Playing DVDs on Laptop - Patched into External Monitor

[rjbinney]

So I'm on the road, my hotel has an extra cool LG 46" flatscreen in the room... And I have an external monitor cable.

I plug my cable into the back of my Dell Latitude D620 running XP SP3, and into the back of the LG. As an external monitor, it's groovy.

But when I play a DVD, I get the following results:

- In WMP 11, I get sound but no picture.

- In PowerDVD, nothing happens. I hit "Resume Movie" and I get a frozen machine.

- In InterVideo Win DVD, I get a picture and sound, but very, very choppy. Like one frame every two or three seconds.

I have the NVDIA Quadro NVS 110M Display Adapter, which seems to be fine.

This has happened with several different DVDs. If I unplug the monitor cable and reboot, all three software packages (WMP, PowerDVD, and InterVideo) run absolutely fine.

I don't have access to a projector right now, but I WAS able to play DVDs on this laptop through a projector several weeks ago.

Any help would be very cool.

Thanks,

[Griff]

Are you extending your desktop, or are you mirroring the projection? Mirroring will take a lot of stress off the adapter and improve performance.

Also, what kind of cable are you using? VGA? DVI? HDMI?

Try using Media Player Classic to play the movies. It's a lot better than most of those programs in my opinion. Can you at least see anything on the TV or projector without running any of the DVD programs? (aka, can you see your desktop on the TV?)

[rjbinney]

Sorry - should have mentioned I'm mirroring (I've found extending the desktop causes more problems than it's worth).

It's a basic monitor cable - is that DVI? Fourteen pins - five across the top, three-blank-one in middle, five across bottom.

As a monitor, it's working perfectly. When I run WMP, I get (on both the laptop and the LG) basic WMP controls, just no picture (not even the Visualizer). But I get my title menu, drop-down menus, etc. And the disc plays - the timer advances, and I get sound.

I downloaded Media Player Classic, and that works! I noticed if I'm in Dual Monitor mode, I get a weird interference when I play video - faint vertical lines scrolling quickly. But if I turn off my laptop monitor and only use the teevee, I'm golden.

Thanks! Now I have to decide on hotel entertainment tonight - Jack Bauer or James Bond???!?!

[Griff]

Actually that would be a VGA cable. 

I'm glad you're at a point that works. Sound like you don't have the worlds greatest video adapter in that thing. Oh well.

As for your last question? DEFINITELY BAUER! 

[rjbinney]

You know, I THOUGHT it was VGA, but Google Images insisted otherwise.

As it turns out, I didn't get done working in time to see Bauer, too late after dinner to start a Bond (you can't start and not finish)... So I'm slowly getting caught up on "Chuck" and "BSG"... Downloaded Bauer (shhhhhh!) and will watch tomorrow night.

Yeah, still doesn't explain WHY it doesn't work... But as we (OK, I) say in the troubleshootin' biz, if you get the results you want, and it doesn't hurt nothin', why worry?