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PII-300 Laptop, 96MB RAM, Win2K - can it play DVDs?

SearchMaster

SearchMaster

Diamond Member
I have an old IBM 600E laptop with PII-300 and 96MB RAM. My wife is going on a trip and would like to have a portable DVD player to entertain the kids. However, if the laptop can handle it, I'd rather put $100 or less into a DVD player for it rather than spend $400+ for a DVD player. Any ideas about whether this setup can handle playing DVDs reasonably well? I don't care if it skips a couple of frames per second because the kids (ages 2 and 4) wouldn't notice. But if it's choppy beyond reason, then it's a waste of effort.

Is there any other test I can try? If I use PowerDVD to play SVCDs, is that a good preview, or is the much lower bitrate of the SVCDs not nearly the challenge of a DVD?
 
If it was an internal DVD then yes, it would work. I have a 600 with an internal DVD player and it works fine as long as all I do is play the dvd and not multitask. External? Very doubtful as the 600 only has usb 1 and that would real slow when paired up with a 300mhz processor.
 
I remember my PII 400 w/ 256 MB of ram had slight issues (some scenes were not smooth) though worked ok. Try it out, but I'd be surprised if it ran well.
 
WalFart has portable DVD players (Audiovox I think) for $169. Then you can still play Starcraft while the kiddies watch a movie. 😉
 
External? Very doubtful
Click to expand...
I concord! External DVD drives on Laptop tend to use CPU Interrupt to access CD/DVD.
Since your PII300 is already below recommendation, an external wouldn't do.
However, you maybe able to "RIP" the DVD into your Hardrive (takes about 4.2G) first.

 
Originally posted by: Peter007
External? Very doubtful
Click to expand...
I concord! External DVD drives on Laptop tend to use CPU Interrupt to access CD/DVD.
Since your PII300 is already below recommendation, an external wouldn't do.
However, you maybe able to "RIP" the DVD into your Hardrive (takes about 4.2G) first.
Click to expand...

I think you mean 'concur' 😉
 
I got DVD playback very smooth on a P2 266 with 64MB ram back in the day. That was under Win98 with no other unneeded processes running and just using a soft DVD palyer. This was a desktop PC mind you but a 300MHz laptop with a similar setup should work
 
You can buy a DVD drive that replaces the CD-R duilt in.
But the speed of the computer is too slow. I've got a
friend that thinks his Laptop makes a good DVD movie
watcher. However, the power never lasts long enough
to finish a 2hour movie..sigh

 
Thanks for all the useful information. I would be looking at getting an internal drive. I don't have enough HD space on this thing for a full rip; heck, I hardly have space for two SVCDs. Rather than looking at a 4 inch portable model, I would do what I do now - convert to Pocket Divx and play the movies on the Axim. We have enough CF space for about 7 hours of video I think. The screen in landscape mode isn't much smaller than the 4in portable DVD player. I'm not looking to spend much money on this, and the DVD was attractive because the CD doesn't work on this any more (!).

It sounds like it would be hit or miss. It probably would be smooth enough for the kids (remember, it only has to please a 4 year old, and not give a theatrical experience), but it may not be worth taking the chance. I've lived without a DVD on this thing for a long while, and I'll probably retire the old girl without one in the future.
 
DVD Playback on my mums PII300mhz + 192MB Ram + 4mb PCI Graphics + PowerDVD XP v4 is very smooth, I don't see why it shouldn't work okay on your laptop...the graphics do have Hardware DVD onboard though...something like an ATI RAge II.

Jamie
 
I played DVD's on my old laptop (PII 366, 192mb RAM, 2mb Vid), playd fine.....i dont know if your using an external drive, it'll probably be choppier than the water in "the perfect storm".
 
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