I recently purchased a new laptop, HP Pavillion dv4, running a 64-bit version of Windows Vista. Since then, I've enjoyed the laptop and found it to work fairly well (except for the occasional crash now and then which likely is attributed to an audio card firmware issue. Even so, one issue I've encountered is the little-known, quicktime black bar.This black car replaces the normal quicktime play/pause timeline that shows up for most mp3/mp4 and other h264 vids. After a little googling I found this solution at the North Arizona University:
If the embedded Quicktime Player plugin does not work in your browser, but only displays a black bar (especially likely if running Windows Vista 64-bit):
1. Right click on the browser icon
2. Select properties
3. Go to the compatibility tab
4. Check the box for "Run this program in compatibility mode for:"
5. Make sure it says "Windows XP (Service Pack 2)" in the drop down list.
6. Press "OK" at the bottom
