WinDVD Blueray video playback scrambled

Hello,

It's been awhile since I've watched a Blu-ray movie on my Vaio notebook. I tried playing a movie recently and the video from the playback was scrambled. What is strange is that the movie trailers shown at the beginning were fine. But once I got to the actual movie, the video does not display properly. Audio seems fine.

Any suggestions?

 

Any suggestions? I've gone back and forth with Sony tech support and now they're telling me to do an outright system restore. I don't want to have to go to this extreme...

 

Sounds like a codec issue.

I can suggest downloading and installing CCCP (search google and download), the COMBINED COMMUNITY CODEC PACK.

Install and try using WinDVD BD again; that DOES / SHOULD resolve the issue. Apart from that, the only other method is a factory reset (system restore). What have you installed on the machine ever since you last played a BD movie?

 

It sounds like an issue with the Copyright Protection with WinDVD. The trailers don't have copyright protection, only the main feature, hence the trailers play and the movie doesn't. Are there any updates to WinDVD out?

 

I considered that but the OP says it worked "a while" ago. So not too sure if it's Copyright Protection...
Taking into account the time span between the last successful playback till the time of the issue, I think something might have scrambled up the codec support somewhere. Alas, why I'm suggesting a 'lightweight' codec pack (for goodness sake, don't get K-Lite - those are horrendously bloated!)

 

I agree, if you go looking for codec packs, the K-Lite packs are a tad overweight.

@OP Do you still have your recovery partition?

 

Hi, I downloaded CCCP as you suggested and installed it. After the installation, I ran WinDVD BD and still had the issue.

What's funny is I downloaded a trial version of PowerDVD yesterday to see if it was software related. The Blu-Ray movie played flawlessly when I tested it out. I went back to WinDVD and the video was still scrambled. Then I tried PowerDVD again, and this time the video was also scrambled.

 

Yes, it is still on my machine and I also have the recovery DVDs.

 

I think you should completely uninstall all of your video players and codecs, granted you can get the WinDVD installer off the recovery partition... then update your drivers for your video card, then try reinstalling WinDVD. What kind of background processes do you have running? Sometimes a program in the background can interfere with WinDVD and cause the copyright protection feature to be enabled. BD-ROM's use a protection system that's different than DVD or anything else, and it's really picky. Can you play DVD's?

 

calyxman: are you using official video drivers?

 

Ahahaha.... If namaiki above is the namaiki I know (somewhat), then this fellow is the solution to all your video problems here on NBR forums, period.

And yes, the problem does seem rather odd so I too would have to ask whether stock video drivers are being used.

Though, I know for a fact that PowerDVD uses it's own set of video codecs (and installs them), and the fact that once you use WinDVD again the playback muddles up across the entire board does seem to suggest some sort of conflict, something which CCCP should have been able to fix... I would suggest opening up SETTINGS (which was installed with CCCP) and checking the re-registering and resetting boxes and trying again.

...If that don't succeed...

Have you tried WMP?

 

I have not messed around with any of the video drivers. I've only had updates via Windows update and Vaio update installed.

 

If you have the ATI card, try installing these new drivers... *Here*

 

Here's the driver for my graphics card:

ATI Catalyst? Mobility Display Driver

But down below it says the following:

Should I still install it?

 

It says that, but it will install just fine. I've used it on a Toshiba (that I no longer own), and even though it said check OEM, it installed and performed fine.

 

oh well, if the driver update doesn't change anything, try disable video acceleration in windvd.

 

I downloaded the driver but I got an error message when trying to install it that my hardware is not supported.

Should I download the original driver from Sony's support page and reinstall it?

 

Any suggestions? What's strange is I can play the special footage from the BD-DVD without a problem, but when I try to play scenes from the actual movie, I get the distorted video. I tried uninstalling CCCP, WinDVD and PowerDVD, and just reinstalled PowerDVD, but still no avail.

 

I tried disabling hardware decode acceleration in WinDVD BD. When I play the movie, the picture quality is clear, but the actual film is jerky and does not run smooth at all. So I go from distorted, pixelated play to clean, but choppy playback. I also tried to reinstall the original graphics drivers from VaioCare.

Hopefully this will help narrow down the issue.

By the way, I remember when I first noticed this issue, before playing the movie I downloaded an update within the player from Fox to allow support for new features in the movie. Don't know if that caused the problem but it's a possibility.