Watching DVDs on Windows 7

[nibbler]

Could it be that windows 7 pro plays dvds automatically and home premium doesn't? Are you on pro or HP?

[jim]

That would seem a bit odd though, considering 7 HP comes with Media Center.

[TAKTAK]

@ TAKTAK and Kalniel: Do you have HDCP compatible screens and graphics cards? My monitor supports HDCP, and the driver shows it's "working". I think maybe if you don't have an HDCP monitor the DRM issue is ignored?

The Nvid control panel stipulates that both the GFX card and display are HDCP capable.


Try the GFX card in a different PCI-e lane?

[nibbler]

Why do you need HDCP for watching Standard def dvds?

[kalniel]

@ TAKTAK and Kalniel: Do you have HDCP compatible screens and graphics cards? My monitor supports HDCP, and the driver shows it's "working". I think maybe if you don't have an HDCP monitor the DRM issue is ignored?

God knows. I'll be doing a reinstall of this system in the next month or so anyway, so maybe this problem will just go away.

I do, but that won't have anything to do with it as we're not talking blue-ray here (nor am I outputting over HDMI) - I'm using normal DVI-DVI.

I think the problem will go away on reinstall - the problem with codecs is if you start trying things you can mess it up then it's hard to clear them out fully/restore the original windows settings.

I don't have that film to try, but I have lots of other protected DVDs from different studios and they're all fine.

Regarding the DVD spinning too noisily, there are a few things to check. First, that your drive is operating in DMA rather than PIO. Second do you have any games that might have installed starforce or similar? I used to have problems with starforce but updating my DVD firmware fixed it. There is a script you can run to reset DMA mode (deletes a registry entry and allows windows to rebuilt it).

If you're struggling to read the data fully then you might be having problems with the watermarks or something. Or and check the disk/drive is clean!

[TheAnimus]

From the drive sounding too loud, to the fact its getting courrupt data on the screen.

Maybe its as simple as the DVD drive been nakered?

Win7hp comes with EVERYTHING you need to watch a DVD pre-installed, it should just work flawlessly.

If it doesn't its a hardware/driver issue.

[watercooled]

Maybe its as simple as the DVD drive been nakered?

Or the DVD itself, does it play OK on another drive/player?

[benus]

If you got NVidia card you should download fresh drivers from laptop2go, upgrade it, uninstall all the codecs you got and instlall K-Lite Pack. Problem solved.