New Nvidia Driver (7.15.11.5680) fixed my HD-DVD playback issues on 5920-6313.. Maybe this help someone else.

I had been trying, unsuccessfully, to get Season 1 of Heroes HD-DVD (1080p title) to play on my 5920-6313. Acer Arcade would error and refuse to play the disc. I don't think it liked me using the Nvidia Beta 169.12 drivers via hacked .inf. Beta 169.12's also caused Vista to bluescreen and crash when I inserted HDMI cable to my 47" 1080p LCD panel. I'm not sure.. but it seems Vista requires an WHQL-signed driver for Vista 32-bit to not trash HDCP protection on HD-DVD. Using hacked .inf invalidates driver's WHQL certificate. I could be wrong.. but that is what I observed.

So I swapped back to Acer stock OEM Nvidia 7.15.11.119. (Had to download from Acer's European site cause US site's zip file has bad CRC and will not uncompress in Vista or via 7-zip. I have emailed them a complaint about this. And, yes, I downloaded two copies to be sure it was their file and not the transfer.).

On stock 7.15.11.119, the disc would "play" but with heavy artifacts and occasional flicker every few seconds. Looked horrible. I could tell the image was supposed to be a face talking but image was covered/trailing in what I can only describe as digital confetti.

I tried updating HD-DVD drive firmware to AC'06 and HP21 firmwares as mentioned in other threads. Same effect. (I decided to keep drive on AC'06 firmware.)
I updated Acer Arcade to 1.12.4706. Still same effect.
Tried AnyDVD to remove copy protection. Same effect.
I suspected video driver issue and asked Acer if they had updated driver. Got no response.

Then I got an idea. I used google to look for other laptops that have 8600M GT with HDMI out. Asus, MSI, and Toshiba have some laptops with this configuration. On Toshiba's support site, under the downloads for Qosmio G45-AV680, they have nice, shiny, and new, Nvidia WHQL-signed 7.15.11.5680 for Vista-32bit.

7.15.11.5680 fixed everything. And OMG.. 1920x1080p is beautiful on LCD panel.

Initially, the drivers would not install (error was "no compatible hardware found") but they unzip to C:\temp.nvidia . I installed by going to device manager --> 8600GT --> properties --> Update Driver --> Let me choose --> Have Disk --> C:\temp.nvidia\nvts.inf --> Then reboot after install.

1920x1080p over HDMI works flawless. I'm using an 20ft HDMI1.3A cable (22 gauge shielded) from monoprice.com to send signal to Westinghouse 47-inch 1080p LCD. HDMI cable was $26. (BestBuy wanted $240 for an 16ft.., pffft, they are ripping people off..)
I'm sending audio via 25ft Toslink optical cable ($8 at monoprice) to Denon AVR-5800. Mini-phono spdif to toslink optical adapter was $1.50 on amazon.com .

I'll miss the performance of the nvidia beta drivers.. (3dmark06 below) but now HD-DVD and HDMI output work perfectly.

BTW, My 8600gt is BIOS overclocked to GPU 572 / Mem 472 / Shader 1144..
3dmark06 on stock (101.19 aka 7.15.11.119) is 3757.
3dmark06 on Beta 169.12 via .inf hack is 4202.
3dmark06 on 7.15.11.5680 is 3856.

Hopefully, this help someone else out and spare them some grief.

 

strange that AnyHDDVD did not help you. I use the latest version and it works a treat with NVidia beta driver.

 

Which BETA driver are you using? 169.21? Do you know if the dualhead/HDMI support was in it? And what player do you use for playback?

I did like AnyHDDVD and will probably buy it when I can afford to. I don't think it helped in my situation because the stock Acer Vista driver was the culprit of my artifacts. Acer Arcade is getting the job done.. but I think I would rather have Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra as my player.

 

Thank you so much for this suggestion! I had the same issue when I was prompted to upgrade the acer arcade software when I tried to play a new HD DVD disc. After upgrading, I had the digital static artifacting all over the controls and static "flickers" during movie playback.

Following your suggestions with the Toshiba support drivers fixed this issue right up for me.

