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Flickering Green Lines in DVD Player

T

thebreadking

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 26, 2008
38
0
I have a 2005 15" Powerbook that has started to have issues with its optical drive. When I try to watch a film, the entire screen is covered with flickering green dashes or lines...almost as if I was looking at "The Matrix", but it was made of dashes. However, this issue only arises when I'm trying to play a DVD using Apple's DVD Player software. If I play the DVD in VLC I have no issues. In addition, if I use the fastforward/reverse commands in DVD Player the green issues disappears.

The drive is loud and does make "interesting" noises fairly regularly, so I thought it was the drive itself failing. However, flawless playback using the above methods convinced me it was the DVD Player application itself. Because I've looking to sell the Powerbook I wiped the HDD clean and reinstalled 10.5 Leopard to see if that would solve it and it did not.

Lastly, this happens on every (video) DVD I've inserted, so its not a random occurrence.

Any ideas of what the problem may be? I'm stumped, and would appreciate any help!
 
thebreadking said:
I have a 2005 15" Powerbook that has started to have issues with its optical drive. When I try to watch a film, the entire screen is covered with flickering green dashes or lines...almost as if I was looking at "The Matrix", but it was made of dashes. However, this issue only arises when I'm trying to play a DVD using Apple's DVD Player software. If I play the DVD in VLC I have no issues. In addition, if I use the fastforward/reverse commands in DVD Player the green issues disappears.

The drive is loud and does make "interesting" noises fairly regularly, so I thought it was the drive itself failing. However, flawless playback using the above methods convinced me it was the DVD Player application itself. Because I've looking to sell the Powerbook I wiped the HDD clean and reinstalled 10.5 Leopard to see if that would solve it and it did not.

Lastly, this happens on every (video) DVD I've inserted, so its not a random occurrence.

Any ideas of what the problem may be? I'm stumped, and would appreciate any help!
Click to expand...

Do you have any other display issues?

Do you have an external DVD drive that you can try?

Can you post a screenshot of the issue?

Cheers
 
Thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.

As for other display issues, now that you mention it, I tried to put in an old Starcraft disc and encountered a very similar problem, only I believe it was white flickering lines, rather than green. Unfortunately, apart from other movie DVDs, its the only "video-based" disc that I own. And it doesn't explain why the movies play just fine in VLC...

Unfortunately, I do not have another DVD drive to hook it up to.

I've attached a couple of screenshots of the issue. Actually, they're "shots of the screen"; having just wiped clean the computer I don't want to start installing screencapture software (as Apple won't let you take normal screen caps with DVD player running).

I've pretty much resigned myself to a degrading optical drive, but the whole VLC thing throws a wrench in it. Again, any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 

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Oh wow, well that would suck far more than a bunk optical drive, but his problems sound practically identical to mine. Thanks for sending the link over. If thats the case, and the GPU is the issue, then I guess the worth of the Powerbook just dropped through the floor, yeah?

Is there anyplace that still sells GPUs that would work with a 5.5 year old Powerbook, or is it not even worth it? I believe its an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (4X AGP), but I have little experience with the internals of this computer...

Thanks again.

EDIT: Are the GPUs even separate from the logic board? Would I have to ::shudder:: buy a whole new logic board just to replace the GPU?
 
Last edited:
Sorry but the GPU chip is soldered to the board. If the GPU fails it is an immediate logic board replacement.

Scour for it on ebay, at least you will have a ball park and decide if you would tear your PB to pieces and sell it for parts or buy a logic board and make it live again.
 
I am not totally convinced that this is a GPU issue. Do you play games on the computer by any chance things with heavy graphics requirements? If so:
Have you noticed any recent issues with low framerates as compared to what you would expect?

Also do you have iStat Pro (dashboard widget) this will let you view your temperature readings. I would try playing a DVD for a while then check the temp. Your GPU should not have to work that hard to play a DVD. If your GPU was bad I would expect other issues as well.

Cheers
 
Thanks, all. I don't play any graphically-intense games on it, but I'll mess around with it per a couple of the suggestions here a little more to see what I can further learn and I'll post an update here.

Thanks again.
 
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