DVD's not playing on E1705

[mlaxer]

Hi,
It seems that I just simply cannot play DVD's on my E1705. The drive appears to run fine because it works with regular CD's. But, when I put in a DVD-R, or a store-bought movie DVD, the drive doesn't appear to recognize it. The light on the drive blinks a few times then just stays a steady green. The drive whirs a few times, then goes quiet. When I try to play the DVD in Media Center, it says that a DVD disc was not detected. Yet, all is well with regular CD's. I do have DVD codecs installed. Does this warrant a new drive? The drive is a TSSTcorp DVD+-RW TS-L532B.
Thanks,
-Mike

The system specs are:
Windows XP SP2
E1705
2GB RAM
80GB HD
Dual Core
NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS

[Skillz]

Sounds like a DVD Decoder issue.

[odious_m]

DVDs usually use a different laser than CDs. Maybe the DVD laser is borked.

The common solution is for the DVD player or drive to use two lasers at different wavelengths: one for reading DVDs and the other for reading CDs and CD-Rs. Variations on the theme include Sony's "dual discrete optical pickup" with switchable pickup assemblies with separate optics, dual-wavelength lasers (initially deployed on Sony's Playstation 2), Samsung's "annular masked objective lens" with a shared optical path, Toshiba's similar shared optical path using an objective lens masked with a coating that's transparent only to 650-nm light, Hitachi's switchable objective lens assembly, and Matsushita's holographic dual-focus lens. The MultiRead logo guarantees compatibility with CD-R and CD-RW media, but unfortunately, few manufacturers are using it.

Bottom line: If you want a DVD player that can read CD-R discs, look for a "dual laser," "twin laser," or "dual optics" feature.

http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#2.4.3

[Yoob@NBF]

First off try a different DVD. Its not unheard of that certain sotre bought DVDs being incompatible with drives it happens all the time. 2nd If the next disc you get doesnt work then call up dell for a replacement drive. If the disc is detected and you cant get playback then try a different player such as VLC media player www.videolan.org Its codecless so you should have no issues running it off the bat.