Minimum requirements for a dvd rom?

Laird · Post by **Laird** » 2003-10-20 02:20pm

Anyways my neighbour went out and bought some no name brand dvd rom so he can watch movies(His sanyo standalone died on him.)

His aged computer is an amd K6 550mhz,384mb ram,32mb rage fury card by ati.

I installed it for him in the system,Installed win dvd etc.. everything looks fine.

I pop in a dvd(Predator 1) and it lags,It's like watching slow motion video,He starts yelling "You broke it,you installed it wrong!",I assured him I didn't,Took it upstairs and popped it in my desktop(800mhz etc..) it worked fine.

He is using XP pro,Anyone know a way to Unlag the movie stream?

Both the drive and dvd were tested on my own system afterwards,I tried three more seperate ones to make sure.

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2003-10-20 02:51pm

Depends, with an dedicated mpeg card like Real Magic it shold run just fine. My old 400Mhz PIII did.

WO mpeg card I have no idea but my current computer runs dvd's just fine 1800Mhz PIV

Laird · Post by **Laird** » 2003-10-20 03:11pm

Faram wrote:Depends, with an dedicated mpeg card like Real Magic it shold run just fine. My old 400Mhz PIII did.

WO mpeg card I have no idea but my current computer runs dvd's just fine 1800Mhz PIV

It lacks the mpeg decoder card,I should specified what were the min requirements for software decoding of a dvd.(Aka watching it.)

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-10-20 04:03pm

My Pentium 2 350 MHz did software DVD playback just fine.

Does he have DMA enabled on the IDE channel the DVD drive is plugged into? That'll make a difference.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-10-20 04:52pm

If he's using the Intermedia player, that one sucks ass and is slow as hell.

Make sure DMA mode is enabled.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-10-20 06:54pm

Minimum requirement is a 333MHz chip IIRC. Thats mainly for the software. I've also noticed that MP9 lags pretty bad when playing DVDs as well while PowerDVD runs like a champ. (they both use the same decoder since MP9 requires the installation of third-party decoding software to play DVDs)

Post by **Beowulf** » 2003-10-20 06:58pm

His computer should be fine for running DVDs. Try a different player.

EmperorMing · Post by **EmperorMing** » 2003-10-21 01:33am

And on another note the ATI vid cards are supposed to be pretty good for DVD playback in software mode.

The Kernel · Post by **The Kernel** » 2003-10-21 02:25am

Guys, this is a K6 processor that has a severely neutered FPU which makes DVD playback calculations difficult. I would play around with some different players, but a hardware DVD decoder is probably the best bet in this system. You can usually find the Sigma Decoder on ebay for around $20.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-10-21 03:09am

EmperorMing wrote:And on another note the ATI vid cards are supposed to be pretty good for DVD playback in software mode.

Recently, that is.

You're talking about a 32MB Rage Fury here, which IIRC is from about 1999 or so. At that point, ATI was still trying to find their own ass with a roadmap when it came to software; their DVD players were just completely borked and their drivers had a snowball's chance in hell of working properly.

Hethrir · Post by **Hethrir** » 2003-10-21 09:59am

My old celery 400 did a fine job of it with a GeForce2 MX in it. Definately the K6-2....

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2003-10-21 10:04am

The Kernel wrote:Guys, this is a K6 processor that has a severely neutered FPU which makes DVD playback calculations difficult. I would play around with some different players, but a hardware DVD decoder is probably the best bet in this system. You can usually find the Sigma Decoder on ebay for around $20.

The K6-III had a weak FPU, but not that weak, IIRC.

Vertigo1 · Post by **Vertigo1** » 2003-10-21 04:59pm

The Kernel wrote:Guys, this is a K6 processor that has a severely neutered FPU which makes DVD playback calculations difficult. I would play around with some different players, but a hardware DVD decoder is probably the best bet in this system. You can usually find the Sigma Decoder on ebay for around $20.

Umm....if Windows 2000 SP3 can run on a K6-2 450 with a mere 128MB of RAM with zero slowdowns (fresh install, so I never killed any services), I think it can handle software decoding of a DVD.....

Vendetta · Post by **Vendetta** » 2003-10-21 05:38pm

Laird wrote:
I pop in a dvd(Predator 1) and it lags,It's like watching slow motion video,He starts yelling "You broke it,you installed it wrong!",I assured him I didn't,Took it upstairs and popped it in my desktop(800mhz etc..) it worked fine.

He is using XP pro,Anyone know a way to Unlag the movie stream?

Make sure DMA is enabled on the DVD drive.

Go to Device Mangler, open up the properties for the appropriate IDE controller, hit the Advanced page, and make sure the transfer mode is "DMA if Available"

DVD drives operating in PIO mode are a common cause of stuttering playback

(If the drive won't change to a DMA mode in the Current Transfer Mode box, then uninstall the drive and controller and reboot the system, then try it)

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Minimum requirements for a dvd rom?

Minimum requirements for a dvd rom?

Re: Minimum requirements for a dvd rom?