Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Strange DVD Audio playback issue on laptop-any suggestions

This is topic Strange DVD Audio playback issue on laptop-any suggestions in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 04-15-2007, 07:15 AM:

About a year ago in the middle of watching Batman Begins on my laptop (dell inspiron 9100) on a flight, the dialog disappeared. Before that, I had watched many DVDs with no problem. Since then, every DVD plays like that. If I remove the headphones and have the subwoofer battery in place, the center channel gets routed out of the subwoofer (no idea why). If I remove the battery and listen through the laptop speakers it works normal. Even with the battery removed, once I plug in headphones there is no center channel being mixed down. I have tried every setting that I can to tell the computer that I only have 2 speakers but nothing seems to work. Is there a registry setting that could have gotten screwed up?

I'm open to suggestions because it is driving me nuts. I don't want to buy a portable DVD player for an upcoming long flight since I have to bring my laptop anyway and it works great for everything else but playing DVDs. I have to be missing something.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 04-15-2007, 05:59 PM:

(if you have XP, sound like you need to reinstall the drivers since it sounds like the default software for the default DELL A/V drivers are beginning to decay when processing DVD playback. Or, it could be that XP itself is beginning to decay since you can't tell Windows that you are using a laptop,esp if you have an DELL Inspirion 9100 being a two yr old laptop. Have you upgraded XP to SP2, or still on SP1 ... check for updates as well)

Goto the DELL site, put in your service tag number and find the drivers needed for A/V usage for the 9100

..just a guess though, could be something else.

-Monte

-Monte

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 04-15-2007, 09:05 PM:

Its clear to me that Batman has put a curse on your Dell! Only Jack Nicholson is able to cure this problem...... with his golf clubs....

Posted by Demetris Thoupis (Member # 833) on 04-16-2007, 01:29 AM:

Perhaps you are viewing the 5.1 Digital Soundtrack instead of the 2 Channel Stereo Surround Soundtrack of the DVD's you are watching. If you are watching 5.1 (although I am not sure on Laptops) then all the speech is routed through the "centre" channel. In 2 Channel mode you can listen the speech via the L/R Speakers.
Demetris

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 04-16-2007, 03:33 AM:

5.1 mixes down to stereo quite well. I've made DVDs which feature ONLY a 5.1 Dolby Digital track with no other audio at all and I've never had anyone have any audio problems on playback. Make sure the DVD software is set to output stereo. Encoding DVDs with both a 5.1 and a 2.0 track is pretty useless... and a waste of space.