New XPS 501x Blu-ray and driver issues

hi, I received my refurb fully loaded XPS15 about 10 days ago and am slowly trying things and setting it up. So far really happy with it but don't really care for the lump on the bottom due to the 9 cell battery. Minor complaint. More problematic:

1. Tried blu-ray player for the first time last night. Nice picture on the 1080p screen. Then I tried to play my Bladerunner bluray through HDMI output onto my HDTV using "projector" for second display. I get intermittent bright yellow static-y horizontal lines across the TV display, jitter, and little audio other than static. The HDMI cable seems to work fine when playing blurays/dvds from my stand-alone player on this TV so I don't suspect it is the problem. Suggestions? [edit: this is true of the projected display whether bluray is playing or not. I'd like to be able to view photos from laptop on my 1080p HDTV for example].

2. The morning after I got the computer, so second time I booted up, I got warnings that "Device Driver Software" was not successfully installed", and listed "Base System Device", "SD Host Controller", and another "Base System Device" with red X's next to them. Also listed "JMB38XxDHostController" with green check so I guess no problem there. I've never seen this message again, but haven't noticed anything not working properly until bluray issue. Although I still haven't checked some of the outputs yet - been very busy with work and kids since I got this machine. Should I be worried?

edit: 3. One other thing. The new XPS15's come with Skype pre-installed. My refurb did not, so I installed it. I thought I read somewhere that you can define output resolution depending on speed of net connection, but I don't see any of that functionality in my standard Skype controls. Am I missing anything?

I have about 10 days before my 21 day return window expires. Really don't want to go through that process so hoping I can convince myself everything is working right before I leave for a business trip next week.

 

1. That definitely sounds messed up. Tried a different HDMI port on your TV? Blu-rays, technically, aren't supposed to play on two screens simultaneously. Either look for updates to PowerDVD or try playing on *just* the HDTV.

2. Reinstall your chipset drivers from Dell. This shouldn't be a big issue.

I'm unsure on the Skype, as I don't use it.

 

Thanks for input.

I resolved some issues.

1. on the line across the screen, I got it to go away by setting the second display (my Samsung HDTV) to 1080p 30 Hz instead of default 1080p 60 Hz. Now I can display photos etc on the big screen and they look good. Can also play DVD's, but not blu-ray. Will try turning off laptop screen to see if that fixes. Still have some audio issues even with plain DVD. However, since I have a stand-alone blu-ray player, I'm not real motivated to work this out until that machine breaks down or I buy a 3D TV. I don't think anything is malfunctioning - just a matter of finding the right settings.

2. As far as the "driver not found" messages, I later discovered that my SD disk reader was not functioning to read photos from camera so that's what it was all about. For some reason, it installed the driver for "xD" but not for "SD" and "M" something and all the other functions (the other "Base" devices) which are built into that reader. Fortunately, it's the same driver for all four functions and once I installed the JMB38X driver for the other devices the card reader works fine. Problem solved.

3. I saw that Dell has a Skype driver for the XPS 15. I uninstalled Skype and download the Dell version. So far I can't tell the difference between the two versions. Perhaps it is less likely to conflict with other things or perhaps I wasted 15 minutes.

Hope this helps anyone else who might have similar issues. Thanks to everyone on this forum. I'm stoked on this computer. Amazing machine for less that $1K.