Hello,

You didn't share any of the requested information about your PC, so it is hard to provide a reason here and some assumptions have to be made.

This issue is actually caused by some AMD GPUs, as DRM protection cannot be enabled in high contrast mode. As to why you have never seen this before, it could be the driver was updated by Windows or you recently enabled high contrast mode.

If you want to continue using high contrast mode, you just need to just press Alt+Left Shift+Print Screen to disable high contrast mode before beginning Blu-ray playback. Press it again once you are done to re-enable it.

Cheers
PowerDVD Moderator Please direct any sales or technical issues to CyberLink's customer support team:

Sales or installation related issues:
https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do

Software technical issues:
https://membership.cyberlink.com/sup

Please find attached.

Use of "high contrast" is not a recent change. I've been using it for years.

Video driver updated a couple momths ago, give-or-take, and a new update was available so I've installed that also with no change. Still receiving the error dialog.

Not using AMD. Using Intel.

After pressing Alt-LeftShift-Printscreen the Bluray will play, but pressing Alt-Leftshift-Printscreen after play has begun causes the player to stop playing and give the same dialog. It refuses to play and also allow me to use my computer.

I haven't made any changes to my system since the last time I was playing Blurays with PowerDVD 18. This doesn't make any sense at all.

Quote Please find attached.

After pressing Alt-LeftShift-Printscreen the Bluray will play, but pressing Alt-Leftshift-Printscreen after play has begun causes the player to stop playing and give the same dialog. It refuses to play and also allow me to use my computer.

Hello,

Yes, as I indicated, you can switch back to high contrast mode after you are done playing the Blu-ray. Since your GPU cannot enable DRM in high contrast mode anymore for some reason, you need to keep it turned off during playback.

Cheers
PowerDVD Moderator Please direct any sales or technical issues to CyberLink's customer support team:

Sales or installation related issues:
https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do

Software technical issues:
https://membership.cyberlink.com/sup

Quote I haven't made any changes to my system since the last time I was playing Blurays with PowerDVD 18. This doesn't make any sense at all.

Understood your frustruction.
However, according to your description, it seems the error you received is a GPU driver related issue that it cannot enable DRM protection pipeline (for playing blu-ray discs) on your PC when the high contrast mode is on concurrently in Windows.

In fact, it is unlikely that your system is able to keep no changed all the time.
Windows keeps changing itself by auto system updates, and the updates might also cause new compatibility bugs from time to time. Microsoft is notorious of the situation that their updates bring user many new bugs and cause the system unstable.


What really doesn't change on your pc is the version of powerdvd 18.
If your powedvd version keeps not changed, and it had worked well in the past to play the blu-ray discs, it didn't do anything wrong.

The DRM protection of the blu-ray discs aims to protect its video from getting tamperred or recorded when it got played, and high contrast mode is somehow a kind of system-wide change to process the image or video displayed on your screen.
Instead of holding powerdvd responsible, I suggest you turn to contact NVIDIA (your GPU manufacturer) to investigate this GPU driver issue that occurred when it processed the DRM videos under high contrast mode. It will save you large amount of time becuase it seems the issue is not caused by powerdvd.


Here is my observation and a troubleshooting advice for you to try out.
It seems you plugged two monitors that are in different resolutions and refresh rates to your PC concurrently.
However about unplug any of them to check if either one works under high contrast mode to play the blu-ray discs solely?
Because, no matter how many monitors you plugged to the PC, the video will play on a monitor only, and it seems you are desperate to play blu-rays under high contrast mode.

So one of you is saying basically I'm up a creek, have a good life.

And both of you are saying DRM doesn't work if I choose windows GUI colors that allow me to read what's on my screen.

<facepalm>

Regarding me contacting nvidia, I'm not excited at the idea of me, and end-user, trying to convince them that Cyberlink's software doesn't work and it's nvidia's fault.

They'll probably tell me it's MicroSoft's fault.

I understand, it probably is MS's. I had just thought Cyberlink would seem more interested in figuring out why it's suddenly not working.


Question: Maybe devs do know why and fixed it? Does this problem exist with later versions of PowerDVD? TheCyberlink workaround page says "Applied to: PowerDVD 18". Does that mean it's only this version?


Sorry I sound so frustrated. I do appreciate the responses.

Hello,

The issue would probably be the same in the latest version of PowerDVD, since it looks like it is GPU related. You can try installing the trial version of PowerDVD 21 just to check.

Looking at your DXDiag file, I see that your NVIDIA GPU is using the latest driver, which means it was updated after March 22 when the driver was released. See attached driverinfo.jpg:. The driver version is the last 5 numbers in the DSDiag file, i.e 512.15

Driver File Version: 30.00.0015.1215 (English)
Driver Version: 30.0.15.1215

My contact at CyberLink mentioned that this issue was common on AMD platforms, but it could be something in the driver upate on March 22 is causing this in some NVIDIA GPUs now. You may want to try rolling back to a previous driver to see if it fixes it as well. Worth a try.

Cheers
PowerDVD Moderator Please direct any sales or technical issues to CyberLink's customer support team:

Sales or installation related issues:
https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do

Software technical issues:
https://membership.cyberlink.com/sup