I saw a thread posted on the "Rage 3D" forums about this too. It seems a few unlucky people, me included, are having problems playing DVD's with the Radeon 8500.
I use Power DVD 4, and am using the "7206" drivers under Win 98.
I have the latest versions of Direct X, am using the Via 4.36a drivers.
I have an Abit Kt7a Raid motherboard running a 1.4 T-Bird.
In the "Rage 3D " thread, no one had found a solution.
I have to admit I'm a bit ticked off. ATI is supposedly has "Industry leading DVD playback" (according to their specs). If this is "industry leading" , I dread to imagine what the other cards are like, because so far , the DVD playback sucks. And the supposed great playback was one reason I chose ATI this time over Nvidia.
I'm hoping someone on the "Anandtech" forum will come thru with a solution.
Thanks.
