Avi playback issues on a widescreen LCD
 

So i just bought a new Inspiron 6000 with a 15.4" WXGA screen and im having some problems playing dvds and avi files. They all appear smaller on the screen and when enlarged playback is somewhat blurry and pixelated. I hooked it up to a normal non-widescreen monitor and playback was perfect so I'm pretty sure its not a driver/codec problem. I have all the latest ATI drivers and updates and it runs games perfectly so I don't know what to do and its kinda bugging me. Any help would be appreciated.

Your avi files probably aren't formatted to play on a widescreen. If you enlarge the picture you will end up loosing the quality that you have with the smaller size. However, whenever viewing a widescreen dvd, the tops and bottoms of the picture will appear to be cut off. They are not actually cut off, but shrunk down in order to show you the whole picture in a widescreen format.

I thought it might just be the files but i tried it on a friends computer who also had a WXGA screen and it worked fine. I think it may just be the display because inspiron 6000s are noted to have poor displays, but im happy with everything else and i really don't want to wait and send it back. Is there nothing software-wise i can do to make the picture sharper?

Hmm. Are you guys using the same media player? With the same DVD settings? Which media player do you use?

Yeah we're both using WMP 10 for avi's and powerdvd 6.0 for DVD playback. A friend mentioned it might be the DRM "feature" on WM10 scaling back the resolution to reduce pirating but i've tried it with other players with the same problem. And Dell seems to have the worst canadian technical support ever *rage*

other players ...

tried media player classic?

yeah i've tried classic, powerdvd, divxplayer, re-installed codecs...nada. i'm pretty sure it has to be the display now so i'll give dell a call and see what they have to say.

I called dell, talked with the useless tech support for an hour and they finally agreed to replace my LCD. I think it will fix the problem, but im not sure. Any thoughts?