exec()-function, vlc on local disk

Next configuration.
1) Windows-PC with xampp installed on D-drive.
2) avi's installed on D:-drive subdir /avi
3) vlc.exe installed on C:/Program Files (x86)/VideoLAN/VLC

I want to show LOCAL, some avi via PHP because I wrote a whole image-appl in php and that runs very well. Now with modern cameras we can make avi's too and so I want to show them also when I use the image-collection-appl.

Using HTML and the FILE-protocol in Href, in the A-tag only works in InternetExplorer, so this is out of question.

Now, I thought using the exec()-funtion from php (native code of my image-collection-appl to call vlc.exe for playing the avi, mov, ...

I used next code:


exec('"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe D:\\avi\\test.avi"');

When I run this, I got a never-ending sandbox ... and a white screen
Can someone help me fix this ? I looked around the internet but nowhere I could retrieve a correct, god and working answer...

Thank in advance