GF2 MX, not good enough for playing DVD's?

[Wega!]

I just borrowed a DVD player from a friend. It's an old Toshiba (read x4.8). I plugged it into my computer and slapped The Mummy Returns in the player. At first everything looked fine, but after some time I noticed that the movie wasn't running smooth :I'm totally newbie when it comes to DVD's, but I can't see why the DVD shouldn't be playing smooth on my setup.
Is it my Old GeForce that's to slow? Or maybe the DVD player is to slow?
Please help me.....
Thanks.

[moonunit]

I've been dabbling in that field recently. I am told you can watch DVDs with a 4Mb video card (any type) and 500MHz processor... so we have more than enough grunt for the job. GF2 is overkill in any case.

I watched two films recently, one played jerky, the other was fine. That was with a 10-speed DVD so I guess we're up against something a bit more fundamental to computer + DVD. System monitor showed the processor wasn't working too hard either (40%).

What software player are you using?
Also, check you're not stretching the image to an enormous resolution (like 1600x1200). Finally, try a different movie.

[Wega!]

Originally posted by moonunit
I've been dabbling in that field recently. I am told you can watch DVDs with a 4Mb video card (any type) and 500MHz processor... so we have more than enough grunt for the job. GF2 is overkill in any case.

I watched two films recently, one played jerky, the other was fine. That was with a 10-speed DVD so I guess we're up against something a bit more fundamental to computer + DVD. System monitor showed the processor wasn't working too hard either (40%).

What software player are you using?
Also, check you're not stretching the image to an enormous resolution (like 1600x1200). Finally, try a different movie.

I'm using Asus DVD player. I'll take a look on the how much the CPU is working later. My resolution is 1152x864, is that too high?
I'll also try to get my hands on another DVD, to see if that helps.

[moonunit]

Might help if you force it to 800x600, but I didn't notice any real difference between that and 1200x1024 (monitor doesn't go any higher :( ).

The official blurb says movies are played at 740x400 or something, so it might be working double-time to scale it up.

Check the Asus player for a hardware acceleration option too. <Shudder> It might be mentioned in the on-line help somewhere.

I didn't get a player with my videocard. Chaintech only shipped with Nvidia reference drivers too. Cheapskates. PowerDVD does the job now, but has only given me grief. Don't waste any money, stick with the Asus.

[mark]

look into enabling DMA for the DVD rom,
power dvd helps you do it (select system diagnostics)


**NOTE, make sure the drive, MB will take DMA, and look for updated drivers**
good luck,
mark

[lonewolf1983]

make sure DMA is enabled
the geforce 2mx doesnt have hardware support for dvd decoding
however your system should be able to handle playback easily

dvd movies are only read at 1x so that wont be a problem
check it out with another dvd movie and see

[mark]

The GF2 MX and many of the other video cards have DVD hardware support. Most of the time the hardware decoder is built right on board. just beacause a videocard doesn't have a decoder board separate doesn't mean it doesn't support dvd playback.

And you are way off on the read speeds
DVDs are read faster on the outer parts or tracks.
And just b/c a DVD-ROM might be rated a 16x (like mine) it's not going to read a whole dvd at that speed, and maybe not even come close.
I think the highest I have seen mine go was 11.87x

here is a screen shot of dvd speed 99, the dvd was Deuce Bigalow Male Gigolo (I just picked it up b/c it was close);

[vanibanez]

I had the same problem I fixed it by putting the dvd player on an ide cable by iyself,apparently it didn't like sharing, but it works great now.

[Monaco]

well looks like everybody beat me to the good suggestions!:) All I can say is that I notice a very sizable difference in quality between different DVDs, sometimes a disc is just recorded poorly, like the compressionist did a really bad transfer job.

so yah, enable DMA transfers on the DVD and DVD drives both. Make 100% nothing at all is running besides windows and the DVD player. Flip back to 16-bit desktop color and see of that does anything. And change to a lower res, that can't hurt. Even at 800x600 the DVD player prog will have to do some scaling.

I know you have the juice; I had super smooth playback on a 300A and GF2MX based machine. It's gotta be some setting somewhere. I hope you get it working man!! I love watching movies on my PC:)

[lonewolf1983]

the rating that your dvd drive has is the maximum tranfer speed
this is at the outer edge of the disc
however all dvd movies are read at 1x for playback
so it doesnt matter about the speed of your drive in this case
:)

[Wega!]

Thanks for all your suggestions! I'll try them ASAP. I'm moving at the moment, so I don't got much spare time...
Thanks again. :beer: