Last night, I hosted a movie night at my house for participants of my martial arts group. It was going to be a doubleheader. I wanted to show them Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, a fun martial arts film followed by The Last Ninja.
When Neither DVD Player Worked
At the appointed hour, I placed the Remo Williams DVD into the player, when, much to my chagrin, it would not play. It seems the DVD that I had purchased through Amazon.com was in PAL format. To be specific, it was in UK PAL format. The discovery that the video was in PAL rather than the expected NTSC format created a sense of frustration in me. I immediately popped the DVD into the second DVD player I had on hand. Unfortunately, it also would not play the DVD. At this point, plans A and B are out the window. Time to develop a new plan.
Finding a Laptop Workaround
I knew my laptop could play DVDs, and I knew that there was a way to play PAL-formatted DVDs, so I pulled out my laptop, fired it up, and popped in the DVD. Wouldn’t you know it, it would not play on the default DVD player. So after a bit of time researching the Internet, I found a solution. Part of the solution was that I had to change the regional formatting. This is how I learned I had to know it was UK PAL format. Did you know that Microsoft only allows you to change the regional formatting for DVD playing five different times before you can not change it? How stupid and annoying is that? I now have to find a program to override that restriction. Fortunately, I could set the right formatting option and get the video to play.
Getting the Picture and Sound Working
My next challenge was to connect my computer to the television. It appeared that my only reasonable option was to use the HDMI connections. Unfortunately, I did not have a spare HDMI cable, so I had to crawl behind the television and do some rewiring. Success! We could see the video on the television; however, we could hear nothing. It is amazing the little things that are not obvious when you are in a hurry.
Very quickly, I grabbed the speakers from my desktop computer and hooked them up to the computer. I could get sound when I disconnected the HDMI cable but lost sound when I plugged the cable back in. I attempted to change the settings of the default speakers from HDMI to speakers, again with no luck.
The last thing I tried was successful… I turned the mute off. Like I said, obvious things pass you by when you are in a hurry. After 30 minutes of troubleshooting, gathering equipment, and experimenting, our movie night began.
Movie night succeeded, though it would have improved had I prepared properly. Because of the time delay in starting, not everyone could stay for the second feature.
Lessons learned:
- If you are giving a presentation, test your equipment and work out bugs well ahead of time. In this case, I did not test the DVD and did not realize it was PAL rather than NTSC.
- Always have alternate plans available. We were going to see this video one way or another. Fortunately, we got it to work on the television.
- Slow down when troubleshooting so that you will recognize the obvious. I lost time because I did not recognize that the mute was on.
A presentation is a presentation. Preparation is the key to success.
