Laptop DVD playback problem (Full Version)

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bobby -> Laptop DVD playback problem (1/24/2007 0:19:51)

Hey all

I've been googling for hours and can't find what I'm looking for.

My bro-in-law has a brand new (month old) Dell Lattitude D620. Nice machine, but DVD playback absolutely sucks.

Commercial DVD's... not ripped or dl'd copies.

During playback the sound is terrific, but the picture is jumpy, sketchy at best. It acts like the video processor can't keep up, gets tons worse when there is heavy action on the screen.

Happens on the laptop as well as on his LCD monitor when he's jacked into his docking station at home.

Battery or plugged in, makes no diff

We've run updates on everything from BIOS to drivers, everything is up to date and it still has the problem.

My next thought was memory, but it's got 2Gigs of RAM

I found several posts online where Linux users experienced this... Windows has far better commercial DVD support than Linux so I wasn't totally surprised to see some issues. Most fixes were with driver or system updates.

The only other thing I can think of is that he's running Windows 2K on the machine... could it be as simple as that?

Any feedback is welcome

Thanks all
Miss it 'round here



BobbyDouglas -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (1/24/2007 3:01:14)

1) Driver issue
2) Compatibility issue with DVD

Driver issue can be fixed by uninstalling the old one, running a cleanup program, and then installing it again.

Compatibility issue will be hard to fix. Could be something like a corrupt codec, or a running process. Did you install any DVD codecs? Have you tried PowerDVD (you can install free trial)?



Spooky -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (1/24/2007 4:42:01)

Check you are using the intel drivers rather than the default microsoft graphics driver?
Its running a better spec than my dell (apart from W2000, but thats debatable ;) and my playback is fine
Does it change with different player ? eg VLC?



bobby -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (1/24/2007 14:43:15)

We tried diff software, not PowerDVD... will dl and give it a try.

It is running the MS driver, I'll have to try the intel driver and see if that helps at all.

Thanks for the suggestions guys!!

:)



Davejb -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (1/25/2007 13:49:33)

It may be due to many apps runing in the background. A few years ago, Dell used to be one of the best as far as not including useless junk and garbage on their PC's. They have since become just as bad as HP, Compaq, or eMachines. Take a look at your startup items and installed apps and remove un-needed software to free up some resources.



bobby -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (1/25/2007 16:08:44)

I cleaned out the startup menu... but maybe there are other processes running in the background that are gobbling up resources.

I'll double check that as well.

He's gonna bring it over to my place tomorrow night so I can mess with it while they have a go at the Wii ;)




Davejb -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (1/25/2007 16:16:38)

run the msconfig utility, most of the stuff will be there, in the startup tab, though you might have some problems determining what's needed and what isn't.



staigerman -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (3/21/2007 15:39:17)

maybe you have different levels of acceleration available for the graphics and it's doing none of it, so it spends more time doing the decompression on the cpu when things get busy.

I would see if the graphics properties advanced tab gives a clue to the acceleration used.

That said, there are also other ways to view a DVD, if PowerDVD doesn't work, use Windows Media Player or others. There are prolly plenty of open source/free choices too.



bobby -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (3/21/2007 15:44:58)

We tried everything I could think of, short of reinstalling the entire system.

He ended up sending it back to the tech guru's at corporate so it's their headache now.

[:D]

Thanks for the ideas!



jaybee -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (3/21/2007 19:33:09)

Got a client with exactly the same problem. It's a short promo DVD I put together for him. The first time he runs it it's fine but after that it jumps, the picture pixelates and goes green. It's not the DVD, that runs fine on my Mac, both laptops here and all the desktops. He also has the Dell Lattitude D620.

We're pulling it in for testing next week and I'll let you know if we find anything. My only suggestion at the moment is that he has his virus checker set to scan everything he runs and/or that his pagefile needs to be increased. The standard setting with Windows is not good. Make sure it's set to twice the amount of Ram and max and min settings should be the same.

Harv agrees with the driver issue though. He has the Dell drivers rather than the MS ones and his laptop runs it fine. He got the latest ones from the Dell site.



staigerman -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (3/21/2007 20:03:40)

for pagefile, I would even go beyond twice the RAM, i.e. I think that on XP (32-bit) the max allowed is 4 GB and if you have a large disk why not allow to use it all. If you ever end up running an application that needs 2-4 GB for data you'll be happy you did. Or if you have several apps running simultaneously that collectively need 4 GB. If you restrict your system to twice the ram and you have 512 MB ram you can't run more than 1 GB worth of apps.

I would just set the min and max at the top possible value so that it won't waste time looking for more.





jaybee -> RE: Laptop DVD playback problem (3/22/2007 5:15:52)

Yes, I suggested twice as on one machine going over that caused me some problems so I was being a bit on the conservative side for safety.



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