InterVideo WinDVD BD for VAIO

[markj1993]

Hi,
I have a Sony VAIO VGN-AR51M and it plays most bluray dvds. When i load up WinDVD BD it comes up with the message 'The AACS Key has expired. You may not be able to play back some titles. Press "Yes" to update.' If i press yes it signs me into to correl and comes up with an error message saying 'Error Code: R03-Explanation:Cannot find matching AACS Key or patch.' If i press no to the update it lets me play most movies such as 'BLACK HAWK DOWN' AND '300' but wont let me play a new dvd (Green street 2) and says 'WinDVD stops plaback because of AACS error check' and goes to a blank screen. I have downloaded all available updates from Sony.
Please can anyone help? Greatly appreciated.
Please can nobody tell me to by other software.Thank you.

[markj1993]

Can i apply the old update after i have installed the latest one?

[RichT1980]

You might have to uninstall the software completely and then reinstall the softwares one by one from the original one through to the current version you have. This was the first advice I received from Thalamus before, he said if I had missed out one of the updates it could be causing problems, since the updats act as patches I guess, not full versions of the software, so if you miss one out, you might miss part of the solution.

My partner is a software engineer (independant but used to write mobile phone software and before worked on DVD software in its infancy) he is sympathetic to my difficulties with WinBD. He only uses Apple, and tells me Apple have no intention of trying to copy BD technology as it will never work properly. I'm not sure if this is necessarily true, but I trust he has some reasonable take on things. He works/ed in multimedia and DVD software for many years and knows very well the problems of AACS. He tells me that until Hollywood relent and change there stance on AACS this is always going to be a problem. I see that Blencogo mentions hackers breaking the AACS code evry 6months and so the DVD(Hollywood) companies change their codes to prevent hacking. When Hollywood change the codes they make it impossible for the likes of us to use the products with the old codes. At the end of the day, Hollywood are trying to limit their loss of profits because of hacked copies of their medium and proliferation of stolen media, but if the AACS is changing every 6months, the software companies cannot hope to keep up. The solution for the poor likes of us would be for Hollywood to remove the need for the AACS code all together, they would have to accept that media would be stolen from them, but don't they make enough money from their movies anyway, otherwise if you want to see a movie played well like in the movie theatre, forget waiting to buy on Blueray and just go and see the movie in the theatre, even though the ticket price is like £10 its less than a blueray, or wait for it to be available on iTunes and buy it from Apple. Apple charge a lot for movies and get a lot of stick for this, but they charge the same as the cost of a movie theatre ticket, and you get to keep it, so I think its not a bad trade off.

Also since the time needed to change the software is long - waiting 2-3months for a new software release is short in software development terms. How many computer games do you see that are due to be released in SPring and don't get realeased for years and years! Its so common. There are so many bugs and bug fixes in all software, whatever it is for, my partners old company had dozens of people working on bugfixing!

I have a VGN-FX38M by the way, so different model to yours, same problems though. I've not played Blueray discs for 6months - as have been out of the country and did not take my personal use laptop with me. I have a 4 day weekend coming up when I will be able to tackle this problem again and shall see if I get messages about the AACS expiry when I try to use Blueray discs that I have at home.

[Thalamus.]

Hi RichT1980,

You should find the AACS update procedure in the following thread: AACS key procedure

[markj1993]

After having my laptop since november 2008, and being unable to play blurays from january, i am still unable to do so after 4 months of being in frequent contact with Sony support, who have no idea how to fix the problem, or what is causing it in my case.

I am pretty disappointed at not being able to play bluray discs, and i am now just sticking to buying and watching normal DVD's.

Thanks for any help suggested, Mark.

[Thalamus.]

Hi MarkJ2008,

did you try the AACS update procedure in the following thread: AACS key procedure..

[RichT1980]

Thanks Thalamus for the link to the AACS downloader, I had an account with Corel already and so it was ok for me to get the AACS update. I have done that now, and have checked which version of Win BD I have, I have Win BD version 8.0.09.670 dated 12/05/2007.

