PowerDVD Completely Frozen with BD

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers
#1

I’ve been trying to play Blu-Ray movies on my PC for a few days now and for some reason, PowerDVD completely freezes (sometimes the whole system completely freezes) whenever I attempt to open the Blu-Ray disc with PowerDVD DX (free version with Dell) or with PowerDVD 9 Ultra. It used to work perfectly until after watching Body of Lies Blu-Ray with it. I’ve tried reinstalling both PowerDVD applications, updating drivers, and updating system BIOs. I can’t seem to get a BD disc to play anymore on my computer :frowning:

Any help is greatly appreciated.

#2

Have you got the latest update for whichever version of PowerDVD you are using?
The latest is PowerDVD 9 build 1719. http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/support/powerdvd/patches_en_US.html

#3

Yes, everything is updated to the most recent version. I have also tried downloading Media Player Classic (freeware blu ray player) but it said it had a problem rendering the disc. I have tried it with 4 different blu ray discs and none of them work with anything.

#4

UPDATE: I have tried everything now. No diagnostic test discovered anything wrong with the drive. I did a complete wipe of everything on my computer and reformatted, and it still does not work. I can’t see it being anything other than a partial hardware failure now. Any idea how likely it would be for a blu ray disc drive to only fail playing BD’s while still being fine with DVDs and CDs??

#5

Different type of laser is used for Blu Ray than for dvds or the one for cds, so it is possible for you to have this specific type of hardware failure.

#6

I contacted Dell about it finally and they’re going to send someone out to replace the drive. Hopefully that works :stuck_out_tongue:

#7

I came upon this post because i had similar problem. My PowerDVD BD 2CH (which is v.7.2 and came with my LiteOn BD drive on a disk labeled something like Cyberlink BD Solution) was working fine until a couple of days ago. Then is stopped playing all blu-ray disks. On some it would freeze right away on others it would play a bit of a preview (with no sound) and then would hang and I would have to kill it. However, DVD movies continued to play just fine.

Well, I found the problem - which might not help you but it might help others. My hint was that there was no sound when playing BDs. Then I remembered that recently, among other tweaks , I disabled SPDIF device in my audio settings, thinking that I don’t need it since I don’t use SPDIF output. Well, that was it. Re-enabling SPDIF fixed PowerDVD BD playback freezing.

So that’s my 5c. Make sure your audio drivers are up-to-date and that SPDIF output is enabled. I guess HDCP requires tight integration of video and audio and any problems with audio portion can lead to hang-ups.

I should mention that I run Vista Ultimate 64bit.

And btw, the OEM PowerDVD is really basic. Mouse doesn’t work on blu-ray menus (you have to use arrow keys); you have to start playback from beginning every time - it doesn’t remember where you stopped on last play; and most of the time you can’t skip previews by activating main menu - really annoying. And… you are forced to use mouse, normal keyboard shortcuts such as space for pause and esc to exit full screen don’t work.

Because of all these annoyances I would upgrade to retail version, but c’mon they are asking $100 for PowerDVD Ultra - which is the only version that plays BD. These days you can get stand-alone BD player for that money.

I wish someone would come up with a good software BD player that’s reasonably priced.