How to play DVD's

I’m a complete novice when it comes to this sort of thing so please bare with me. I have bought a Wii for my son and he was told by his mates you can make the Wii play DVD’s is this so and how do I go about it and still have full functionality?
Oh yes, he downloaded the latest patch from Wii, 4.1E.

Do you have the HBC installed? If so, then launch the hackmii installer and install DVDx. After the installation finishes, get the application MPlayer CE. Launch Mplayer CE, and insert your DVD. Launch the DVD from Mplayer, and it should load. Thats it. If you need help, just ask. :)

Thanks mate. No I have as yet not installed anything other than the Wii update. I’m really not sure where and what to install first. When we had a DVD recorder we taped a lot from the TV to watch at a later date, the recorder went on the blink and our dvd player won’t play them?

Well, if you want to play dvds, you'll need to install the Homebrew Channel. See this page for installation directions, and this page for general info about the Homebrew Channel. :)