poor dvd playback

[PYe]

When ever i try to play dvd films on my computer i get jittery playback. For a while it plays fine and jitters every so often and then it finally just stops and crashes the program im playing it in.

My hardware specs are pretty healthy so i assume there must be some kind of software problem. Ive tried a few different programs on a few differnet films but nothing seems to work properly.

programs tried:

power dvd
real one player
windows media

Does anyone have any ideas on what cud be causin this?

[reboot]

When you say "dvd films", do you mean an actual DVD disk, or something you downloaded?
If it's downloaded, what format is it in?
If it's an .avi do you have the proper audio and video codecs to play it?

[PYe]

I mean real DVDs, playing straight off the original disc.
The discs are in perfect condition, not scratched at all.

[reboot]

Get rid of Real one.
Reinstall PowerDVD over top of itself.
Jittery playback is either a stuttering computer, because it's very busy doing something else in the background, a dirty DVD player, or a corrupt/dirty DVD disk.
Not sure if PowerDVD has these options, but you can look:
Process priority.
Allocated RAM.
You can set the process priority by hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL, the processes tab, find the player, right click and change the priority. Set it higher.
The ram you have...is that SDRAM or DDR?

[PYe]

The RAM i have is SD but memory isnt the problem ive run power dvd with the task manager running to see if anything is using more memory or cpu power but nothing is...all that happens is the CPU usage falls away to nothing when the jittering happens while available memory and applications running etc stays the same.
So i guess the DVD drive must be the problem as the disks are clean, although running cds in that drive is fine.
I wud replace the drive but if i do and thats not the problem it's too big a waste of money and effort, since i am but a poor student.

i guess ill have to wait until i go home in 3 months to watch my DVDs.

Thanks for your help.

[andyms18a]

open device manager find the entry for ide controla and right click the controla that the dvd drive is on select properties then advanced setings is the drive set to dma ?

[reboot]

Ok, you've obviously done some homework. If the CPU usage drops to nil during the jitters, then it's the DVD drive not reading the disk, filling the buffer and putting it on the screen.
Have you messed around with video drivers at all? You might simply try blowing out the DVD player with compressed air.
Because of the amount of data on a DVD, versus a CDR, the drive may be able to handle CDR easily, but if the head alignment is out even slightly, it won't read DVD's properly any more.

[PYe]

reboot,
I havent messed around with the video drivers, i havent got the latest catalyst so i cud update that i guess. But as you said it looks like the drive is the problem...i have also noticed it has become noisier when first reading the disc sometimes, again this doesnt apply to CDs. I dont have compressed air easily to hand so i cant try that.

andyms18a,
will the DVD be primary or secondary IDE? i cant tell what it is.
anyway Device 0 and 1 on the primary IDE both are set to ultra DMA 5. and the the secondary device 0 is multiword DMA 2 and device 1 is "not available".

Thanks for your help guys...tho its looking like it aint a fixable problem with replacing the drive.

[reboot]

All your current drives are set to DMA, so that's not the problem, unless you want to disable it temporarily and try that.