Stuttering DVD Playback

[Alterscape]

Hey all,
I'm trying to troubleshoot a friend's DVD playback problems. His box is homebuilt, an AthlonXP 2100+ w/512mb DDR (PC2700 I think, I'm not 100% sure, its about that vintage). A couple of months ago, his DVD player (Cyberlink DVD player) started stuttering while playing back DVDs. He wanted a DVD burner anyway, so he went out and bought a double-layer burner. DVD playback improved, but still skips a bit. Trying it with Windows Media was even worse.

I've never dealt with a problem like this before, so I'm not sure where to turn. We've already run spybot, adaware, and symantec AV, so I'm fairly sure it isn't malware taxing system resources.

Any thoughts?

[edit] I remember that we had to change the IDE channel from DMA to PIO mode to get the new drive to read. I've read that PIO can be too slow for DVD playback, but the problem was happening with the old drive in DMA mode, so.. I'm not sure if that's at all relevant.[/edit]

Ryan

 

[Stinger1]

I've experienced the same thing and found that the problem went away when I reduced the speed at which the DVD was burned, ie, instead of trying 16x, I dropped it to 4x. There isn't very much additional time spent producing the DVD and I have smooth playing DVDs.


Is this problem only on your burned DVDs, or on factory DVDs too??

 

[Alterscape]

The problem was with all DVDs. As far as I know he never actually tried any burned DVDs.

We found that unplugging the secondary device (a CD burner) made the DVD drive stop skipping. I'm guessing it has something to do with the IDE cable that he's using being pretty ancient, and 40-pin. We ordered a new 80-pin cable today..