Could use help picking DVD drive.

[MixDJ]

I recently traded for a DVD drive and have been having issues with choppy video and poor performance (the cd sometimes stops spinning, stutters, and then continues).

I want to go ahead and do something about this. What should I do? Should I get a Hollywood decoder card? OR, should I get a newer 16x/48x rom?

I am totally new to DVD and the issues it presents, so I'm not sure what to do, which is where you come in.

What drive would you recommend if I were to buy one? I'd love to have a player that doesn't stop 3 or 4 times during the movie and stutters.

I most definitely could use your help. LMK

 

[acejj26]

there are only 2 manufacturers of DVD drives in my mind.....pioneer and toshiba....i've used both, and they both make fantastic drives. i've had 2 defective samsung drives, and my friend has had 2 defective lite-on drives. i'd stick with pioneer and toshiba

 

[MixDJ]

I was close to buying a Samsung too! I dunno, it looks good, because it's 16x/48x and is about $44 on Pricewatch. Some Pioneers aren't bad either, but I don't want to put up with the skip and stuttering anymore. I just hope if I dish out the money, I won't have the problems anymore.

 

[jj1492]

Here's another vote for Pioneer and Toshiba. Pioneer slot-fed drives are niiiiiiiiiiice.

 

[Oyeve]

Antother vote for Pioneer and Toshiba. Stay AWAY from creaative labs drives. They are over-priced junk, IMO. You may want to check to see if you have DMA enabled for that drive. That may be why its stuttering.

 

[MixDJ]

I take it that's in the bios? (the DMA setting). Also, the odd thing is, when I boot, it tries to install hardware and asks for drivers. (WinXP) I never needed drivers for any other drives before. I have no idea what's going on with it, as I've never seen it happen before.

 

[Ausm]

<< there are only 2 manufacturers of DVD drives in my mind.....pioneer and toshiba....i've used both, and they both make fantastic drives. i've had 2 defective samsung drives, and my friend has had 2 defective lite-on drives. i'd stick with pioneer and toshiba >>



I agree


Ausm

 

[SCSIfreek]

got a lite-on from dell for 39.00 shipped very cheap dvd-drive. I treat it as a cheap CD rom drive hehehe...


--Scsi

 

[MixDJ]

I went into the bios looking for a UDMA setting and low and behold, I've encountered ANOTHER problem. Now it won't boot up, and says Verifying DMI Pool Settings and it hangs. Gah. I'm looking up stuff, but no luck atm. This is yet another issue I have NEVER encountered. Gah, back to newbie status for me!

 

[Suki]

try removing the drive from the device manager and let your os reinstall it, then reboot . It fixed my problems before when it stop recognizing my dvd.

 

[inqztive]

Lite-on drives are exceptionally good. i use them myself and a few friends of mine too. No one has problem. if your friend has problem with Lit-on then it's his bad luck. i am sure there are people around here who has problem with toshiba and Pioneer too (They are very good brands too by the way). Every brand has a failure rate. Lite on has the extra advantage of fastest audio ripping and plays DVDs like charm even if the disc is of very poor quality.

 

[ojai00]

<< Here's another vote for Pioneer and Toshiba. Pioneer slot-fed drives are niiiiiiiiiiice. >>



I have a Pioneer slot DVD drive and it's been great for me so far. I had that exact same problem as you before and I realized that it was because the drive cannot be in DMA mode. If you go into your Control Panel and go to System, open the IDE controllers, open the Secondary IDE controller (if that's what you have your drive under) and change Device 0 (assuming that your drive is the master on that controller) to PIO mode. That should fix your problems. I realized that after I formatted my computer (IDIOT!! (me, not you) ). Anyway, hope this helps.

 

[MixDJ]

I'm back and I am gonna look at it again. It hangs in the boot sequence, so I can't go into my device manager. What I did being the genius that I'm not, is I set the settings back to default and that's when it began. Now the main drive, which is a 6 gig, shows up as a 445 or something in LBA mode. It won't boot in LBA or Normal, or Large, ack! Heh, a bit on the aggravating side, but I'm pretty sure I'll get it sooner or later.

 

[Mavrick007]

What are your computer specs? How fast of a cpu, etc? It could be because you have a problem cause of DMA or cause the cpu is doing all of the work. In which case you would benefit from a hardware accelerator vid card or a Hollywood Plus card. I don't think you should worry about buying a new dvd drive cause they aren't going to work any better than the one you have now(unless there's a defect with the present one or if it's dirty) since most dvd drives play at 1-2x dvd.

 

[MixDJ]

A buddy of mine is willing to sell me his Hollywood Decoder card, so I can get that if I need it. In fact, I had thought of that previously. I still have to get my pc back up before I think about that however .

 

[Trader05]

I just purchased a 16x Toshiba, $50 from zeehoo.com. But the shipping is pretty hefty, i purchased a cdrw too. The reason i picked this drive to the Pioneer was that, right now i have a Toshiba 48x cdrom drive, it reads everything, silent, and fast. Never had any experience with a pioneer drive tho, but i heard that they are loud, but that's from a while ago, they might have fixed this problem.

 

[toant103]

Pioneer slot loading 16x

 

[MixDJ]

Formatting this pos, will try the UDMA trick in XP in about an hour or two, right before WWF Raw.

 

[Zukatah]

I'm using a LG 16X DVD and I can say it's nice, quiet and plays everything I throw at it. Much better than the old Asus 50X CD-ROM I was using before...

Pioneer's slot load are somewhat noisy so you should be careful with that. Aopen has received good reviews too...

 

[MixDJ]

Just in case you guys were wondering what was wrong with the pc when it went down. The master boot record was all messed up. I had to repair it. Fixed and back up. I still need to figure out a way to get the DVD to stop accessing and stuttering in spots. It does it in almost all of the movies so either I do need the Hollywood Decoder, or a new Toshiba or Pioneer.