Blu-Ray Playback on Sony Vaio AR11S

Zippster

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hi all just thought id put my 2penneth worth in the pot...

ive had my Sony Vaio AR11S now for a week and by god am i pleased with it, its replaced my uber games pc as ever since i received my 360 ive not touched it....anyways i bought the 1gb upgrade(upgraded to 2gb) straight away as i do alot with digital photography and raw files.

today i received my Blu-ray version of 'Stealth' as although my money will be going into HDDVD this laptop has a bluray drive so i thought id check it out. now ive read alot on this forum about this laptop and blu-ray playback so i wasnt expecting much at all as i only intend on using bluray for backups etc.

hooked up to my samsung 32r73 in the bedroom via hdmi(dabs value £7.49)

WOW....well i dont know if its the extra memory or what but the playback is truely FANTASTIC! no juddering,frameloss, stuttering, lip sync issues as all PLUS i noticed that for some reason the drive doesnt seem to be region encoded?? i still have 5 times to change and my current region is blank!

just thought id share..

Andy.
 
Zippster said:
hi all just thought id put my 2penneth worth in the pot...

ive had my Sony Vaio AR11S now for a week and by god am i pleased with it, its replaced my uber games pc as ever since i received my 360 ive not touched it....anyways i bought the 1gb upgrade(upgraded to 2gb) straight away as i do alot with digital photography and raw files.

today i received my Blu-ray version of 'Stealth' as although my money will be going into HDDVD this laptop has a bluray drive so i thought id check it out. now ive read alot on this forum about this laptop and blu-ray playback so i wasnt expecting much at all as i only intend on using bluray for backups etc.

hooked up to my samsung 32r73 in the bedroom via hdmi(dabs value £7.49)

WOW....well i dont know if its the extra memory or what but the playback is truely FANTASTIC! no juddering,frameloss, stuttering, lip sync issues as all PLUS i noticed that for some reason the drive doesnt seem to be region encoded?? i still have 5 times to change and my current region is blank!

just thought id share..

Andy.

Please tell me where you got your Bluray movie from, im from the uk and have an ar11s also, done the ram upgrade and am eager to try some movies out, Im also gobsmacked by the performance of this laptop in every department (especially games). With the encoding thing, sometimes its one of the joys of getting the latest and the greatest, a similar thing happened with a few dvd players when they first came out. I have however heard that region encoding/selection will fully work in windows Vista.
 
hi jahan i actually bought it from Ebay, from a guy called bluenosekev (do a search by seller id) he has a GREAT selection in stock ;)

but for fun ive ordered a few from playusa.com.


Andy..
 
Zippster said:
hi jahan i actually bought it from Ebay, from a guy called bluenosekev (do a search by seller id) he has a GREAT selection in stock ;)

but for fun ive ordered a few from playusa.com.


Andy..
Cheers Andy, just purchased Stealth from Bluenosekev!!
Jahan
 
Sounds good :thumbsup: What playback software are you using?

WOW....well i dont know if its the extra memory or what but the playback is truely FANTASTIC! no juddering,frameloss, stuttering, lip sync issues as all PLUS i noticed that for some reason the drive doesnt seem to be region encoded?? i still have 5 times to change and my current region is blank!
Are you sure this isn't just referring to the DVD-Video region? From what I understood the BluRay element should be locked to a single region out of the box. I guess the proof of that will be when you try a UK BD when they become available.
 
im using the windvd BD that came with the laptop and its GREAT! im trying to do a printscreen of the region setting but having a moment trying to find the corect key combo to get a alt-prtscrn just to show that the BD rom region is greyed out and still says 5 remaining.
 
although does this help?

Version:
7.5 B43.043
Navigation:
Type: BDMV
Region: None
Drive: G:
TV System: Unspecified.
Macrovision Level: 0
CGMS Level: 3
Video:
Hardware:
Vendor: Nvidia
Connection type: MEDIASUBTYPE_YUY2
Downstream renderer: CLSID_DisplayServer
Stream:
Type: MPEG2
Bitrate: 30.000 Mbps
Framerate: 23.976 Hz
Resolution: 1920x1080
Aspect ratio: 16x9
Audio:
Hardware:
Audio Device: directsound
S/PDIF: Present
Number of speakers: 2
Stream:
Type: Dolby Digital (AC3)
Bitrate: 192 Kbps
Number of main channels: 2
LFE Channel: None
Sampling Frequency: 48khz
Bits Per Sample: 16
Output:
Sample Rate: 48 KHz
Bits per Sample: 16
CPU:
Name: Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2500 @ 2.00GHz
Family:6 Model:14 Stepping:8
Standard Feature: 0xbfe9fbff
Hyper-Threading: Not supported, Not enabled
Instruction support:
Intel MMX: Enabled
Intel SSE: Enabled
Intel SSE2: Enabled
Intel SSE3: Enabled
AMD 3DNow!: Not enabled
AMD Enh 3DNow!: Not enabled
AMD 3DNow! Pro: Not enabled
Computer:
Notebook
 
I've been saying it was region free for a month now but no-one believed me.... Trust me on this one!;)
 
some of the bit rates look weird? Any idea why? Type: Dolby Digital (AC3)
Bitrate: 192 Kbps, that seems half a DVD!!
 
nehalem said:
I've been saying it was region free for a month now but no-one believed me.... Trust me on this one!;)


i believe you ;)
 
Zippster,

A couple of questions if you have time.

