Help with DVD rom; skipping during movie

Whenever I load a dvd after it starts playing it gets really choppy and the video and sound skips. I don't know if it's a driver or player problem. I updated DirectX and that says their are some *.vxd files that aren't certified by Microsoft (whatever that means). The files are present on the system and DirectX seems to be able to use them because the Diag.exe test program says everything is working properly. By the way the DVD player I'm running is ATI. That might be the problem right there, but I don't know. Can anyone help or give me some pointers on this software issue.

Is DMA enabled for the DVD drive?

Are there any programs running in the background?

Are you using the latest ATI drivers, DVD player, and Multimedia center?

Have you installed the Digital Video update for DirectX? It's called the Video Capture update now, but you should still install it. Microsoft's DirectX Site

Agreed!

Also, download and install the latest updates for the motherboard's chipset.

Also what are you using for a decompressor? Hardware or Software (ie - does your video card support DVD playback, do you have a DVD daughter card - ie. creative dvd kit, or do you use the machine power and a software player for playbeck)? If you are using hardware - check for a firmware upgrade from the manufacturer - if it is software - what are the details of the machine? CPU, RAM, HDD (Total and free) and what software are you using?

If using software decoding, unfortunately this isn't a patch on hardware. If using ATI DVD software this is better than most, but still pretty poor compared to hardware...

There are various tweaks you can do to try to improve it (the DMA thing, and also ensure sync data trabsfer is enabled). Best thing is to get an MPEG decoder card. Might sound pricey, but it will make an amazing difference to DVD playback.

(This only applies if you're not already using hardware decoder <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0"> )

Hey thanks everyone for responding. The advice did in fact help. I went and enabled DMA in the settings for the DVD player and that fixed the problem. Thats all that was needed to be done. Again, thanx!