Tag Archive for Error

Articles/Editorials, Rants!

Why is it so Hard to Play Blu-Rays on Windows?

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what

I just want to watch my blu-rays while I’m writing. I have four monitors, I use the center and left for work, and then the right one for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Blu-Rays and DVDs and then the 4th is a small one for just other stuff.

Why is it so hard to play blu-rays on Windows, not even just Window 10, I had problems on 8, 7, and Vista and all of them really as far back as I can remember. Yes everything is updated, all drivers, etc and my computer is more than capable of playing blu-rays. I’ve got a Core i7 4790K CPU with 16gb of ram, R9 280 and 7870 video cards, more than enough to play a blu-ray for sure.

I have Power DVD 15 and I have Nero 15 Ultimate Edition, both of which are supposed to play blu-rays. I can’t remember the last time I could play a blu-ray with Nero, I’ve tried and tried but it just won’t work, it gives me some BS error about cannot play this media and of course tells me to upgrade my drivers and blah, blah, blah, all of which is done already.

I’ve uninstalled and re-installed too many times to count and yes everything is up to date.

Yesterday I watched a couple blu-rays, today I popped a blu-ray in with Power DVD and got a black screen with sound. I tried another one and got picture but it was horribly distorted and pixelated. It’s a fairly new disc so it’s not damaged and it plays fine in my Xbox One and PS3. What happened between today and yesterday? Nothing at all, I went to sleep and woke up to it not working.

I paid for Power DVD 15, but then Power DVD 16 came out like a week later which pissed me off quite a bit actually, but whatever on that.

I have two Blu-ray players, Samsung and Lite-On, both do the same thing as to errors and not playing so it’s not the hardware.

Why is it so hard to watch what I paid for on my computer?

I’ve got a plethora of HDMI cables, switched them out, tried on different monitors and same thing.

Why is it so hard to just play a blu-ray on Windows?

Articles/Editorials, Rants!

Dear Netflix

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I guess you could call this an open letter to Netflix or a list of my gripes and complaints, questions and suggestions.

The service which supposedly would make viewers want to trade in their old DVDs at musicMagpie and take to online movie watching every time. It would do if these points were addressed first

1. I still hate the new user interface, the scrolling just annoys me, can I get the old one back please?

2. What the hell is with the new ‘feature’ of ‘Continue Watching’ at the top of the page now? I didn’t ask for that, nor do I want it! Can I make it go away? How can I continue watching something that I already watched? I finished the movie, but yet it’s there in my ‘Continue Watching’ section. I really HATE this new ‘feature’ and I want it to go away. I’m an adult so I watch R rated movies, (especially the horror movies, love them), but I have kids and I don’t want to see naked boobs or similar on the top of my screen when my kids are around. Many times your continue watching screen grabs aren’t the most flattering. Something needs fixed there as I do let my kids watch Netflix at times and they don’t need to see that just yet as they’re rather young.

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3. What is the deal with the Top 10 for me? It’s a list of things I’ve watched and haven’t watched. I could see if it was a top 10 list of things I’ve watched, my top rated stuff, but it isn’t. I could see if it was a top 10 list of suggestion for me, but it isn’t. I don’t know what the hell it is but I don’t think I’ve ever picked anything from the list.

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4. What the hell is the ‘Based on your search’ thing? I was searching for a movie, I was only searching for that movie because I wanted to watch it. I didn’t want suggestions based on my search, I wanted to watch that particular movie only. I searched for it to see if I could watch it on Instant. If I wanted to find things like what I was searching for then I would search for things like that. I was looking for one particular movie only. Can we make this go away?  Oftentimes you’ll show a ‘based on your search’ for something that I don’t even remember searching for or something that I searched for last year!? What good does that do me?

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5.The whole ‘More Like’ thing? if you’re going to suggest things, please make them at least CLOSE to what it’s supposed to be more like. ‘Analyze That’ is NOTHING AT ALL like River Monsters. How the hell is ‘Eddie and The Cruisers II’ more Like ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’? Sure it stars the same person but it’s nothing ‘like’ it at all.

6. TV Shows out of order, I like TV Shows, many times I’ll find something I’ve never seen and watch it and enjoy it very much. I’ll go and watch TV shows that I missed when they aired.  So why is it so hard to put the TV shows in the order they aired? I’ve run across it several times now with TV shows episodes just totally random ordered. Seriously, it’s not that hard to put them in the order they aired. if you’re not sure go stop over at IMDB and you can get the order they aired in, really simple to do.