1) What is the file structure like on the BluRay disc? Is there a clear MPEG2 movie file?

2) Can you copy the BD contents to your HDD?

3) Assuming you have your 360(s) set up for streaming, and 1 and 2 worked, can you rename the MPEG2 file to .m2v or .mpg and stream from PC to 360?

Something of a long shot but it'd be interesting to know if this works and, if not, where it falls down.
 
Rasczak said:
Zippster,

A couple of questions if you have time.

1) What is the file structure like on the BluRay disc? Is there a clear MPEG2 movie file?

2) Can you copy the BD contents to your HDD?

3) Assuming you have your 360(s) set up for streaming, and 1 and 2 worked, can you rename the MPEG2 file to .m2v or .mpg and stream from PC to 360?

Something of a long shot but it'd be interesting to know if this works and, if not, where it falls down.

yep 360s are for streaming, im at work at the mo i shall answer your Q's tonight ;)
 
yep 360s are for streaming, im at work at the mo i shall answer your Q's tonight
:thumbsup: Cheers

I've been saying it was region free for a month now but no-one believed me....
It's not a question of believing you nehalem - it's just there is no way of testing it at present. For all we know the second you put a BD-Video disk in your drive you became region locked to that region (especially if the option is now greyed out). We will all have to wait until Region B BD becomes available before we can confirm whether it works or not.
 
This is great news! I've just ordered a BD version of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang from DVD Box Office to try on my AR11S. I'm now looking forward to similar results.

Cheers, Roman
 
Do you think the ram upgrade is definitely needed for decent playback of Blu-ray? I've got the laptop but only just received delivery of my 1080p lcd so still need to hook it up and check the quality.

Btw I found movietyme have pretty good prices for blu-ray films.
 
Rasczak said:
Zippster,

A couple of questions if you have time.

1) What is the file structure like on the BluRay disc? Is there a clear MPEG2 movie file?

2) Can you copy the BD contents to your HDD?

3) Assuming you have your 360(s) set up for streaming, and 1 and 2 worked, can you rename the MPEG2 file to .m2v or .mpg and stream from PC to 360?

Something of a long shot but it'd be interesting to know if this works and, if not, where it falls down.

1. the disk cannot be read via explorer, when i expand the disk it shows no files or folders{edit this was without UDF reader enabled now i see everything}

screenie of the movie folder attached.

2. yep jsut copied a smaller file (guessing its an extra or somthing)
3. nope its not looking like a mpeg2 file or any mpg i cant seem to find anything to look at the header of the file to figure out what it is?

hope this helps

Andy
 

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shaithis said:
It really shouldn't require 2GB of RAM to playback an MPEG2 file =/

im sure it doesnt, i required 2gb of ram for other stuff i wanted the lapper for.


Andy..
 
this is great news, after reading loads of posts about this lap top not running blu ray discs i was thinking of going qosmio, now the sony is a defo buy, many thanks for this welcome information. Where are you guys buying from,
seen it at currys with discount code for £1657 online, which is the best I could find.
can I ask how much was the extra ram?
 
Many thanks for doing that Zippster :thumbsup: Sorry to hear it didn't work as it was mooted as a good way of making the 360 BluRay compatible. :(

I suppose as the formats mature more software will become available that will hopefully enable us to do it - although once Vista arrives we could be 'locked' out for a significant period.
 
markbigears said:
this is great news, after reading loads of posts about this lap top not running blu ray discs i was thinking of going qosmio, now the sony is a defo buy, many thanks for this welcome information. Where are you guys buying from,
seen it at currys with discount code for £1657 online, which is the best I could find.
can I ask how much was the extra ram?

i got mine from dixons online with the offer from egg for 10% instant cash back (expired 31st july), a You at work code for a further 5% and a nhs code for free shipping etc. my CC bill came in at £1500 ;) bargin as i was trying desperately top order one at comets shop and price matching there own website for £1800, in the time it took to argue and phone general managers they sold the only one they had in the main warehouse ;)

worth EVERY penny, specially as i only wanted blu ray for backup purposes ;)


oooh extra ram came from my thinkpad as its identical ;) ddr2 4200 cl3

happy bunny i am.
 
£1500!!!!...hat off to you mate.......
 
I was thinking of getting this laptop but was taken aside by a friend who explained that there could be problems:-

1 - Regional Coding. It's greyed out you say? Maybe this means it doesn't support BR RPC at all? Do we know if current USA BRs are RPC? If they're not then isn't it possible the drive simply doesn't support it and every coded title be it USA or EU won't work?

2 - New Coding. No secret BR is currently using MPEG2. No secret that Warner and others will start using new coding soon. Will the laptop handle VC1 high def? Will it handle MPEG4? The latter is what will be used by Sony. If these new codes are introduced this year then the laptop might have an uber short lifespan.

3 - 4x Disks. New BR media is about to be released for the new 4x drives (I think LG are first?). This probably won't be compatible with first gen BR drives. DVD-RW v1.1, v1.2, v1.4 anyone?

Anyway for £1500+ that is alot of unanswered questions!
 
you trying to spoil my day?
 

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