I have checked if any of my BD discs play, in order of release date:
2004 Brokeback Mountain, region B, Entertainment Video - worked first time, crisp, perfect
2004 House of FLying Daggers, region B, Pathe! - worked after I changed Audio setup to Renderer: Direct Sound, instead of Auto.
2006 Casino Royale, Region A-B-C, Columbia Pictures - audio ahead of video, sound coming and going, crackling. Did not work with audio on Auto, on direct sound, or on wave out, or with convert 96kHz to 24bit output option.
2006 XMen 3, region B - Marvel Columbia - same as for Casino royale
2006 Spiderman 3, region A-B-C - Marvel Columbia - same as XMen 3
2008 The Dark Knight, SDH - Warner Bros - same as Spiderman 3
2008 Stephen Fry in America, BBC production - same as others from 2006, 2008

I have checked the Sony Vaio update page for my machine and the only update is the one I already have installed. When are Sony going to fix this!! I noticed that the Intervideo start screen says the software is licenced up to 2006, perhaps that explains why the ones from 2006 onwards just don't work, because the software is so out of date, despite the updates released by Sony. I could accept that, had I not bought this laptop new in 2008, at a time when it was being marketed as a new model.


If you have a link to a more up to date software update I would love to know about it.
Thanks in advance, Richard

[halibuts]

I've recently had trouble with the AACS update on my TT. I had advise to start windvd as an adminstrator. That solved the problem for me.

If you go to start, programs and right mouse on windvd icon, then select run as administrator. Then when the massage about updating your AACS comes up, if you select update, then it might work for you.

My problem was not exactly the same as yours, but it might be worth a try.

Good luck.

[Thalamus.]

I have a VGN-FX38M by the way

Hi RichT1980,

I don't recognise your VGN-FX38M, do you mean FZ38M.?

If so then unfortunately version 8.0.9.670_2 is currently the latest update for Win DVD..

There is a Firmware update available for the FZ38M, use the following link for the updates available for the: FZ38M VAIO

[RichT1980]

Hello THalamus,

Yes, my laptop is a VGN-FZ38M, when I wrote my last post I must have done a typo.

Since then I have sat down with my other half and checked the information tab in the setup window of the Blueray player to see if there was a common theme to the BDs that don't play properly. First of all I turned off all other programs that were running in the background the last time I tried them, so I turned off iexplorer, which was using 15-25% of my CPU - for facebook, hotmail, etc.

On this second attempt I got the Brokeback Mtn, Flying Daggers and surprisingly for me the Dark Knight BDs to play, the other BDs still would not play. Looking at the 'information' tab in the setup page of the BD whilst it was running we noticed that for each of the BDs that do not play without serious amounts of judder and poor sound to video syncing, they all are H264 (MPEG4) video encoded.

When playing H264 the info window showed a DXVA connection for colour conversion only and the H264 was not hardware accelerated, the CPU usage was therefore much higher, at 100% CPU usage consistently, compared to the MPEG2 or VC1_C BDs that did work, running at closer to 70% CPU usage. Additionally the audio on the H264 discs were significantly more processor hungry, with bitrates at 1536 to 2457, and streaming at 48kHz, 24 bits per sample, trying to convert to an output of 48kHz, 16 bits per sample.

I tried the firmware update that you recommended for my model from the Viao update internet site and I got the result in the Word file attached. It did not like it.

I checked the NVIDIA Geforce 8400M GT graphics card driver that is installed on theis laptop and it is version 7.15.0011.0128 dated 30/10/2007, there is no newer update provided by the Sony Vaio update page, and I tried to get a newer one from the NVIDIA website and it said that specifically Sony OEM graphics card driver updates were only available from the SOny Update page.

So do you have any insider knowledge of when Sony plan to make my laptop capable of H264 High Definition, non-juddering, lip sync'ed playback, either by a NVIDIA OEM graphics card driver update or with a newer than Jan-09 WinBD player patch?

Or should I give up on buying and trying to play BDs on this laptop?

[CyBer111]

I updated to the latest version of WinDVD from Sony, got an account from Corel and made Corel a trusted site. After all that, I got to the point where Corel says I'm downloading the latest key but it just hangs there. After reading several other forums, I opened WinDVD as the Administrator by right-clicking the application. This time it updated in seconds with no problem.