Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty

en.community.dell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 224 posts

Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty

#21

Post by philliphaydon »

Ma8ee wrote: post #18
guard-of-terra wrote: post #3

This is stupid. They are making speakers that can't withstand some cases of within-the-bounds PCM signal. If we had a normal society anywhere on earth they would be sued to the ground there.

Speakers are built to be able to withstand short peaks with high power to reflect the dynamic in the music or your movie. This is what is abused to be able to play loud sounds continuously. You could take the possibility to do that away, but then you would of course also remove some of the dynamics out of the music. But of course, the people that burn their speakers this way don't care about dynamics or evidently abo…

Not sure if you've ever owned a Dell laptop, but I'll never buy one again. On a couple of occasions I have tried to play DVD's on them and cannot hear people talking with the volume up. Put headphones on and its too loud. Dell speakers are junk.

Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty

#23

Post by speeder »

jbk wrote: post #15

As the main developer of VLC, we know about this story since a long time, and this is just Dell putting crap components on their machine and blaming others. Any discussion was impossible with them. So let me explain a bit... In this case, VLC just uses the Windows APIs (DirectSound), and sends signed integers of 16bits (s16) to the Windows Kernel. VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded…

Any other manufacturer do that? (someone mentioned HP below)

I am a VLC fan (thanks! I wish I was skilled enough to contribute to the project) and right now using a ASUS laptop, I want to know what manufacturers I should NOT buy from next time (I bought this ASUS because I tried to buy from DELL and their site was buggy and did not closed the transaction... good to me their site was buggy!)

Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty

#24

Post by Aardwolf »

maxerickson wrote: post #16
Aardwolf wrote: post #8

Shouldn't instead Dell make the speakers not be able to get physically damanged by software?

It would probably either cost more or the speakers would have a lower peak volume. I don't think it is a wild compromise to make some assumptions about the sounds people will play through the speakers (and it's not like a spec relating the max energy/time is going to help most shoppers).

Well, it's also a wild compromise to say the warranty is void by installing popular software. If they would instead say, the warranty is void if you go above such and so threshold for such and so long (no matter with what software), that would make sense, but this, just seems a cheap way of making the warranty unexistent.

Anyway, a moderator from Dell replied that you can contact him if Dell refuses to give support just by seeing VLC installed, so maybe it's better than it seems.

Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty

#25

Post by jbk »

speeder wrote: post #23
jbk wrote: post #15

As the main developer of VLC, we know about this story since a long time, and this is just Dell putting crap components on their machine and blaming others. Any discussion was impossible with them. So let me explain a bit... In this case, VLC just uses the Windows APIs (DirectSound), and sends signed integers of 16bits (s16) to the Windows Kernel. VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded…

Any other manufacturer do that? (someone mentioned HP below) I am a VLC fan (thanks! I wish I was skilled enough to contribute to the project) and right now using a ASUS laptop, I want to know what manufacturers I should NOT buy from next time (I bought this ASUS because I tried to buy from DELL and their site was buggy and did not closed the transaction... good to me their site was buggy!)

> Any other manufacturer do that?

We heard about HP and Dell doing that, and ONLY in the version they shipped to India or South-East Asia (Do they ship worse components there?)

> I wish I was skilled enough to contribute to the project

There is a very high chance that you are skilled enough, to be honest.

Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty

#26

Post by eru »

jbk wrote: post #25
speeder wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any other manufacturer do that? (someone mentioned HP below) I am a VLC fan (thanks! I wish I was skilled enough to contribute to the project) and right now using a ASUS laptop, I want to know what manufacturers I should NOT buy from next time (I bought this ASUS because I tried to buy from DELL and their site was buggy and did not closed the transaction... good to me their site was buggy!)

> Any other manufacturer do that? We heard about HP and Dell doing that, and ONLY in the version they shipped to India or South-East Asia (Do they ship worse components there?) > I wish I was skilled enough to contribute to the project There is a very high chance that you are skilled enough, to be honest.

Even if you don't know much, there's always grunt work to be done to get to know a project.

Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty

#28

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

jbk wrote: post #15

As the main developer of VLC, we know about this story since a long time, and this is just Dell putting crap components on their machine and blaming others. Any discussion was impossible with them. So let me explain a bit... In this case, VLC just uses the Windows APIs (DirectSound), and sends signed integers of 16bits (s16) to the Windows Kernel. VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded…

Low quality speakers and a poor hardware design. It isn't even a challenge to match amplifier output to speakers in such a way that the amplifier can't break the speaker. There are easily a dozen cheap ways to make this work properly that don't rely upon a probably non-existent WMP based solution.

>VLC does not, and cannot modify the OUTPUT volume to destroy the speakers.

That would be remarkable.

>And as VLC is present on a lot of machines, it's simple to blame VLC. "Correlation does not mean causation" is something that seems too complex for cheap Dell support...

It sounds like a #BOFH excuse.

Re: Installing VLC Media Player voids your speaker warranty

#29

Post by stcredzero »

jbk wrote: post #15

As the main developer of VLC, we know about this story since a long time, and this is just Dell putting crap components on their machine and blaming others. Any discussion was impossible with them. So let me explain a bit... In this case, VLC just uses the Windows APIs (DirectSound), and sends signed integers of 16bits (s16) to the Windows Kernel. VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded…

VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded. This is just like replay gain, broken codecs, badly recorded files or post-amplification and can lead to saturation.

I have to say, there may be a UI issue here as well. I blare my speakers with VLC playback something like 5X times more often than QuickTime player or mplayer. I use all 3 with about equal frequency.

Post reply on HN