Playback Problems on Newly Installed 2500A

I've searched on the forums, but I can't find anything regarding the problem I am having.

I purchased a NEC 2500A DVD RW drive for my Dell Dimension (4400? I think) desktop system. I opened the PC, installed the DVD drive, plugged in the power cables and the IDE cables. I moved my existing CD RW drive down to the 2nd IDE plug. I set the DVD RW as the master, and the CD RW as the slave.

My problem is that the video is messed up. The audio comes through fine, but the picture is separated into different color streams or something. There is a black & white picture, then a green picture that is slightly off-center and a pink picture that is also off-center. Bascially, there are three separate images superimposed on top of one another, but not aligned.

I purchased a DVD decoder (Cinescope - or something like that) on line - a support website told me to try this...but still no luck. The picture is bad whether I view it through Real or Windows Media Player. I checked the Device Manager, and both the DVD and CD are listed as DMA enabled.

I thought the drive was defective, so I exchanged it, and I am having the same problems. I bought it from newegg.com, and it did not come with any driver software or instructions. Is it possible I need to update to a compatible driver? If so, where do I get the new driver? If that's not problem, what is?

Any help is genuinely appreciated. Normally, I am not a complete klutz when it comes to this stuff, but I'm obviously doing something stupid.

Thanks!

Hi.
First of all... have you tried a "real" DVD-Player Software like PowerDVD ?

regards
muellinger_hn

nope...is it something I can download - or do I need to buy it at a store? Obviously, I'm a complete idiot.

Thanks so much for offering some help.

LOL

Forget the commercial products and dl Media Player Classic here: click. It plays DVDs and most other formats, is very lightweight and reliable. And most importantly, it's free.

i have seen that before when playing back a PAL dvd in a ntsc dvdplayer but not in a computer... have you tried more than one dvd?

yeah - I've tried several. Same problem. I'm going to try and download the Media Player Classic.

Wow - I don't think I've ever felt so inadequate. I can't even download the Media Player Classic. I just keep getting shuffled from site to site, with no option to actually download - I've tried right clicking the files as well. I really don't want to pay an extra $20 for PowerDVD on top of the $15 I already blew downloading Cinescope or whatever it's called unless I really think that's going to fix it.

If you had to guess, would you guess a software (driver, decoder, player) problem or hardware problem (IDE hookup, bad drive, etc..)?

Is it possible my videocard is not compatible? I don't even know what kind of card I have, but I can watch AVI, MPEG, MOV, and WMV files with no problems. I even do some video editing from my digital video camera. The PC has no problem playing the files. In fact, prior to buying this infernal DVD drive, I was burning movies I filmed of my son's first year in SVCD with no problem.

Is there any chance the Pinnacle Expression video editing software is the problem? Again, normally I would think the drive is defective, but this is my second go round with a different drive (same make and model) and the same problem.

Thanks so much for the help you already offered.

Go here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/...er_Classic.htm

and download the version for your OS. You'll get a zipped installer that you have to unpack first. Unpack the file with Winzip or similar and start the installer.

YOU FRIGGIN ROCK!!!!!!!!!!

THANKS EVERYBODY!!

That apparently was the problem. I can't believe the Windows Media Player that comes with XP doesn't work, but the Media Player Classic sure does. Thank You!

IMHO, the newer windows media players just suck. A lot of bloat, a lot of unnecessary functions and therefore a lot of system resources being wasted.

Media Player Classic on the other hand is open source freeware that has been developed / tuned for quite a while. Glad it worked out for you.

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the newer windows media players just suck. A lot of bloat, a lot of unnecessary functions and therefore a lot of system resources being wasted.
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so true. i use the free version of winamp and find it very cpu frendly.