780G DVD Playback

What are you using for playback?  I've never seen anything like that on my 780G, but I don't use HDMI - just DVI straight from the MB to the TV...  But, as far as I know, DVI / HDMI should be "same / same" for DVD.  And I can use WMP, Media Center, PDVD7, and WinDVD9 to play standard DVD's.  Like Matt said, I don't know why the issue would be with commercial DVD's.  Do you have AnyDVD?

Am I correct that the fluorescent colored blocks is typical of copy protection problems?  Like I said before, I do not suspect a decoder problem since backed up DVD's play fine with protection removed.

Sort of, copy protection problems normally end up with digital snow and then the TV and/or player erroring about copy protection.

That almost sounds like a cable problem, like the DVI transmission has a high rate of errors. Like I said snag a basic HDMI cable and go HDMI to HDMI since your mobo and TV both support it natively.

Oh and using WMP11 and VMC basically equate to the same thing, so it isn't much of a test, if you want to test, test using an application from a vendor that isn't MS (ZoomPlayer Pro, PowerDVD, etc).

Speaking of monoprice.com... this past weekend I wanted to get a firewire cable to test my neighbor's STB firewire port.  Of course after digging through all my junk I couldn't locate one, so I headed out to pick one up locally.  Boy was I surprised when I saw the price.  $35 for a friggin 6 foot firewire cable?  No thanks.  I came home and ordered one from Monoprice.com for about $3.50 with shipping.  That was Saturday.  Now, on Tuesday I see that it has arrived and looks great.  I should have purchased 20 and sold them to the local store for $10 each.  ;D

The x1250 IGP on the 690G is OK for DVD's & other standard video, even ATSC (OTA) HDTV but you probably won't want to use it for Blue Disc.  Mine worked (works) fairly well for one BD format, but you probably won't be happy using it for BD...  It's DB performance relies heavily on the strength of your CPU. ( On the other hand, the 780G and it's HD3200 IGP works very well for all things BD. )  I don't know anything about the 3870, but I'm assuming you'll want to use it.

Forgot to mention that I had the problem while using a regular DVI-to-DVI cable plugged into two different non-HDCP displays.  I didn't have an HDCP display to test it on.  My memory is hazy, but I'm fairly certain that playback was fine when using a VGA cable.

If you have any additional codecs installed, I'd check them and reinstall.  Different codecs can break one another (on occasion) and cause some real bad distortion of the image, including bright green and pink boxes.