Have had a few problems today with my new laptop, basically it is cool for watching DVD's etc, but when i have tried to watch a web cast or some stuff with embedded media player control on a web site the sound wasnt working correctly. Imagine all voices sounding like the smurfs... quite amusing for about 30 seconds then very annoying.
I tried upgrading to media player 11 and then i got no sound at all.
I google'd for a while and came across a post which said to install a 3rd party codec pack which has now resolved this so it is all working fine now.
The pack recommended was http://filehippo.com/download_codec_pack/
Hope this helps someone else