Cannot play Blu-Ray in PowerDVD or WinDVD - images are multicoloured snow

[AnitaPeterson]

Hi there,

I have a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray DVD unit in my Athlon64 X2 4600+, sporting a Radeon X1650 (with AVIVO hardware acceleration) and 2 GB of RAM, under Vista Ultimate. The machine, is, for the moment, connected to a monitor via VGA, I'm not using DVI.

As you can see, my hardware is more than adequate for HD. In fact, I can play any HD format I want, from 720 .wmv to 1080p .mkv files, via MPC or VLC (CoreAVC is also installed). I have AnyDVD running in the background at all times.

I also have PowerDVD Deluxe 7, PowerDVD Deluxe 8 and WinDVD 9. Yet, none of these software players will work with my Blu-Ray discs (I have only two of those anyway).

PowerDVD 7 shows multicoloured snow (actually, small squares) instead of the proper image, although it plays the sound properly.

PowerDVD8 has to be upgraded to Ultra in order to play Blu... and needs a hack for HD-DVD (thanks, Cyberlink!)

WinDVD 9 just stops whenever I try to play a Blu-Ray disc.

However, I have no problems in running any of my HD-DVDs or "regular" DVDs in these programs.

Am I missing something here?

[Baldrick]

I would try install anydvd and play with powerdvd to see if it's encryption or hdcp problem.

[jman98]

PowerDVD versions that support HD playback, whether HD DVD and/or BluRay, have "issues". They sometimes just don't play things very well at all. I've even had issues with these versions when playing normal DVDs.

WinDVD will NEVER work. Give that up now.

Note that ONLY if you are using HDMI connections between your PC and the monitor will PowerDVD and WinDVD show HD DVD and BluRay in 1080p. They will downgrade the video resolution a lot on your type of connection. I don't think this is your problem, but you do need to know that it is happening.

Finally, if your BluRay discs are among the newer titles released, they may use the final spec of the BluRay format and that may be what's causing the software players to have fits. I know for a fact that PowerDVD 7 definitely came out prior to this spec. It might be true for PowerDVD 8 and WinDVD 9. Do a web search and see if others are reporting similar problems for these discs.

[PG Tips]

Is your monitor HDCP compliant?

[MOVIEGEEK]

Use DVI on an HDCP compliant monitor,also look for a firmware update for your drive and driver update for your videocard.

[mankhan]

Anita, do as follows:

1. If you are using two monitors at same time then go to your video card control panel and disable one of them. In other words dont use clone mode.

2. As i may understand that you are also playing mkv files on your PC which means that obviously you have installed codecs and Haali Media Splitter/Matroska splitter, etc. If this is so then you would have to un-install haali/matroska splitter (only) as it conflicts with WinDVD plus Bluray edition to playback blu-ray DVDs. or use PowerDVD 8 ultra edition to playback blu-ray disks.

On my PC WinDVD 9 blu-ray editon works better than PowerDVD 8 as quality of pictue is much better in WinDVD but the only problem is that it conflicts with Haali/Matroska splitter and i'm trying to google out if any remedy is there.

If you shall ever be able to resolve this WinDVD/Haali-Matroska conflict, i hope you would let me know on maknkhan67@yahoo.com.
Take care