I never thought I would end up saying this, but the latest version of Microsoft’s “Windows Media Player” (currently in beta) really does rule.
You should be able to figure out from the picture above that it has thumbs of all the albums - regardless of where they come from. It seems to be able to play most types of file “out of the box”, but doesn’t play DVDs - you need to but a codec for that from a third party. I bought one from Intervideo earlier, and it worked immediately.
I can now watch my box set of Buck Rogers while I’m working