Complete newbie with Blu Ray having troubles

[ewanmclean2005]

Here's what I have tried so far to get Blu Ray working on my PC, system specification for my PC will follow.

I have installed PowerDVD on my PC (running Windows Vista), the BD adviser told me that my PC was adequete enough to run Blu Ray. My system specification is as follows.

RAM 2GB
Processor AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (2x2.0Ghz)
Graphics ATI X1300 (256mb)
Hard disks 1x Seagate IDE (2 years old) 1x Samsung SATA (dunno if this matters)
Pioneer BDC-202 Blu Ray ROM drive.

Software

Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 and I have tried the PowerDVD software that came with the drive and I have also downloaded the patch for it too. I also have Nero 8 installed on my machine, which also has difficulty playing discs.

PowerDVD manages to play one of 2 BDs that I bought, I have bought Surf's Up and Ice Age; The Meltdown.

Problems I am currently having (prepare yourselves for this)

The Surf's Up BD, will play in PowerCinema but is extremely jumpy while playing the actual movie, also I have a dual monitor setup, somehow it manages to play on my main monitor(connect through VGA) but whenever I try to play the video on my HDTV (connected through HDMI/DVI output) it Blue screens my PC. When I try and play the Surf's Up BD through Nero 8 it freezes at that loading screen before it shows the title menus and crashes often.

The problem I am having with the Ice Age 2 BD with PowerCinema, it tells me that I need to go online to download extra software, but my PC is not connected to the Internet, when I try to play Ice Age 2 through Nero Showtime in Nero 8, it tells me that the disk has an invalid DVD SVCD or CD structure and doesn't allow me to go anywhere.

Any help would be appreciated thank you.

[danay82]

Originally Posted by ewanmclean2005

I have installed PowerDVD on my PC (running Windows Vista),

Well that is one major problem right there.

This might not be the problem, but I had a similar problem like yours and it turned out the driver was overwritten for my video card by the MS Windows driver.

Had to re-download it from Nvidia and corrected the problem.

Like I said, it might not work in your case, but i'll ponder on another idea for ya in a few.

[ewanmclean2005]

Okay, downloading and installing an updated driver has exacerbated problems further, where I was able to play a movie but jumpy before, I tried to play a movie again and PowerDVD is now telling me that the driver I am trying to use is incompatible with Blu Ray , I guess I'll have to roll back the driver.

[danay82]

The PowerDVD software your using, is it the Ultra version?

[ewanmclean2005]

Originally Posted by danay82

The PowerDVD software your using, is it the Ultra version?

Yes it is, I did a format and reinstall of Windows today because my PC was starting to act up a little though so I am in the middle of sorting things on my PC

Last night I installed the 3730a patch (after rolling the driver back). This caused problems too because the program started to freeze.

You know I would have at least expected Windows Media Center to be able to support Blu Ray in Vista straight out of the box, I really have no idea why Microsoft have decided to be annoying as usual and not support it.

[ryoohki]

Originally Posted by ewanmclean2005

Yes it is, I did a format and reinstall of Windows today because my PC was starting to act up a little though so I am in the middle of sorting things on my PC

Last night I installed the 3730a patch (after rolling the driver back). This caused problems too because the program started to freeze.

You know I would have at least expected Windows Media Center to be able to support Blu Ray in Vista straight out of the box, I really have no idea why Microsoft have decided to be annoying as usual and not support it.

Lol you think MS would paid to have a Blu-ray codec.. i mean Media Player doesn't even play DVD by itself in 2008.. LOL

[ewanmclean2005]

Hey guys I fixed (most) of the problems I managed to watch Ice Age 2 today, turns out I cant play movies through DVI to HDMI cables so I swapped for VGA.