Activ Board image grainy, pale colours and video play jerky

[Deb]

Hi Guys, I'm a newbie so apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this. A school i support has installed new Promethean Activ Boards in all the classrooms. They have noticed that the image displayed on them is very grainy and very hard to make out. When they try to play DVDs on the board they display very jerky images and the DVD pauses at intervals almost as if it's buffering. They use Hitachi projectors which i think are quite old. The computers are Dell AIO, connecting to the board with a Startech USB to VGA converter. I've checked the cables, connectors, projector leads, removing the converter and plugging the board into my laptop direct, changing the settings on the projector with no joy. I tried ringing Promethean who blamed the projector, Hitachi who blamed Promethean and Startech who were helpful but unable to help. Can anyone suggest anything i can try please?

[FN-GM]

It will be those poor USB adapters or the projectors causing the issue. The board is just something to project onto. I would first eliminate the USB adapter.

[witch]

I doubt it is the boards as they do not even need to be on to display an image - they are just being used as a smooth white surface to project onto. It seems as if you have eliminated the convertors as you say you have plugged directly into your laptop with the same result.

Does the DVD jump when you use your laptop?

Did you disconnect the convertor all together so that you can see if the connection to the Promethean board isn't interfering with anything?

Have the projectors been moved when the boards were installed?

[Deb]

Thanks for your quick replies. I'm running out of ideas :confused2:I did remove the adapters completely when connecting my laptop so it could connect vga to vga but the results were inconclusive. As far as i know the projectors have not been moved. The DVD played properly on my laptop and also when i played it on the PC. I've tried changing the setup on the projectors but there are very limited options. The situation is complicated by the fact that the new school PCs are running Windows 7 so staff have had to get used to this, but all the staff assure me "it was much better before", presumably under XP.

[witch]

Hmm

Have you tried setting it up so that it only projects to the board and is not visible on the laptop? This sometimes sorts out issues like that

Or this: Open Media Player (or click screen of video clip that isn’t playing very well)

Right Click on top bar (where it says Windows Media Player)

Tools

Options

Performance

Advanced

Untick ‘use overlays’ under video acceleration

 

 

Look for similar in other media players (eg VLC media player it is Tools, Preferences, Video)

Edited October 10, 2014 by witch

[Deb]

Dell Optiplex 3011 All in One. Plays fine on PC and on my Thinkpad which is pointing me towards problems with the projector as it's not playing properly on the IWB.

[witch]

Not necessarily - I have had issues with a video output to a projector that was to do with the laptop. If the DVD plays fine on the computers when disconnected from the projector I would suggest that you check to see if there is a graphics driver update available as well as trying what I have suggested above

[plexer]

Get a standalone dvd and hook it up to the projector using a composite lead, if picture is still rubbish it's the projector if it's reasonable for a composite image then it's not the projector unless the vga input is knackered.

 

Ben

[witch]

I think the laptops can't handle sending an image to the local machine AND the projector

[Deb]

Thanks Guys. That's given me something to try when i go there this morning.