dvd wont play under vista premium 32 bit

[hewittm]

Hi

First time on the forum but wondering if you can offer any advice on my problem

I have just built a lovely HTPC and put in a pioneer BDC-202BK blu ray drive

Everything works fine except play back of dvd's. Not tried blu ray yet and understand I need power dvd ultra but not even got to that yet

Running vista 32 bit Premium so it should play dvd's natively within both media center and media player

When the dvd plays I get perfect audio but the screen fills with tiny coloured blocks and I can see areas of the screen which are actually correct but these are very few and normally quickly covered with the coloured blocks as the picture moves. Sorry for the poor descripton but I cant explain it any other way

Anybody got any ideas or seen this before

Background info
the blu ray drive is connected via sata
I have tried an ide dvd drive and the same thing happens so I guess its something in vista
my board and graphics card are more than adequate to play dvd mediaIf i installvlc player they play but this isnt really the soln I was looking for

[guns1inger]

Are you using the latest drivers for your graphics card, or just the ones that shipped with Vista ?

The basic drivers that install with Vista are just that - basic. You have to install the manufacturers drivers to get all the features running correctly.

[hewittm]

As graphics are on board I installed those that came wth the gigabyte board...thanks for the prompt reply

[guns1inger]

I would stick with VLC or the KM Player. That VLC works would suggest you have a codec issue. I know previous versions of Windows did not ship with mpeg-2 playback, and most versions of Vista don't have it either. This has never been an issue for me as I have always considered Windows Media Player as software of last resort. Especially for DVD playback, where it has always been something of a dud.

[hewittm]

I've just checks the gigabyte site and there are more recent graphics drivers available so will try that...guess its VLC for the time being but I would likke to get it working in media centre as I'm using the machine as a pure HTPC with a remote control
Thanks[/s]

[redwudz]

The motherboard manufacturers drivers are often a fair amount older than the ones you can get from the video chip manufacturer. With a Gigabyte motherboard, most often it's a ATI or Nvidia video chip. You should see which brand chip and model in your video display settings. If you don't get any better results from the Gigabyte driver and you've tried VLC player, try the manufacturers latest driver.

It's also a good idea to uninstall the old driver before updating, then reboot and install the newer one.

[hewittm]

updated the ati display chipset and no change....I think it may be a codec problem so I'll keep looking....I know I have the latest display on board chipset drivers (nothbridge and southbridge) and the latest cd-rom drivers from pioneer.

I bought cyberlink dvd ultra 8 and thought this might get me round the problem but it just freezes vista when I try and play a dvd....so a freeware vlc saves the day as a temp workaround

I'm going to try and log a call with microsoft re this one...I should at least be able to play dvd's natively wthin vista premium !

Thanks for the pointers thus far..much appreciated all

[edDV]

Power DVD Ultra is likely to install the software MPeg2 decoder that you need. The one that comes with Vista Premium may be limited to Windows applications and may only activate from Microsoft. You can call their support line.

The NVida drivers should allow hardware MPeg2 decode support from the display chipset.