Vista - Vista32: dvd playback degraded?

I'm seeing that standard commercial dvd plays back with some jagged edges
in vista. Monitor is a 42" 1080p HDTV. Playing the same dvd in xp on the
same machine (it's dual boot) shows no jagged edges. Could I be seeing the
effects of vista content degradation due to drm? Tests are done with the
latest vlc with the same settings on both OS. I can't use media player for
the test due to an old crt attached using vga without EDID (a content
protection violation).

What player are you using?

Try Vlc Media player and windvd

Are you using the latest video card driver for your card according to your
video card vendor's web site on the Vista side?

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"Paul" <this@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OjyBo7$ZJHA.412@xxxxxx

nvidia 8800gts with 177.79. Various vendor tech support people told me that
the very latest driver would not be appropriate or required for my card. My
system has been stable for months. To get me to ever change video drivers
again I would need confirmation that the specific bug I have is fixed by
the new driver. Way too often consumers are told -update your video driver-
with no technical justification whatsoever. Windows update has a video
driver holding in limbo for me, but there is no way I can jeopardize a
working setup... at least update should tell the version it wants to hit me
with.

If I do the xp/vista video test with my hdtv again I will take pictures of
the screen with my camera. If you read what few docs there are on vista CP,
there is sometimes a video degradation process where the video is
deliberately compressed then expanded -- to a poorer quality. I wonder if
that's what's going on here, even though I am using an alternate player.

"Paul" <this@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23Cab$FGaJHA.5440@xxxxxxCool - if you trust their expertise then you should follow up with them on
this and see what they have to say. =\
Absolutely. But it is a pretty useful test to isolate out possible failure
points. =)

--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

> "Paul" <this@xxxxxx> wrote in messageThere is no basis for trusting any tech support. They tend to read scripts.
Without a schematic for the electronics, data sheets on all the parts, full
source code for windows and the drivers you don't have anything reliable to
go on. No technical documentation of details is available from any source
so we are all just making guesses about what's inside the black box. The
situation is so complex now that I don't think there are even 10 people in
the world qualified to give a truly informed opinion. Tech support is
oriented to getting rid of you and moving on to the next call.
Many times installing new drivers damages the OS installation, discourages
the user, and doesn't fix anything, especially if the problem is
'by-design'. However getting a straight answer on what 'design' is is
practically impossible. The uninstallers for windows video drivers are
generally a disgrace as well.

Hi Paul,

Sorry but I get the impression you know how to get around a PC and have pretty set idea of what's wrong and no amount of advice will convince you. yet you expect us to answer a problem on not really enough technical information from yourself.

I can only give a gut feeling from the informatiion you have given but I suspect that since you are dual booting/Virtual PC between XP and Vista it's possible, and I don;t know exactly how you have set things up, your Vista is running XP codecs if that latter were installed last.

You can check which codecs you are running easily enough but don't go installing heaps of codec packs willy nilly!

Also, you are running a standard definition DVD on a HD monitor. It's possible XP is doing a better job at upscaling the video but again...I have no idead what you have or have not installed on your PC.

I'm sure you have a decent enough reason why you want to run two Operating Systems but my Vista 64 bit has run lots of my old programs with no problems.

"Paul" <this@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OFj5Sn6bJHA.2132@xxxxxxSo I might know more than many of those support people, even if just by
osmosis. I suggested one fundamental thing you might want to try. If
you're afraid of it, set a System Restore point.

I'm not tech support, I'm just a friend. If you know much about drivers
you'll know that the Windows Update ones should be the most funamentally
stable but the vendor updated drivers probably contain more user-level fixes
you might care about.

Potentially such as this.
This isn't by any design that I'm aware of.

--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Thank you for answering. No, the 2 operating systems are completely
independent including drivers. The question was, is Vista doing any
degrading of standard dvd playback on purpose? I know I have already hit
some content protection since media player refuses to play dvds at all on
my system due to my generic crt/hdtv monitors, I have to use vlc. Just want
to know how far this extends.

I run dual boot since I have a lot of old stuff I don't want to move over
to vista like photoshop and autocad. The xp system is very crufted up now,
and vista runs visual studio really fast. After a couple weeks of work I
got vista stable to the point where I could play dvds in clone mode and run
beyondtv acceptably well, but the dvd playback is jaggy like I said. It was
really hard since vista won't play nice with one of my monitors. Since the
system is stable, I don't want to experiment with new nvidia drivers unless
there is documentation that they address my specific problem.

What I mean here for example is that support will have you thrash around
with drivers, even though the problem is really the design. Monitor EDID is
more strictly enforced with vista, and is the reason a lot of people
complain they can't get their old hi resolution setting they expect. No
driver from nvidia will fix that AFAIK. Happened to me.