7. Missing episodes? Here’s another one about TV Shows. Why put incomplete seasons up? That’s just pointless really it is and all it does is piss people off.

8. FIX your errors! The dumbass recurring n8156-6013 error is still not fixed. Also I don’t like being blamed for the error, you’re little error message sometimes blames me saying it could be my internet connection or something else I did wrong like the time on my computer. My question is how can my internet be down if I’m browsing the Netflix site and seeing the error? The time is correct on my computer, maybe the time on your computer is wrong?! We all know it’s a problem with Netflix and Silverlight, so why don’t you get together with Microsoft and fix the errors once and for all? Netflix blames Microsoft and Microsoft blames Netflix, it’s ridiculous.

9.Speaking of errors and blaming. When you’ve got a problem, don’t blame the customer. The similar error message comes up blaming my internet connection or the time on MY computer when you’ve got an issue with your system. If Netflix is having problems I’ll check Twitter and see many other people are having outages, but yet your error message blames me for the problem. If you’ve got a problem own up to it and don’t blame us.

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10. What happened to the ratings? Yes they’re there on the movie page, but not on the pop out. It just gives Netflix’s best guess for me. What good does that do me? I want to know what other people might think of the movie, I don’t want to know what you think I might think of the movie. FYI: You’re wrong 90% or more of the time anyway as to what you think I’ll rate something, so it really does me no good at all.

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11.Another one about TV Shows for you, what the hell is this new ‘feature’ about automatically starting the next episode? It’s annoying, please make it stop or give us the option to use it or not. If I’m watching TV shows I’ll use the time between them to go to the bathroom, get a drink or snack. The first time this happened it was rather annoying as I come back and the show is just playing away and I had to restart it. What’s the point of that? This is not what I would consider a ‘feature’ or an improvement at all.

12. Here’s a suggestion for you, how about searching by actor? Yes there is the option but it doesn’t exactly work all the time the way it should. Many times I’ll want to see something and forgot the name of the movie or show but I know who starred in it and it would be really nice to be able to search by actor. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it gives me a nice grid of the movies they starred in, other times it gives me a list of a few movies and then a bunch of others that they weren’t in. I don’t care about the movies they weren’t in.

 

Well that’s just a few things off the top of my head….

Don’t get me wrong, I love you Netflix but you really piss me off at times, especially the stupid ass things you do to supposedly ‘improve’ our viewing experience.

Articles/Editorials

Battlefield 3 Plus Premium, Pay More for the Bundle on Amazon!

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Here’s another Amazon pricing snafu..

Battlefield 3 Plus Premium Bundles is on sale for $109.94 which seems like a good deal until you look closer..

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Yep, if you want the bundle you’ll have to pay about $20 more for the privilege of bundling the games together..

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I love Amazon game deals, but you really need to watch them… I see a bunch that are also listed as deals but they’re actually 0% off.. they’re just regular priced games listed as deals..

How-To

How To Fix Netflix Error n8156-6013

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So I’ve posted about this a few times now but I thought it’d be easier to put it all in one posting.

So there are a few ways to fix this wonderful error that Netflix throws up.

Netflix says it’s the users fault essentially, and that’s wrong it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of Microsoft and Netflix.

They say your computer time could be wrong, which is possible.

So here’s a list of fixes for the dreaded n8156-6013 error for you:

1. Run as Admin – This is one is simple, just right click and run your browser in Administrator mode. This one works sometimes and it was one of the things that worked for me.

 

2. PlayReady – This one is a bit more complicated as it involves finding a possibly hidden folder. You’ll most likely need to go into your files and folders settings and change to view hidden files and folders.You’ll need to find the folder and rename the mspr.hds file or you can just delete. There have been problems with deleted it, so it’s safer to rename it. you can just call it mspr.old if you want or whatever. (some have said to delete the actual PlayReady folder, don’t do that as it will cause an error.

– Windows 7: it’s located at C:/ProgramData/Microsoft/PlayReady\mspr.hds or C:\Users\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\PlayReady\mspr.hds

– Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\ApplicationData\Microsoft\PlayReady\mspr.hds or C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\PlayReady\mspr.hds

– On Mac: HD > Library > Application Support > Microsoft > PlayReady > mspr.hds

 

3. Fix the time on your computer – You’ll need to go into the BIOS and set the time to the correct time and date. This has worked for some people.