 

Same problem i've had with my 5920G and i put the sony Nvidia ForceWare X 167.43 for Windows Vista 64bit WHQL from laptopvideo2go...works great

 

Hey folks, I have the same problem regarding changing from the stock drivers and losing HD DVD, and stock giving poorer graphical performance with the 5920g.

I followed some of the suggestions above, and found that the only one that worked was installing the Toshiba drivers from there support site.

Now the thing is that I have the Aspire 5920g with the 8600 GS card, rather than the GT card (not sure if this is a region thing - I live in the UK). The drivers I installed only offered the option of installing for the 8600GT, but I thought that I would give it a try, and to my surprise it worked! I now have decent graphics performance and working HD DVD's.

I just got my 5920, so the last thing that I want to do is overheat and risk damaging the graphics card. So I was wondering has anyone done this before? Can anyone offer some advice to any ramifications my modding will do?

Cheers for any help, and thanks to the original poster for the tips!



My specs for info...
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 - 2GHz (x2), 800MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache
RAM: 2GB DDR2
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS

 

I am still having issues with HD-DVD playback on my TV with the newest titles (e.g. Bourne Ultimatum). Works fine on teh laptop, but when I connect the TV the Acer Arcade program gives me a "graphics video card error" or something like that and won't play the disc at all (works fine when the HDMI cable is not connected).

Is this the Toshiba driver you're referring to? If so, I've already installed it and still doesn't work ...

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...hhegdecgfkceghdgngdgmn.0&ct=DL&all_docs=false



Thanks.

 

Much appreciated, Thorny.

My one modification to the instructions you've posted is due only to my personal preferences: as I'd like to keep several drivers around in case they're needed, I manually extracted my download to D:\Drivers\Nvidia\7.15.11.5680\ so I can if necessary switch drivers with (comparative) ease.

I have yet to try playback through HDMI to HDTV however Toshiba's 7.15.11.5680 drivers worked like a charm under 'PowerDVD Ultra' and 'Any(HD)DVD' after I did the following (extra steps added since I've tried many different drivers and reinstalls previously):

a) Uninstalled the stock driver,
b) Restarted the 5920G,
c) Ran Ccleaner's Registry cleaning tool,
d) Restarted the 5920G (again, just to be safe),
e) Ran Ccleaner's Registry cleaning tool (again, to ensure changes took effect),
f) Followed the 'Have Disk' methodology outlined in the first post (directing Vista to look for the .inf in the folder into which I manually extracted the driver).
g) Restarted to complete the installation.
h) Test with 'Superman the Movie' HD-DVD
i) Reboot and retest (to ensure stability of upgrade: Acer stock drivers once worked *once* with HD-DVD before the artifacts returned)

I had previously updated to the latest version of Acer Arcade Deluxe and successfully installed the Cyberlink HD patch. I have not touched either the HD-DVD drive's firmware or the system's BIOS.

Having encountered the same flicker and digital artifacts issues in both Arcade Deluxe and PowerDVD (with and without AnyDVD), I'd figured the drivers were to blame but ran into the same problem as others have: any modded .inf voids WQHL certification and causes DRM/HDCP errors which prevent HD-DVD playback.

Since specs vary by country and sometimes by store, here's my machine (the 'Future Shop' version as purchased in Canada):

Acer 5920G Model ZD1 (aka. 'Aspire 5920-6273')
Intel T5250 (1.5GHz 667MHz FSB, 2mb L2 cache)
2gb DDR2 RAM
250gb 5400rpm HDD
Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT 512mb
Intel 4965 802.11 a/b/g/Draft-N WLAN
Toshiba TS-L802 HD-DVD player & Dual Layer DVD writer

Cheers,

- Arctic

 

You have new drivers on european site:
ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_5920/vista/Drivers/

Still, they are 7.15.11.5672, so the one from Toshiba are newer.

 

Sorry for the late reply... but the drivers won't hurt your graphics card. They either work or don't work and, and at worst, crash windows to a blue screen. As far as heat goes, I wouldn't worry about that, either. Any change in clock speed would be minor.

 

Good Suggestions from Arcticwolf. Drivers don't always uninstall gracefully.

Glad these drivers have helped some.
I'm still getting flawless playback from them.