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DVD software for an old laptop?

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  • DVD software for an old laptop?

    SO I have a Dell Latitude P3 700Mhz with 256MB of ram with ATI Rage Mobility video. Both VLC and Media Player Classic play dvd's extremely choppily. Anyone have any suggestions on a dvd player that would work with this beast? I can't increase the ram it has the maximum it can ever have and I already put a 30GB drive in it. Even if you know PowerDVD 3.0 would be the best choice.

    I'm lending it to a friend who needs entertainment for 6 weeks while out for school.

    Thanks
    Wikipedia and Google.... the needles to my tangent habit.
    ________________________________________________

    That special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, Or maybe below the cockles, Maybe in the sub-cockle area, Maybe in the liver, Maybe in the kidneys, Maybe even in the colon, We don't know.

  • #2
    VLC should be able to do it - when I was trying it on dual p2 266, it wasn't fluent, but also I would not call it extremely choppy. Did you check if UltraDMA is turned on for DVD drive? Or perhaps there's something wrong with GFX drivers/no overlay?

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    • #3
      dma is turned on for the dvd and the hd. Overlay is fine. Updated both audio and video drivers with no improvement.
      Wikipedia and Google.... the needles to my tangent habit.
      ________________________________________________

      That special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, Or maybe below the cockles, Maybe in the sub-cockle area, Maybe in the liver, Maybe in the kidneys, Maybe even in the colon, We don't know.

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      • #4
        hrm... video ram is dedicated but only 4mb...
        Wikipedia and Google.... the needles to my tangent habit.
        ________________________________________________

        That special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, Or maybe below the cockles, Maybe in the sub-cockle area, Maybe in the liver, Maybe in the kidneys, Maybe even in the colon, We don't know.

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        • #5
          Perhaps small LiveCD distros meant for movie playback are worth checking? (such as http://geexbox.org/en/index.html ). Not very elegant solution, but if it'll work then there won't be much more hassle involved...

          edit: 4mb of VRAM would be too small amount to actually use overlay, I think...

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          • #6
            Yeah, that's not enough video RAM to do things well. Before you said that, I was wondering if the DVD was working in DMA or not. Maybe rip the DVD to the hard drive to see if that changes anything...

            but it's probably your lack of video RAM.
            Gigabyte P35-DS3L with a Q6600, 2GB Kingston HyperX (after *3* bad pairs of Crucial Ballistix 1066), Galaxy 8800GT 512MB, SB X-Fi, some drives, and a Dell 2005fpw. Running WinXP.

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            • #7
              isn't there some cacheing features/options in VLC/media player?
              Better to let one think you are a fool, than speak and prove it


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              • #8
                Haven't found the caching but I found the ability in both progs to give them higher than normal priority. It helped some with MPC but makes things pretty smooth in VLC. However, since i started this thread the audio on the computer isn't working for anything. It was glitchy before but not sure what's going on with it now....
                Wikipedia and Google.... the needles to my tangent habit.
                ________________________________________________

                That special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts, Or maybe below the cockles, Maybe in the sub-cockle area, Maybe in the liver, Maybe in the kidneys, Maybe even in the colon, We don't know.

                Comment


                • #9
                  you might want to check TCPMP ( http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/ ) as it was always the fastest with low memory comsumption, but i'm not sure at the moment if it is able to play DVD's from the dvd drive ...

                  R.
                  "Women don't want to hear a man's opinion, they just want to hear their opinion in a deeper voice."

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                  • #10
                    Perhaps an old version of some dvd-playback software can better cope with it?

                    Here is an archive that hosts older versions of softwares:




                    Jörg
                    pixar
                    Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die tomorrow. (James Dean)

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