dvd playback on pc

[defcombeta]

ok this is something i have noticed of late. i am running on win xp with over half a gig of ram etc. now i play my dvd in power DVD and the film plays perfect not a skip etc, even if there is a light mark on the disc. now if i go into media player 9 which use the same dvd codec supplied by power DVD the film has some frame drop in one or two places, i dont own a normal dvd player for my tv so i cant check weither the discs do this on a regular setup.

reason why this bugs me is i got return of the king today and it plays perfect bar one small frame drop at the start when gollem states he forgot even his name and it fades to black. now the disc is second hand ( think less than half price) and has one light mark but is so faint you have to strain your eyes to see it. do dvd have to be in mint for media player to work well with them. im not worried too much since power dvd is a perfect playback, it just annoys the hell out of me that two programs provide different results for the same function.

is it normal for media player to mess things up, perhaps in the way it control the devices in the pc. anyone else come accross this problem.

[Ryan Gutierrez]

What type of Vid Card are you using on your computer, also, what is the speed on the DVD-ROM?

[defcombeta]

ok its a geforce 4 4600 ti multithread edition. the dvd is x16 speed as far as i know when i bought it using the lastest stable drivers.

j

[s/LaSH]

Also, how fast is your CPU? That might make a difference - a lot of video performance comes from hardware-specific functions and CPU time (frex, I've heard that video filters in Sasami take up perhaps 100MHz of CPU speed each, and having a couple on is fairly normal).

That said, Media Player is not a devoted DVD playback system. It is set up to do many, many things, but it does it at a cost of not doing them quite as well as other programs. Think of it this way: When the bell rings, Messenger A runs to the depot and brings the package back home. But Messenger B runs to the manager's office, asks which depot to go to, and then does the job. It's probably several blocks to the depots, while the manager is just next door - but that is extra time, no matter how insignificant, and someone may notice.

Or so my understanding of the matter goes. It may be imperfect, but that's what I reckon.

My solution? Use this powerDVD program over MP9. See if you can set powerDVD as your default DVD autoplayer, or, failing that, make an easy-access shortcut somewhere.

[defcombeta]

my cpu is the first hyperthread version at 2.95 gig pentium four ( also called 3 gig at times) it just bugs me that the same codec and machine parts give different results. part of me is starting to think it may be due to marks on the disc but i tried a sample promo disc i got in a store for free and scratched it up and it played back perfect.