media player 10 and dell laptop

[bigjoe_dub]

have media player 10 on the work laptops. (fairly locked down so cannot really upgrade)

anyway we have Dell lattitude D620 laptops with XP on them. one of the lads has a dvd with some AVI files, ( a few episodes of the Sopranos)

media player will launch then but will only play the sound and not the picture. my own laptop (same model) has an external Dell (1907FP0 monitor and the files play fine. only seems to be when you use a laptop without an external monitor.

Why is this?? would have thought in this day and age laptop monitors should be well able for avi files.

and

anything I can do to help this chap out apart from giving him my lovely monitor?

 

[puffmullett]

Have you installed all the up to date codecs? If note download & install Ace codec pack & this should solve your problem

 

[bigjoe_dub]

are they ok from pop-ups / spywear point of view.
can you recommend a good site to download from. google chucks up loads of them.

why would the external monitor not need the codecs?

 

[DrMoriarty]

[broken link removed]

Maybe try the Divx player or the VLC player, if the laptop will let you install them? The DivX suite includes codecs which should allow you to play the files in WMP too, if you prefer that.

 

[bigjoe_dub]

hi DM

used this little program called gspot (true name) from here
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/GSpot.htm

it looks at media files and tells you what codec is missing if any.
came up with xvid missing.
quick search on google gave me
http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/

installed this and worked first time.

 

[DrMoriarty]

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the trusty GSpot!

 

[tivanagh]

Funnily enough I came across this problem last week when I also tried to watch an episode of the Sopranos. I have a Dell desktop which I bought in November. I thought it strange when only audio came up but didnt have a clue where to start looking to fix it. Thanks for the info.

 

[Ballyman]

As mentioned above. VLC player works perfectly for me.