 

4. Replace SilverLight – The last fix is one that I used originally and you could call it a last ditch effort and that’s to install on older version of Silverlight. This might work for a while but Netflix will complain that you need to upgrade.

-You can go here to find the SilverLight 3 SDK: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=16011

-Direct link is here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=150228

There really isn’t any actual fix for this. The fix would be for Microsoft and Netflix to get their acts together and work together to fix this for people.

I know I run into this error every once in a while and it annoys me to no end. I originally used option 4, but options 1 and 2 seem to work but not every time. Sometimes one will work and sometimes the other will.

As I said it’s their problem and they know about it and they won’t do anything for whatever reason.

 

Here’s the links for the original posts:

https://www.kristoferbrozio.com/2011/08/25/netflix-error-n8106-106/
https://www.kristoferbrozio.com/2011/03/07/fix-for-netflix-error-code-n8156-6013-updated/
https://www.kristoferbrozio.com/2010/06/25/fix-for-netflix-error-code-n8156-6013/

Rants!

Diablo III Errors and Paying to be a Beta Tester

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I love the Diablo series, it brings back a lot of memories, I remember the first one and the second one but I won’t be getting the third one any time soon. Why? because I refuse to pay to be a beta tester.

Yep that’s all we as gamers and consumers seem to be doing lately, paying to be a beta tester. The whole Skyrim PS3 thing was just ridiculous, I bought the game on launch day and couldn’t play it due to lag for about five months. That’s sickening making people who paid for a product to wait that many months to be able to actually use the product as it was intended.

I refuse to buy games anymore when they first come out. I will wait until I see the patches are out to fix the issues with the games and by that time I’m sure the price will drop anyway. I still don’t think we should be paying $50 – $60 for a game either, especially ones that have single player sections that only last an hour or so. I’m a single player type of guy, I’m just not into the multiplayer thing and that’s pretty much what you’re paying for with most games. Sure people like multiplayer, I get that, but most of my experiences have been dealing with little brats and their attitudes. I’m 40 years old, I have three kids, I play games to get away from life, to relax and enjoy myself not to deal with little kids and their nasty language and threats.

I’d love to know where these kids parents are that they’re allowed to say the stuff they do online over voice or just text chat. So of it is just disturbing really.

Anyway, back to the point. Why are us gamers dealing with paying to be a beta tester? That’s what we’re doing really. We pay for a basically buggy and unfinished game and then we have to wait until they fix it for us and who know how long that’s going to take. Skyrim is a big example of that, I had to wait almost five months to play it on the PS3. It’s gone, I got rid of it and got the PC version recently. I can play the game and enjoy it with decent FPS and no locking or freezing. I;’m seeing the same thing with Diablo III now, bugs and errors and problems. I want the game, yes I want Diablo III but I’m not going to buy it right now as I want to be able to play it when I want to play it and how I want to play it.

I just don’t get why more people don’t see what is going on here with these companies and these games not working correctly when they launch. Plain and simple we’re paying to be a beta tester for them. They have our money so what real hurry is there to fix things. There’s no incentive really. Sure some bad publicity maybe, but again, they have our money so what the hell do they care if it gets fixed or not?!

Then of course there’s the whole DLC thing but that could be another rant post in itself I’m sure..

Rants!

netflix error n8106-106

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What the hell is wrong with Netflix?

I’m really sick of this error popping up. There’s not a damn thing wrong with my internet connection, yet they try and tell me there is. That’s BS.

They’re raising the rates on us for a product that doesn’t even work part of the time.

I’ve posted about this fix before on here. So let’s recap.

I’ve done all my own fixes already, and they worked until today. Then it spits out the error right in the middle of watching something.

The quick fix I’ve got is just open your browser with ‘run as administrator’, right now that fixed the problem for me. Why though should I have to run as admin to watch Netflix?

 

Here’s links to the other two posts with the other fixes I‘ve used that worked for a while anyway.

https://www.kristoferbrozio.com/2010/06/25/fix-for-netflix-error-code-n8156-6013/

UPDATED: another part of the fix here: https://www.kristoferbrozio.com/2011/03/07/fix-for-netflix-error-code-n8156-6013-updated/