DVD playback probs

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Big G

Guest
Had an ongoing problem, and i hope someone can help.

I'm currently running a soundblaster Live! (original one) with a daughter card with the digital ins and outs.

My problem is that the SPDIF out is connected to the coax in on my external DTS/Dolby Digital decoder which works an absolute treat. The only problem is that sometimes i get a little "blip" in sound where the DVD playback seems to lag or drop a couple of frames.

Edit: if i run the DVD in a window and click around the desktop as to take away CPU time from any hardware, this blipping seems synchronous with menus opening, hard disk activity etc.

The thing is, when the DVD playback lags, the bitstream to the decoder stops momentarily so the 5.1 sound disappears for a split second, but long enough for my external decoder to think there is no sound anymore. When the "lag" of the DVD fixes itself (we are only talking about a fraction of a second, but enough to stall the sound/video), the bitstream returns.

Can anyone suggest how to smooth out DVD playback, or force no frames to drop from playback? Are there any programmes or utilities for this, or to cache the playback?

I've tried many things to troubleshoot this. Here are some:

1. Upgraded my DVD drive to an LG 8161B (16x DVD playback supporting ~20 Mbytes per sec), i still get a "blip" every now and then. The 4x Hitatchi i had before was really jumpy.

2. Tried three different DVD software playback programmes, including windows media player 9, PowerDVD and nvDVD (nvDVD being the best of all three, PowerDVD is very jumpy and media player aing much better)

3. Tried killing off all the tasks in windows i don't need (such as antivirus, msn messenger, disabling the LAN connection, steam)

4. Tried a programme called DVDidle, that didn't help at all.

5. Newest soundcard drivers for the SBLive!

My (relevant) spec is:

Windows XP Pro SP1
Asus A7V266 (the ide bus supports ATA100)
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ clocked to 2700+
512 Mb RAM
Soundblaster Live!
Western Digital Caviar 120Gb on the primary IDE controller
LG 8161B 16x DVD master on secondary controller
Teac 48x40x16 CD-RW slave on secondary controller

Running latest 4in1's (i thought it might be a bus mastering problem)
Latest detonators

Bah, someone help or throw ideas :(

G
 
C

Ch3tan

Guest
I remmeber reading about this problem here before, do a search, I am sure a solution was found last time.
 
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Ulysses777

Guest
I've found another thread about this, but there's no replies.

Also, the search function on here is useless - it ignores any search terms less than four letters long, so it ignores DVD, unless you use exact phrase :(
 

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