picture/audio problems playing DVD

L

lb_uk

New Member
Have a machine a home that came with Windows ME installed (bit old then) and worked fine then 18 months ago I bought the XP home upgrade.
Most software works fine but the CD burner/DVD rom (Matshita) is still giving problems. It plays and burns audio disks fine but on the rare occasion when I try to play a dvd the audio and picture are jumpy (sort of quick stop/start)
I have tried media player 10, PowerDVD and Real player with the same result. It has been suggested that this could this be a driver problem or a codec? problem. limited info, but any suggestions to solve it would be welcome
Thanks
 
Thankyou for the reply, but that appears a bit complicated for an old'un like me (when I was 21 I have a cassette player that looked like a brick with 5 buttons on the front).
Looked at your website as suggested but couldn't get the (click "here")advice link to work.
Thanks anyway
 
How old is the hardware? I sounds like the hardware is working too hard. If you were running ME, windows XP would be a little bit too much for the compter unless you upgraded the memory.
 
Thanks for the advice, I'll check the memory etc tonight although I think it has 128mb RAM, not sure about the processor.
I didn't use it very often to play dvds but I'm sure it played them ok,even after the XP upgrade. The only major difference since then would be software updates like Windows SP2.
As a test I opened task manager and then put in a dvd, the CPU usage immediately went from 3% to 100% and stayed there.?
 
Now I'm making progress, upgraded the memery from 128Mb to 576Mb and the dvd appears to run ok. However the sound is still jumpy and out of sync.
This happens with CD's as well so I suspect a problem with the sound card.
Any suggestion to check this would be appreciated.
Thanks
 
Spoke to soon, dvd tries to play but both picture and sound are still jumpy and the CPU is maxed out. I have a copy of "Sherlock" that will list all the codecs on the machine and I can compare this to your list.
Should I and how do I delete any old or not required codecs. I'm in the dark on this. Any help, much appreciated
 
Correct me if i'm wrong but i think that memory upgrades (even if there are several modules) should only be done like the following: 128Mb RAM, 256Mb RAM, 512Mb RAM etc... Modules of different "capacities" can cause problems when mixed and matched.
Older motherboards with intergrated graphics and sound may also find it hard to keep up & play DVDs.
 
Hi Dan, I originally had 2 x 64Mb and the computer store that upgraded and tested it said it worked fine with 1 x 64Mb and 1 x 512Mb. The problem with DVD playing was there before the upgrade which I did as it was a suggestion on this forum, I need to find out why the CPU is maxed out, my laptop has about the same processor speed with 256Mb and plays DVDs fine so I think it must be a software/codec conflict although as you have gathered I'm not an expert.
Thanks anyway
 
lol i dont have alot of expertese in dvd drives either but ive been trying to get mine working so i leaned a bit. yeah powerdvd is what i have too, and i couldnt get my dvds to work on my pc, but then i saw somewhere on windows help that you need a dvd decoder or you wont be able to watch dvds and one of the programs it mentioned was powerdvd so i reinstalled it (i had taken it off too bc i was like ugh who needs another program to watch dvds on when i have wmp) and then wmp still wouldnt work but i could watch the movies using power dvd :).

did you try to install powerdvd and try watching your dvd from there yet?
 
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