Playing DVD's

[CraigWolfie]

I recently brought my Sony Vaio, and I am very impressed, apart from the Battery Life and when I am playing DVD movies.

I do a set of nights for my job every 12 weeks, and one of my reason's for buying a laptop was so I could play games and watch DVD's in those long hard nights. Although on every film I have played the sound and film keeps jumping.

I have tried several DVD's, and all the same, the further into the film I go the worse it get's.

I have a Sony Vaio PCG-K315M.

It is a P4 3.06 (532)
40 Gig HDD
512 MB RAM
15.4" WXGA X-Black LCD (1280x800)
Pioneer DVD-RW Drive (DVR-K4)

I am using WinDVD 5 (come pre-installed), and the same thing happens in Windows Media Player. I have all the updates from Sony's WebSite installed.

Please help if you can, it is Driving Me CRAZY.

[kee-lo_]

If you go into the powerpannel and set it to performance it'll work better. The catch 22 is that the battery won't last the whole film

[feederfan]

The battery life isnt bad at all, its just average, playing DVDs is suprisingly processor intensive, and that uses a lot of battery! Try setting your power setting to interVideo winDVD to improve battery performance

[mrgame_cat]

I am having exactly the same problem with my fr415b...

How does adjusting ther power options affect the jittery dvd playback?

To be honest, this has only just started happening on my laptop and I am worried it is indicative of a dvd drive on its last legs.

Can anyone shed some light on why my laptop is doing this?

I am using PowerDVD6.0 to play dvds and like CraigWolfie, this is really annoying me.

Thanks

[CraigWolfie]

Thank you for your help, I will give it a try, to be honest because i am at work I am not too worried about power consumption. If I was, i would of brought a Centrino. Although my battery will only last about 30-45 mins. And that is playing Pin Ball, or creating web pages. But thank you for your input.

[feederfan]

30-40mins? my K series will last 2 hours when I am using Macromedia Studio MX and playing music. Make sure you set the power configuration to VAIO optimised! you should get more than that!

[kee-lo_]

My GRX does 2hrs

[Leafy]

I'm happy that 2 people (as far as I can work out) have the same problem as me - the DVD jumping and faltering destroying the relaxation of a good movie.

What's interesting is that I have just bought an external DVD writer and playing DVDs on this comes up with the same problem .

Playing through different DVD software (Nero, Windows Media player, WinDVD) makes no change.

Therefore it's not the drive (which I presume is where I'd use the DVD cleaning cloth), and not the software, therefore it must be the driver (?).......

Again the DVD player worked fine at first and the problem only developed after about a year.

Looking forward to hearing any results / other solutions people have.


Concerning the battery :
My battery has run out after about 3 years of negligible use. I'm going to buy another one soon. This is, I'm told, due to the fact that I kept the computer plugged in (and therefore charging) and didn't keep running the battery down to nil before recharging. Apparently this is the way to prolong the life of any rechargable battery.

[feederfan]

you shouldnt need to run it down before re-charging if it is an Li-On battery because they do not suffer from the old battery 'memory' problem!

I think the dvd problem comes from the graphics card not being able to render it fast enough, but i dont know, its a very unusual problem and i cant say i have encountered it with my K series at all!

[TygerTyger]

A lot of people have told of this happening on their Vaios. I can't say as I can offer an explanation either though. Try exiting any non essential running programs.