Skip-less DVD solution?

ShaidarHaran

Member
Feb 18, 2001
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Ok, I know this isn't fully-dependant on the video card but not sure where else to post this and get a response.
So here's the situation: I have a stand-alone DVD player (Samsung 611) and it's decent, great image quality and distortion is a rarity however, it does skip occasionally on fast-moving scenes and when loading chapters. Is this normal for non-progressive scan players? I also have a 2x DVD drive in my comp P3 800(Slot1 100fsb retail hsf), 384mb pc100 ram(256mb CL2, 128mb CL3), V3 3000 AGP(166core/166mem, latest X3dfx drivers) using WinDVD and I have yet to see any distortion with this setup but again, slight skipping is visible with my comp. With the stand-alone player the skipping seems much longer than on the comp but I notice the comp skips more often. Again, in comparison the skipping on the comp lasts for much shorter periods of time and is much less noticable than with the sstand-alone player. I am getting a 32mb Radeon DDR (OEM) which can overclock to Radeon 64 speeds (183core/183mem) and supposedly has dvd decoding in hardware (or at least partial decoding). Will the Radeon give me less skipping or am I limited by my older 2x dvd drive with its high seek times (I think between 180-210ms for DVDs). Would a faster DVD drive like a 12x or 16x give me skip-less DVD playback? What is the bottleneck in my system? I guess the overall question is is there any way to get perfect DVD playback without a progressive-scan player?
Thanks in advance.

 

Wag

Diamond Member
Jul 21, 2000
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A faster DVD-Rom will not effect video playback.

With the Radeon you should get smooth playback, if that was the problem to begin with. You have DMA turned on for your drive?
 

ShaidarHaran

Member
Feb 18, 2001
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I just got asked the same question over on another forum where I posted this message. I'm really not sure if I do. How would you check if it's enabled and how would you actually go about enabling it if it's not? My BIOS is a stupid OEM pos (damn you Dell!!!) so I can't really do much from there...
 

Packet

Senior member
Apr 24, 2000
557
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to enable / check DMA

goto

start > settings > control panel > system
then hit the device manager tab
and double click the cd-rom heading

click on your DVD rom and hit properties down at the bottom
hit the settings tab, and there is a check box towards the bottom that says "DMA"

if the box is checked its on, if not check it and reboot
make sure that its checked for your harddrive(s) too.
 

ShaidarHaran

Member
Feb 18, 2001
114
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yep, it's enabled for the dvd drive as well as my hard drive. crap, thought I could get a quick fix for this by enabling dma ;)