I recently purchased a Sony Handycam HDR-CX150. It records in full 1080p HD and saves the files in .m2ts format. When I first transfer these files from the cam to the computer and play the .m2ts files on my Sony software, the video is clear, crisp, and looks the way I think full HD video should look. But .m2ts won’t play on any media player on my computer except VLC Player, and then the quality is horrible—it tears and won’t play right. So I am forced to convert it to a full HD H.264 file or something of the same quality. I have tried every converter program from HandBrake to AVS Video Converter. I don’t care about cost or hard drive space; I just want to know if there is any way to convert my full HD .m2ts files to a format that will not lose any, or barely any, video quality. I don’t care if the output file is larger than the input file! I have 12TB of storage between my computer and server. I’m using a 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.7GHz, a Radeon HD 4890, and 6GB of DDR3; I don’t think my hardware is the problem.

—Christopher Basquit

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I have a custom-built gaming computer made by Magic Micro housed in a Thermaltake Soprano case. It has 4GB of RAM, a 3GHz Core 2 Duo (model unknown), a 500-watt Antec power supply, two 1TB Seagate hard drives, and a Sapphire Radeon HD 4870. Things are fun and fast here. The desktop sits right under the air-conditioning vent in my library. Using SpeedFan, I recorded the max temps to be 158 degrees in the Core 0-1 areas and 124 degrees at the CPU. Am I in trouble? Normally it runs around 98 degrees combined, but it was a hot night. I turned the AC on and it all cooled down quickly back to 98 F. Is my desktop OK or do I need to do something?

—Chris Buemi

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Every time I try to join a multiplayer server in Battlefield 2, my computer freezes with no sound for nearly a minute, then resumes again. I can’t seem to diagnose the problem. I have installed the newest patch (1.5). I have reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. All the drivers were automatically installed by Windows, so I only had to install my soundcard drivers. My computer is connected to a cable modem via a Linksys wireless router. I have also manually updated my PunkBuster files. Any idea what’s causing the pausing?

—rtschchand

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Right now, I’m trying to upgrade to Vista Ultimate (so when I can get Windows 7, I can keep everything) from XP Pro SP3. At the end of the installation, a blue screen pops up for a second and restarts the entire machine, ruining a five-hour install. I tried installing new RAM (the old DIMMs were faulty) but it failed to work. I can’t build a new rig as I don’t have the cash to make a proper one, and I don’t want to do a clean install as my PC has a nasty habit of being terribly unstable without certain patches (due to something CPU-related). My computer is an M3A78-EM motherboard with an AMD Phenom II X4 940 BE CPU (which amazingly, has survived a full motherboard short-out), a GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card, and two 2GB DDR2 RAM sticks. Both of the operating systems are 32-bit. Is this problem software- or hardware-related?

Read the Doctor's answer for Brandon after the jump.