So here's the thing. I have a few video files in DivX format of roughly 45 minutes in length that I want to watch (Battlestar Galactica to be precise). They're saved on me external HDD and though they play fine, every 20 minutes or so my screen goes black and I have to get up and move the mouse again to watch while the audio just keeps going. It's really annoying and it kind of detracts from the overall experience. How can I fix this?


Also, my PC is having trouble playing DVD movies lately. It reads game discs just fine but when I pop in Disturbia or (because of my sister) One Tree Hill I get some nonsense about my PC not supporting the DVD's format... It would be nice if I could get help with both of these little issues. My lappy is a Dell Inspiron 6000.

I seem to remember you saying you used DivX player. Use something else.

Shoot, I thought I posted this in hardware and software help. Sorry El, could you move it? My bad. Yeah I use DivX player but it happens on WMP and others as well. I think my PC actually falls asleep every 20 minutes but so far nothing I've changed in properties helps.

If you've checked it's nothing to do with your power settings in Windows and associated 3rd party software, and it's not the player...

loldunno. Also get a new PC already.

Try using Media Player Classic, my display cuts off like that on some players but never this one.

Its what happens when you watch television off a computer. The only player I know that can doesn't cut out is what Rifle suggested, Windows Media Player but I don't think you need "classic".
Alternatively you could try changing your monitor/screensaver settings but thats a long shot. Its to prevent screenlock or screenfreeze (the image becomes burned into the monitor ) or whatever its called. Its a safety feature that is built into your monitor so you will probably have to dig deep to change it.

Media Player Classic is different to WMP.

I don't use either so sorry for the confusion. I am somewhat adverse to watching television on my monitor, just trying to be helpful. Go classic downloaded.

Yeah it's all to do with power saving of some kind, whether it be your monitors settings or your windows ones.

Like I told you, set options better you fucking idiot Downloaded.

Where's the options button? It cuts out even with WMP, there's nothing I can do! .

Change the power settings in the control panel.

Grrrrrreat! That helped! Now just to fix that weird DVD format issue.

You need to install something like PowerDVD to play them in WMP, might as well get a decent player while you're at it.

Would VLC do the trick?

How the hell can you say you checked your power settings when you didn't even look in control panel... I mentioned checking your settings properly in my second post. It's shit like this that makes me give up on helping people.

Installing VLC will allow DVDs in VLC but not WMP.

I was talking about desktop properties. I thought it was a screen saver, I never knew power options could be fiddled with like that.