The VideoLAN Forums

Some six months back we bought a laptop for my kid sister from a leading brand. Withing couple of months speakers of the laptop started malfunctioning. They would skip sound and playback at inaudible volume. Since the machine was within warranty, my old man took it to the nearest service center of the brand and asked for the free repair. He was but given some real innovative excuse...... I had to share this one.

They told that it was because of VLC
According to them VLC required speakers with 5 amperes of current and the laptop's speakers only supported 3 amperes. And since the problem was caused by using unsupported software, we'll have to shell it out from our own pocket.
The very concept they gave seems nothing to me but a hilarious excuse.

Request you to kindly :
1) comment on this episode.
2) advise me on what should say to these people bamboozling us with some real bull***t.
3) enlighten me if there's really this 5 ampere speakers' requirement associated with VLC.

Clearly not.
This is a stupid excuse from big american brands that don't understand anything at computers.

VLC allows you to over-amplify a file (audio above 100%) and that can lead to saturation in the audio output.
But, VLC uses all the normal Windows APIs, and sound is output to the speakers through the drivers.

The problem of those misdesigned laptops is that the audio drivers are outputting waves that are too strong for the speakers...
But they don't want to fix their drivers and don't want to put less crappy speakers...

Updates...

I printed into PDFs following items and e-mailed them to my pop:
1) This page containing my post and j-b's reply.
2) j-b's profile page from the VLC forums.
3) j-b's CV from http://www.jbkempf.com/
Pop took printouts of above items to the vendor and confronted them.
Vendor budged... changed speakers without charging anything.
Of-course the vendor warned that if next time if the speakers get corrupted due to VLC use, warranty will be void.

Thanks & Regards,
Varun.

Updates...

I printed into PDFs following items and e-mailed them to my pop:
1) This page containing my post and j-b's reply.
2) j-b's profile page from the VLC forums.
3) j-b's CV from http://www.jbkempf.com/
Pop took printouts of above items to the vendor and confronted them.
Vendor budged... changed speakers without charging anything.
Of-course the vendor warned that if next time if the speakers get corrupted due to VLC use, warranty will be void.

Amazing!

Warrenties, eh? They get you twice by first having you pay for the coverage and then, when something does break down, they say: "It was probably mishandled at your home... and you must pay for it." They've got your money; so why bother doing the work?

Updates...

I printed into PDFs following items and e-mailed them to my pop:
1) This page containing my post and j-b's reply.
2) j-b's profile page from the VLC forums.
3) j-b's CV from http://www.jbkempf.com/
Pop took printouts of above items to the vendor and confronted them.
Vendor budged... changed speakers without charging anything.
Of-course the vendor warned that if next time if the speakers get corrupted due to VLC use, warranty will be void.

Thanks & Regards,
Varun.

ROFL.

So they promised to use the same lame excuse the next time the speaker fail? (of no fault of VLC, of course)
They're just mad because they got served!

I would concur. If a manufacture provides both audio drivers and the speakers, then their drivers should prevent the speakers form being damaged. Either that, or the circuitry driving the speakers should be volume limiting, based on the specs. Of course, whatever is external to the computer is a different matter, since at this point you are dealing with unknowns.

If it happens again I would be curious to know what the brand is.

Just demonstrate the basic flaw in their argument: the program does not output directly to the hardware. That's what drivers are for. Then ask them if they can spell amperes.

They do not care, obviously.