a dvd rant

[NiceWorg]

I was watching two great movies on my pc tonight (a fistful of dollars & once upon a time in the west - ya I´m an indian), but was amazed that my computer didn´t hold enough power to run them smoothly. This happened only at times, but it bothered. It´s interesting, because I have a 800Mhz, 256 DDR system, and I don´t buy the reason that my computer is outdated because I´ve seen DVDs running better with half slower systems. Now, it is a fact that time has left cards specifically designed for DVD performance behind, so I wouldn´t need one. Also, before starting a movie, I always clear the memory from stuff that isn´t essential.
Picture quality is another reason to cry. DVD quality should be especially sharp, but that´s not often the case. It doesn´t make you smile when you can spot color patterns from the screen. I´m wondering some ways to improve this. I believe it´s not the monitors or settings fault, I´ve tried everything. The DVDs themselves are chrystal clean.

Sooo, it´d be interesting to hear your experiences playing with DVD´s, what components are best if you want to get the best out of them etc.

[ 05-14-2003, 08:14 PM: Message edited by: NiceWorg ]

[/)eathKiller]

Just because your computer has a DVD player doesnt mean it's fast, unfortunetly. Especially the earlier models like with 800 Mhx, I think only Macs could sucessfully manage memory routines, perhaps you should try using a differint DVD playing application or not run anything in the background while you watch it ...

[NiceWorg]

Yes, I have noticed that the application matters, but I believe I got the best one (PowerDVD). Forget Media Player, it´s awful. I don't also run anything on backround.. and the driver is 16x speed, the fastest model LG has.

But yeah, you´re still right. Macs win this round.

[Seraph]

You have your DVD drive set up to run in DMA mode right? This tends to be very important when playing DVDs.

[/)eathKiller]

Originally posted by NiceWorg: But yeah, you´re still right. Macs win this round.

Except Bronze-Keyboard Powerbooks with OSX [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[andrewas]

16X DVD driver is worthless if its sharing a channel with an active drive. If that happens, any time the computer wants to read something from the other drive, the IDE interface has to shut down the DVD (and IDE is very inefficient while its doing this), then spin up the other drive, read the data, switch back to DVD which may need spinning up again.

Open up your case and make sure that the DVD drive isnt sharing a cable, if its unavoidable make sure its sharing a cable with a drive that wont be accessed during movie playback. On a standard config that means that it cant share with the drive with the "C" partition. Its usualy safe to share with the CDR, although that will kill your on-the-fly CD-copy rates.