Very new newbie, Blue Ray drive and now movies are grainy

[tpmrcp]

I have searched the board and am still lost. Here is what I have and what I did.

I bought a gateway http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9032352&type=product&id=1218010536521
and i bought this moniter Gateway 22 inch HD http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8894093&type=product&id=1211587387624

Ok watching dvd'd were awesome on it, clear lines on cartoons like Scooby-Doo.

So i thought that i would go ahead and buy a blue ray drive to watch blue rays. The computer said that it doesnt hava an expansion bay, but when i opened it up there was a place to add it, i just had to remove the metal cover. So now I had 2 drives, my Blue Ray ( LG GBC-H20L) http://us.lge.com/products/model/detail/computer%20products_optical%20drives_optical%2...GBC-H20L.jhtml and a regular dvd drive that came with the computer.

Everything hooked up fine, but now the movies I play, even back on the regular dvd drive, are not as crisp. I renter SAW3 on BlueRay today and it stutters just a little, but it is grainy too, nothing like what HD should look like. My graphics card is intigrated but has an HDMI output so the people at BestBuy said it will work. I tried disconnecting the dvd drive to see if maybe it was too much to have both drives, and it is still the same way. Any suggestions? I just might take the BD-rom back and stick with my regular dvd, but i am worried i wont get the movies to be the same as before i messed around.

Help please

[Soopafresh]

Rent another Blu Ray movie and do a comparison. The graininess may just be how that particular movie was produced.

Saw 3 Blu Ray Review:

"Video Quality on this release is 1080p in AVC MPEG-4 on a BD-25 Single-Layered Disc. Grain, for some, may be an issue here as the print does have a fair share of it."

http://www.highdefdiscnews.com/?p=666

[jman98]

Soopafresh is quite correct. The HD formats have the potential of showing a lot of grain, more so than DVD did. In some cases the grainy look is intentional from the filmmaker and it's not caused by bad mastering.

You might try renting a recent Disney movie and see what it looks like. Recent Disney films should not be grainy.

[yoda313]

@tpmrcp - I noticed you have posted a dual core pc with 4gbs ram and vista 64 as your pc spec. On the surface that should be more than enough power to run bluray efficiently. The only reason you would have stuttering is you might not have enough video power.

Integrated graphics are not usually the best way to go for high quality video. Even though it has a hdmi output the onboard graphics just might not be powerful enough for stutter free playback of hd graphics.

Go to powerdvd.com and download their high def advisory program. I don't have a direct link but they should probably be touting it in their download section. This will do a run through of your system to verify if it has enough power to run high def video. Your horsepower and ram are sufficient but it would determine your graphics power.

Also make sure you pause any anti virus programs while playing back video. Even on a multicore system you should limit or eliminate background applications while running high def video to ensure smoother playback.

In the end if you do decide to get a new graphics card you should make sure it at least has hdcp enabled on it and probably hdmi output as well.

One last note on the stuttering - try to see if there are updated graphics drivers for your motherboard video. That may help as well.