flicker DVD.. Old machine ?

[ps]

Hi clever folks;

My better half just bought a Lite-on DVD-rom drive.

Computer: AMD K6 II, 500 Mhz, 300 mb ram.

Graphic card: ATI Rage IIC AGP

Running Windows XP Pro.

DVD bundled software: PowerDVD 4.0

We can easily read data-CD's. For example, the new drive installed the
Powerdvd software without problems.

But when we try so see movies, firstly, Powerdvd crashes, whereas Realplayer
will play the movie.
However: The sound flickers and the picture seems to be one step after the
sound and moving too slowly. Picture quality not really good.
I have tried almost all remedies, such as changing screen resolution, ticked
DMA, etc. but no good. It is impossible to see movies in a satisfactory
way.

I really suspect the PC is too old for this kind of thing.PowerDVD 5.0
manual says it has to be Athon, but this version is 4.0. Do any of you have
good experiences with seeing DVD-movies on AMD K6 II, 500 Mhz, 300 mb ram or
less ? The minimum recommendations seem to be Pentium 166 or higher.


Peter

 

[kony]

Hi clever folks;

My better half just bought a Lite-on DVD-rom drive.

Computer: AMD K6 II, 500 Mhz, 300 mb ram.

Graphic card: ATI Rage IIC AGP

Running Windows XP Pro.

DVD bundled software: PowerDVD 4.0

We can easily read data-CD's. For example, the new drive installed the
Powerdvd software without problems.

But when we try so see movies, firstly, Powerdvd crashes, whereas Realplayer
will play the movie.
However: The sound flickers and the picture seems to be one step after the
sound and moving too slowly. Picture quality not really good.
I have tried almost all remedies, such as changing screen resolution, ticked
DMA, etc. but no good. It is impossible to see movies in a satisfactory
way.

I really suspect the PC is too old for this kind of thing.PowerDVD 5.0
manual says it has to be Athon, but this version is 4.0. Do any of you have
good experiences with seeing DVD-movies on AMD K6 II, 500 Mhz, 300 mb ram or
less ? The minimum recommendations seem to be Pentium 166 or higher.


Peter

WinXP isn't really a good choice for that box, Win98 would run a lot
faster.

Even so, I"m suspecting the video card... ATI made some perfectly adequate
AGP cards for video playback, but the Rage IIc isn't one of them, was
quite slow.

You wrote "ticked DMA"... DMA should always be enabled, except in rare
instances when that causes a problem.

On a well optimized K6-500 machine I've seen DVDs play back fine, though
it was back in the Win98 days, usually using Voodoo3 video cards since the
Super7 motherboards were picky about nVidia video cards at the time (for
example, an nVidia TNT/TNT2 might be a bad choice).

Still, you're right, the machine is marginal for what you're trying to do.
An MPEG decoder card might help, but those are very rare these days, since
any semi-modern system has more than enough horsepower to decode DVDs,
there isn't a market for them anymore. If you really want to spend as
little as possible I'd try to find a used voodoo3 or ATI "Rage Pro Turbo"
or newer video card... don't guarantee it'll work, but it should help a
lot and only cost <$20 these days.

 

[ps]

Thanks a lot, kony !

I happen to have a woodoo card in the drawer, so I will just try that out
before returning the player.

Actually, I don't agree with you about Windows XP and my old computer.
Changing from 98 to XP has been the greatest aliviation for us since the
invention of the wheel...

Instead of writing "ticked DMA", I should have written "doubled checked that
DMA was ticked", which I did.

Thanks a lot for a clear and positive answer.

Peter

 

[~misfit~]

Thanks a lot, kony !

I happen to have a woodoo card in the drawer, so I will just try that
out before returning the player.

Actually, I don't agree with you about Windows XP and my old computer.
Changing from 98 to XP has been the greatest aliviation for us since
the invention of the wheel...

Instead of writing "ticked DMA", I should have written "doubled
checked that DMA was ticked", which I did.

Thanks a lot for a clear and positive answer.

Also it could be a combination of the software and the speed of the IDE bus.
Some proggies read ahead from the drive and cache it in RAM. others try to
read direct. I found this with DivX's on an older machine. Using my DivX
playing program it stuttered and jerked really badly and appeared to be
reading directly from the drive (ATA33 bus) then decoding in realtime. Using
Windows Media Player however it was smooth as silk (Same codec, same drive)
and the drive light didn't 'flash' as much, it seemed to read/decode in
bursts. I think this could also apply to DVD playback. Changing the program
I used to watch it made it go from totally un-watchable to perfectly fine.