Hi there!
Well that would be the most stupid thing to do.
After all AnyDVD HD is no threat to WinDVD. And if they made WinDVD not play with AnyDVD, this would simply make their competitors sell more software, because nobody would want that WinDVD no more...
So I don't believe that this is actually the cause.
You are so right... but I guess they might just be exactly that stupid!!!!
It might be though, that since the latest updates, for some reason WinDVD would no longer play unencrypted content at all (which would be a bug, and they simply didn't test that prior to release).
I've installed the issued update and it is as it was before: WinDVD plays happily all encrypted content as long as AnyDVD is NOT running!!! It flatout refuses to even start playback while AnyDVD is in the system-tray!!! It just kills playback immediately...!!!!!
So I don't think it has anything to do with the new update... it seems to me (but I'm no expert) that WinDVD somehow detects AnyDVD running and simply stops!!! User "lostinlodos" reports that it also won't run while Alcohol is running, so I guess all this points in the direction that Intervideo (or Corel or whoever owns this proggy) has really implemented a memory check of some kind...
If you do have the possibility to burn a copy of some BD and see, whether WinDVD will play it then....
I'll try it in the next few days, as I don't have an empty BD disc yet (they tend to be as expensive as the movie-discs themselves here in Athens!!)
Unfortunately, I don't have a (working) copy of WinDVD to check this, maybe comments from other members whether or not they have this problem will help.
PM will follow...
(...) for the most part it's no longer legal to use WinDVD outside of the US, as it conforms to the DMCA and thereby violates the "fair-use" clause of the International Copyright Act and can not be imported (or downloaded) in other regions.
It may well be so for the "full" version of WinDVD 8 that was scheduled to support Blu-ray (and HD-DVD) and was later removed from circulation (that infamous Japanese version), but the version of WinDVD BD that comes bundled with at least the Sony Vaios appears to be legal in all countries where Vaios are being sold. The update is donwloadable from the Vaio-support-sites of almost all countries (both in Europe, the US and many more), and the application-suite of the Vaio includes the setup files for the WinDVD BD for re-installation after a system-restore...
Three, if you're interested in a new player, try out Cyberlink's PowerDVD. It does everything WinDVD does and more, and should still work with all your software.
Well, you are abolutely right... I would not even sit and deal with WinDVD if it was not for another problem: PowerDVD seems to have many bugs and even version 7.3 doesn't run stable and w/o hanging & crashing on the Vaio. So I don't know if all this is maybe after all "just" a stupid Sony-related Vaio incompatibility...
The AR31S comes with an nVIDIA Go 7600 GT, 2 igs of Ram, a Core 2 Duo T7200 cpu... so system wise BD playback should not be a problem...
Oh well, just wait & see I guess...
I'll do some more checks and will be back later...
Thanks a lot for all your input & all the best
Petros