OLD Sony DVD drive

First, I'm an eDummy. My drive sometimes will not recognize a disc, sometimes will and will play a movie in one minute increments after going through the introductions. The picture quality is good, this is with Win XP Home. I don't know what other info I need to provide. Any help will be greatly appreciated, zeek

 

If it only involves movie playback, I would investigate the "player" that opens to play the movie (for example, I use PowerDVD). I would look for upgrades (and since some disks don't start at all, this may involve the CODECs) or uninstalling and reinstalling the program.

Before I committed it to the bin, I would at least do a firmware upgrade for the drive.

Let us know if you would like help with those.

Matt

 

old Sony dvd drive

Thanks to Pete C, I had tried the recommended fixes and no luck. The problem is; the picture displayed will run for a minute or two and will freeze. I clik on the F/F then clik play and I have another minute or so of play. Now thanks to Mattman and how would I deal with CODECS? Personally, I suspect the machine it's self, the dvd player though I'm a complete novice.. I'm at a loss. Thank you both. zeek

 

Here is a 30 day trial of PowerDVD:
http://www.download.com/CyberLink-PowerDVD/3000-2139_4-10762543.html?tag=lst-1
48MB.
Try it, if there is no change, uninstall it. If it runs the movies, then you will need to investigate further, since it costs $50. I have gotten all my versions of PowerDVD from software bundled with graphics cards and CD/DVD drives. Computers like HP, Compaq, Dells, etc will have similar players in their software bundle and you may be able to update yours at their website (also look in the Tools -> Options menu for updating options and CODECS should be mentioned there).

For $50 I would just buy a new drive and use the player that will come with it (so check the software included with the drive, drives can be sold "bare ", without software).

There are freeware players at that same website (like Advanced DVD Player and Avant DVD Player), but you would need to probably trial them to see if they have the CODECS you need.

For me, I would probably just get a known working drive from another computer and test it in yours. A quick (and easy, for me) test.

Matt

 

It would be helpful to know basic hardware configuration of computer .... CPU, graphics card, memory. With no knowledge of system age, I would suggest the following ..

• Check graphics hardware acceleration. From it's current position, reduce by half. Play your video and make adjustments accordingly.

• A good free player which includes all codecs in a single download/install ... VLC media player

 

sucess

Thank you for your suggestion. The "Power DVD" player seems to solve all of my problems with video. Would you be kind enough to recomend a new DVD drive? The one I have is 6? years old and will fail soon no doubt. Do you have any suggestions about deleting the older mechanisms that caused this problem to begin with? I thank you for your help. Zeek

 

old Sony dvd drive

Thank you , I'll look at the VLC player and the accell. Also I'll work on getting a config worked up.

 

Zeek, it is not necessary to check graphics acceleration or your system configuration since Mattman's suggestion of using PowerDVD fixed your problem ... providing or fixing a codec is my guess(??). The option you do have remaining is installing VLC for a free media player. I have / use PowerDVD and I feel it is the best paid DVD player on the market, with VLC coming in second. You can install both, they get along good with each other. For those who may run videos via ISO format, VLC can directly ready the file, no mounting of the file required ... plus numerous other file formats.

 

old Sony dvd drive

Thank you and I've found out that my drives are all healthy so I'm gonna d/l the VLC and do with what I have. I appreciate your help. zeek