Thalamus I'd be pleased for your advice on this

[RichT1980]

Hi Thalamus,

I experienced similar problems with my Sony Vaio FZ28M laptop a couple of weekends ago. I tried HDMI to my Sony Bravia TV first and could not get a picture to begin with as I was trying to display the image on the TV and the laptop, after using the F4 key to switch to HD display screen only the picture was okay.

Next problem was as you describe, I was under the impression that the picture and sound went through the HDMI cable to the TV, but discovered that actually I need to connect the sound via the low quality earphones jack to a audio splitter cable (with red and black plugs) and plug these into my audio in ports on my TV, then set up the audio on the TV so the audio in is from hear.

After you have done this you may need a reboot of your laptop for it to recognise the path of audio and sound.

After this I encountered the same problems as every one else seams to have done who has tried to use their Sony Vaio laptop as advertised. The bundled WinDVD BD 8 software is almost worthless if you want to "enjoy hours of uninterupted Blue Ray video playback" as is advertised by Sony in all their literature and online, I experienced lip-cinqing problems, audio break-up (as though the sound was coming from an old gramma phone sat on a bass drum being repeatedly banged, so that every few seconds I get a slight interuption in sound), this was trying to play The Dark Knight, new Batman film on Blue Ray from Warner Brothers.

I am currently trying to update my Win BD DVD 8 software with the updates from Club Vaio (don't even attempt to download Win BD DVD 8 Gold/Platinum updates from the Corel/InterVideo publishers website as it is incompatible with the OEM version of the software that Sony bundle with their laptops across their entire laptop range), unfortunately when I tried the ones from Club Vaio the first time, from the page that was specific to a FZ28M model Windows Vista (Home Edition) informed me that the file is corrupted (I wondered if this was because the file took 1.5hours to download on my 512kb internet connection and it had somehow missed a chunk of data or miss copied it, but after trying again I got the same result).

I have downloaded the updates you recommended (at work on a much faster ADSL ethernet connection) for installation on my Vaio later when I get home. If they are successful (crossing my fingers and toes on that, but not holding out much hope!!! I will let the forum know.

I am disappointed with Sony that their product does not do what they advertise it as being able to do. When I came to choosing a laptop I chose Sony over a less expensive rival brand (which had essentially the same specifications except for the Blueray drive) because I thought I was buying the best available from a reputable brand, I have only just started using the BlueRay disc drive for BD discs, I have owned the laptop for 11months now and it works very well for DVD playback; photoediting; internet use and also 3D first person computer games and also office functionality, just the BD player and battery life which are real let downs for the moment.

I was browsing the latest models of Sony Vaio laptops to see if Sony had gone to the trouble of bundling their models with Corel/Intervideo's WinDVD 9 Platinum software which is supposed to have eliminated the problems of the old WinDVD 8 Blueray disc playback but was disappointed to find that they are still bundled with WinDVD 8 (and only a Sony OEM version at that, not the Gold or Platinum versions (which surely must be old hat now that version 9 is on the shelves) which means that every user who wants to watch BD discs will have to go through the same process of downloading 2 files at 90Mb, then a further file of 100Mb just to try and get the OEM version to work properly.

Interestingly Corel/Intervideo's website for WinDVD 8 BD suggests that the software is incompatible with Windows Vista - I wonder if this is a case of Sony "trying to fit a square block through a round hole" and just not quite managing to pull it off, as I guess they have to write a patch on the version 8 software to get it to run with Vista.

I will try the updates this evening, there goes another 2 hours of my life trying to get Sony bundled software to work, well, I'm an eternal optimist, I live in hope that I will be able to "enjoy hours of uninterupted Blue Ray video playback" sometime soon,

Thanks in advance,

Richard

[Thalamus. · Accepted solution]

Hi RichT,

that's a long post..

Have you had any joy with updating Win DVD8 and has it help solve your BD viewing problems.?

[RichT1980]

Hi Thalamus,

PROBLEM SOLVED

I had to uninstall any reference to WinDVD (i had installed a trial of WinDVD9 from Corel's website which screwed things up royally),

Then download the original OEM WinDVD from your link, tried this on its own, got nothing good.
Then followed the update sequence that you described
Then found still had lip-cinq problems, was at my wits end by this point, then:
Found the file EP0000171783 - via Sony Vaio update for my VGN-FZ38M. In the update labelled: WinDVD BD -8.0 - 8.0.9.670_2

Installed this one, restarted computer and now my BD player works fine, lip-cinq is great, action sequences much smoother (I would not say perfectly smooth, occasional break up, but a hell of a lot better, quite watchable).

A good result, only took 1.5 hours for uninstall and reinstall and then 4 updates!! Plus all my time downloading the updates at work!!

Thanks for thread Thalamus, worth mentioning to others in the same situation that untill you install the 3rd update you won't have a BD drive that works though, and until you install the EP0000171783.exe things don't run smoothly at all. Now all is working though.

I've not had time to try with my Sony Bravia TV yet, and I'll need to check my sound settings for HDMI output to it as I had sound feeding seperately via my headphones jack which is bound to have caused problems.

I'll report back if I get this working too.

Cheers

Richad

[Thalamus.]

You're welcome, good luck..

[RichT1980]

Hello,

Further good news.

Just tried watching The Dark Knight linked up to my partners Sony Bravia TV, after realizing that I needed to set the TV as my default speaker choice and then make sure the amplifier that is hooked up to the TV was set to TVout got sound and visuals via the HDMI and the quality was as per playing from my laptop.

Quite happy with the playback, still get occasional disruption in fast action sequences, where the sound has trouble keeping up with action or vice versa,

Guess I will have to live with that until the next update.

Cheers,

Richard

[Thalamus.]

glad you've managed to solve your audio problem..