choppy dvd playback on older laptop

[dfarrales]

my aunt just picked up a older lappy... compaq 1925/celeron400mhz/196mb

not flashy at all but it's primary use is for minor stuff. it DID come w/ a dvd drive. i installed win2k and powerdvd on there. problem is that all dvd's played are VERY choppy (video and audio). is this a software issue or hardware issue? would some other dvd palyer other than power dvd be useful?

thanks,
Deo

 

[Arcanedeath]

You might try and older version of Power of WinDVD as they tend to use less CPU resources, a 400mhz Celeron was around the limit w/ good software that one could get DVD play back on w/out a hardware decoder. The other option is to get a PCMCIA hardware decoder card and use that for DVD playback, some decent ones are under $50 and would solve your issue aswell. Hope this helps...

 

[hompsar]

the thing about PowerDVD was that it was good for when you had weak specs. like, it was supposed to run on low-end computers without a problem...weird

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I googled it and found someone who says DVD playback was fine with both Win and Power players in 2kpro. He mentioned some people had problems due to an older bios, so if it doesn't have the latest one start there since it's free.

 

[jt63]

Is the controller set to use DMA? If it's set to PIO, that could mess up your performance

 

[stevty2889]

You could also check the settings in power dvd and make sure you have hardware acceleration disabled. That should help smooth things out on that system.