zaway

I bought the Toshiba slim 8x DVD player that I will be using in my car PC. Now when I play DVDs on it some of them (older ones) work perfectly, others (newer ones) do not. I played around with PowerDVD XP player and saw that the DVDs that do play well only transfer around 3MB/sec of data where as the ones that don't work well (choppy playback) transfer about 6MB/sec.
My question is, is it my Video card that's having issues with alot of data or is it the DVD player not being able to transfer that much. I have a feeling it's the video card beacuse PowerDVD shows the data being transfered but the video is displaying it very choppy.

Did anyone experience this before? any ideas, suggestions?

p.s. I'm waiting on my new Head Unit and then I'll be ready to install my car PC. The Xenarc LCD is awsome too

zaway

ares

iTrader: (2)

I read about another person having trouble with the dvd player skipping, and audio not matching video. what kind of computer are you using, I believe that person had the via9000 but then Im 99% sure that quite a few others on here have the same computer with no such problems...

abz123

Do you have the drive set to DMA?

You can speed up the performance of your DVD drive by changing the setting to DMA. DMA, or direct memory access, is a technique for tranferring data between the main memory and a device without passing through the CPU (central processing unit).

Here's how to change the settings.
-Click on the Start Menu and choose Settings, Control Panels.
-Open the system control panel and click on the Device Manager tab.
-Find the listing for CD-ROM and double-click.
-You should see a box for DMA. Check it.

Some compatibility problems have been noticed due to DMA, though it is rare. If you do notice any problems after making this change, such as your computer crashing more often, uncheck the box.

MannishBoy

iTrader: (1)

Good advice above. I'd also wonder about using too long IDE cables, too if the above advice doesn't help.

Also, what processor are you using? I've wondered about the lower end C3 processors, and if they can keep up with the decoding. I know chazzg has used it, though, so that shouldn't be it.

zaway

Thanks for the help. I don't see DMA settings in under the DVD properties (I know how to turn it on) so I will try through the BIOS eventhough I think it's already on. I do think the problem is with the board's processing power. I'm using the VIA M800 C3 board with 512MB of RAM. I think I'm going to take the DVD drive and hook it up to my desktop PC and see if it does the same thing, if it does than I'll get a new DVD if it doesn't I'll have to get a new video card for my board.

zaway

zaway

OK, I got it working. It is definitly the processing power of the board. What I did was first of all upgraded the on-board video card drivers which helped some. Next I played around with WinXP and turned off all the crazy windows desktop things such as fading of windows and menues, etc. To do that, right click My Computer and select Properties. Next click on the Advanced tab. In there you will see three things, pick Performance Settings. In there you will see some setting, I picked "Adjust for best performance" and it speed up the display alot. I can watch all my DVDs now with no delay at all. I'm sooo excited. I will be adding a 3D card later but for now I'm satisfied.

Thanks for all the help

zaway

ares

iTrader: (2)

hmmm, really, why not get a faster board? you only have one PCI slot, you want to use it to replace something you already should have?

abz123

Also make sure you have hardware acceleration max out.

I have the EPIA 800 and have not had any problems. Definately don't want to do any CAD, 3D games or video editing. Not the fastest, but a good trade-off between performance and cost/size/heat/noise. For DVD, MP3, GPS, and other car related stuff, I've found it more than adequate.

zaway

ares, I'm using this board since it was what I initially planned on using for the same reasons abz123 pointed out and for what I need it to do it works just fine. In a few months I might get the 1GHz EPIA board and they have a MPEG decoder on them but for now it's working fine.

abz123, where do you turn hardware acceleration on? I turned it on through my DVD player but since there is no physical hardware accelerator on this board it doesn't do a whole lot.

I have to continue to tweak things in Windows and I'm sure I'll be able to get some more power out of the board.

zaway