Playing DVD's on dell laptop

A

Aidan 2232

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Has anyone experienced problems playing dvds on their laptop? Mine is a new Dell and a few dvds which play fine on the dvd player are very slow on the computer. There is also a lot of static noise. Any suggestions?
 
Is that when you are using Dell software? If so, turn off the hardware acceleration - ie. switch it to NO under options. If this doesn't work, download the free VLC media player. This player is a multiregion player, and I've always found it pretty good.
 
I remember having a similar problem. Tracked it down to the firewall bundled free as part of my broadband package (blueyonder in UK). I turned off the firewall and it solved the problem. So I immediately removed all blueyonder software from my system.

Perhaps something is running on your PC that is using to much resource?
 

Thanks for the comment. I'm using the MS Media Centre that came with the laptop. Is it worthwhile downloading something else?
 

McAfee came with the p.c. so i'll try turning off their firewall. Thanks.
I don't think i have a resource problem.
 
Aidan,
I've had a similar problem on an older Dell Latitude running Windows 98. I never solved the problem completely. I would log onto the Dell website and check out it's support section. There will be some information there that might help. It's best to make sure you have the most upto date Bios version and video drivers etc etc. You can easily download them from the Dell website.
Are your DVD's all Region "All" or a particular region? This can be a problem if you bring DVD's back from holidays abroad, they could well play in a standalone DVD player but may refuse to play on a PC. You can easily check the Region setting of your PC's drive by downloading and running a small program called Driverinfo22. You can get it here,
[broken link removed]

It's worth trying the "hardware acceleration" suggestion from Shnaek. turn it off and try. then turn it back on and lower it by one "notch". This did work for some of my DVD's.
Might be worth trying a different player, Shnaek suggested the free VLC player, it's worth trying as it seems to handle almost all formats and popular with people using "ripped DVD's" I use WinDVD, which is an excellent program and you can download a trial version off their website.
It'w worth a try.
check out the follwoing website, which I found useful at the time.

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#4.6

Hope this is of some help, goodluck
 
Some of the latest Dell laptops have a software (emulation) Creative soundblaster system installed. I deinstalled ALL of this, and it solved all my sound problems.

Prior to doing that, I was getting scratchiness, and stuttering in sound - now all is fine.

eD
 
Thanks for the advice. I deleted most of the dell pre-installed software and dvds play properly using media direct.
 
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