Blu Ray on PC

[chipsgravy]

I have recently got one of these LG HD DVD / Blu Rau drives. I haven't p;ayed much on it however, when playing Face Off HD DVD the sound keeps going out of sync with the video. If I skip back or forwards it resynces but it just seems like the audio is playing slightly slower than the video. I can't find a setting to fix this and its driving me mad. What software is everyone using to play the discs?

[abigsmurf]

Sound going out of sync indicates the CPU isn't coping.

Your options are fairly limited in fixing this:

Overclock the CPU (you shouldn't need a heavy overclock if you're not noticing frames dropping)
replace the CPU for a faster one
Get a graphics card with Hardware video decoding (you don't have to splash out, you can get them pretty cheap) and use a player that supports this.

[sj33]

@chipsgravy - What's your spec?

You can play Blu-Rays in Media Player Classic HomeCinema these days (using CoreAVC for faster decoding), and ffdshow supports the HD audio codecs. You don't get the extra functionality though of course.

[chipsgravy]

The specs on the PC are Intel core 2 quad processor Q6600 @2.4mhz, 3gb of Ram and an Nvidia GeForce 8600 graphics card.

Do I really need more power? Darn!!

[sj33]

No that's plenty, and your GPU supports hardware decoding anyway. I'd ask over at Doom9 if no-one here can help.

[abigsmurf]

It's incredibly odd you're having sync issues with a setup like that. That should play Blu Ray without breaking a sweat. CoreAVC is a good option although I understand it requires a lot of tweaking to get it playing blu-rays.

Other than that, I'd see if you've anything running slowing it down. Disable anti-virus software when playing, see if that helps.

[sj33]

Basically any Core2 CPU should be able to decode it, even without GPU hardware acceleration/DXVA/CUDA.

What player are you using? PowerDVD is generally regarded as the best commercial HD-DVD/Blu-Ray playback suite, though the newer PowerDVD 8/9 doesn't support HD-DVD, so you will have to track down Version 7.

[chipsgravy]

Yes, Im using the version of Power DVD that came with the LG Drive. It doesn't state which version it is but it does have the HD-DVD logo. I'm going to have to experiment I think with a variety of discs. Blu Ray and HD DVD, to see if this was a one off or just related to one format or a bigger problem.

Thanks for the replies guys.

[randombs]

I've had a few issues with my LG drive, too. First of all for some reason it refuses to move to the next layer on Matrix Reloaded from my HDDVD ultimate collection. All the other discs are fine, all the discs are mint, it just will not budge past halfway. I tried the film with my 360 HDDVD drive and it played fine. Now and then I have an issue with dvd playback going a bit funny with it. Maybe it's just a bit dodgy.

Oh and I'm pretty sure the PowerDVD that comes with the LG drives is 7.3

[abigsmurf]

Early DVD drives were often fussy about layer changes. May be worth seeing if you can update the drive's firmware. See if there's anything on the LG site.

Remember firmware updates always have a chance of bricking the unit

[randombs]

No there's no firmware update yet that I've seen (I bought it last Summer). It's not a DVD drive though, it's a BD/HDDVD combo

[abigsmurf]

just saying that it's early(ish) tech and they can have teething troubles

[randombs]

when playing Face Off HD DVD the sound keeps going out of sync with the video. If I skip back or forwards it resynces but it just seems like the audio is playing slightly slower than the video. I can't find a setting to fix this and its driving me mad. What software is everyone using to play the discs?

What's your CPU usage like when playing the film? I wonder if the LG drive just has trouble with HDDVDs as I've had absolutely no problems with BR discs at all, but that Matrix Reloaded HDDVD gives me trouble and I'm pretty sure I've come across one or two other HDDVD films that had issues.

[Rockman_Joey]

I just got a SATA Blu Ray Drive for my drive and it asks about changing the region only five times before it locks. Is there any way I can get region free Blu Ray playback with some sort of application.

I got the drive as I have a Japanese PS3 so now I can play Region B movies but just wanted to know if anything was available? Thanks in advance

[huxley]

^ get anydvdhd for the region free option.
Billy run the firmware update tool that came with your bundle software, Mine updated the drive for me, didnt have any problems with it before or after.