Choppy DVD Playback

[MrMikeL]

Just bought a DVD player for my Gateway 2000 Solo 9300 laptop:

288 MB RAM
PIII 500 MhZ
12 GB HDD
Torisan DRD-U424 (4X playback speed)
PowerDVD v5

I have run through the PowerDVD diagnostics and it all appears to be optimized. Playback is OK but not quite like a regular DVD player - it's a little choppy. So my questions are:

1. What will make DVD playback less choppy with my current setup?
2. Will an 8X DVD drive work better than this 4X drive?
3. Would a PCMCIA hardware decoder card make a difference?

Thanks everyone!

Regards,

-Mike

[muno]

1. Latest and greatest directx/drivers always help
2. Doubt it.
3. Well, of course it would, but is it wise to spend money on something like that, no. DVD playback should be fine on your setup, without a decoder card.

Oh, and make sure dma is enabled on the drive.

[MrMikeL]

OK, really naive question: how do I know if I have the latest DirectX version? An the drive has a genericWindoze driver, but I can't find a driver specific to Torisan.

DMA is enabled.

[muno]

Start->run->dxdiag

I meant display/audio driver, there are no drivers for atapi devices.

[MrMikeL]

Thanks so much. DirectX v8.0, and my video/audio drivers are up-to-date.

Is there a newer DirectX version?

[muno]

dx9.0b is the latest.

[phenious]

In the DVD player settings and options look around for an option that says hardware accelerated. That could help you out a lot

-: phenious :-

[MrMikeL]

I downloaded DirextX 9.0b - not much improvement. But when I put in a diff DVD, it downloaded a DVD player called InterActual Player. This one plays back DVDs better than PowerDVD 5.0.

So I guess the playback software makes a diff.

Thanks one and all for the help. I'm still thinking of getting a combo drive, but this is OK for now.