Problem playing DVDs on Windows 10 laptop.

An elderly relation has a newish laptop (operating system is Windows 10) which like many newer laptops doesn't have a DVD drive. He bought an external DVD drive for backing up documents etc, which it manages to do. However, if he wants to play a DVD on the laptop via the external DVD drive he finds that he can't do this, although it can play CDs.

The DVD player software he is using is "VLC media player", which is able to play DVDs on this computer running Windows 10, although this pc was upgraded from Windows 7.

Any suggestions on how to fix this problem, please?

default programs issue.

if he puts a DVD in the drive
gives it 2 mins
then holds the windows key then E

does it show the contents of the dvd like audio_TS and video_TS listed?

Yes, it does. It cannot seem to read the files though.