playing DVDs on laptop

[SOFTAIL]

I bought a new DELL laptop to use on my vacations, I have been using a cheap portable DVD player when away from home, when I bought the laptop I thought I could use it instead. However, when I play the DVD's the video is choppy, like it's dragging and the audio and video don't line up....thus making it imposible to work out to. Movie DVD's play fine. I have spent countless hours on the phone with DELL changing and reseting things on my computer, but it has not fixed the problem. Dell says that it is more than likely a software problem (which came on my computer) but they can't tell me how to contact the 3rd party vendor or how to fix the problem. Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone else out there play there workout DVD's on their laptop? any success? and if so what software are you using????????/
Thanks,
Lee

 

[emackay]

Hi Lee,

I use an ancient laptop (good for nothing but surfing and dvd's) to play all of my workouts on - never the tv/dvd because I like the portability of the laptop. I too had this problem before (on what was then a new laptop) and found that switching to InterVideo WinDVD 4 did the trick. I am certain that there are several generations of this software out there that are more recent, but this happens to be the one I have that is currently working with all of my cathe dvd's (and I do mean all - I have all but 2). I think I downloaded it for 30 bucks after a 14 day trial period.

Good luck - hope this helps!

arancini

 

[Irisg1]

Hi Lee,

I have a Dell Inspiron 1150, which is pretty much a base model Dell Laptop, and I play DVD's with no problem on my laptop all the time. In fact, I use my laptop often to preview workouts and get familiar with routines.

Have you tried Media Player, or Real Player. Those are free to download, and would help you figure out if it is a software problem. I think Dell preloads Cyberlink, and it works for me with no problem, but maybe yours needs to be reloaded. You should be able to play the videos with no problem, especially on a newer laptop. Good Luck.

Iris