I'm back again as I had about 30 min to have my first visit to an Apple store here in Tyson Corner Northern Va. I went in at lunch yesterday and wanted to check out the latest in the 17 inch Powerbooks because I have all but decided to buy one right after X-Mas.
Anyway, I was underwhelmed with the sound coming out of the two that they had set up at the store. I fired up iTunes and was happy to see so many songs already loaded on the machine and was surprised not to hear any sound coming from the speakers . I maxed the volume in iTunes, with no change and then maxed the volume in the preferences of the Powerbook and could barely hear anything coming out of the speakers of both Powerbooks. What I did hear was quality sound to be sure, but the store wasn't that loud and I would say I couldn't hear any sound just about 3-4 feet away in that open environment.
I then threw in a DVD of Bela Fleck performing at the Quick. This is a great looking and sounding DVD that is a good test disc for blacks and great sound quality. I inserted it and waited, and waited and waited just when I thought someone had disabled the DVD player (30 seconds) the player came up , with the beach ball for about 4 seconds and the disc finally started to play. I was disappointed in the video quality. I have never seen a Powerbook playing a DVD live, but had heard how incredible it looked.(this is one of the reasons I am considering a 17" powerbook) The blacks looked fine, but the picture showed too many jaggies ( somewhat to be expected with a LCD) and a shearing like effect where it looked like the video was trying to catch up with the audio. The audio again was extremely low, good quality, but barely audible without turning the sound all the way up and not loud even then.
Questions. I know this was a stock machine with 4200 HD, and 64MB video card but shouldn't the machine have been able to play a DVD without jumping around some? I closed everything I could find on the machine and in the terminal with "top" could only see 12-15% cpu usage before start. I didn't have time to wait around to talk with a "genius" as they all appeared to be busy. I searched the threads on this board and could find nothing about this low sound phenomenon. Even though both machines exhibited it. (I didn't get to play the DVD on the second machine, only iTunes). Anyone had this happen before? Do you Powerbook owners always use headphones when watching DVDs? I had planned to use this in my bedroom and although had considered adding external speakers, would like to use it without if possible. Thanks in advance.
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