Okay I will throw this out there and if no one can help me I will just throw a decoder card in there and be done with it.
The system:
Thunderbird 1.1 GHZ
Asus A7V
WD 40 gig ATA 100 HD
256 PC133 memory
Voodoo5 AGP 64M 5500
Ricoh 32X 12X 10X DVD/CDRW
SB Live value
Win98SE

The original complaint was the DVD hangs.
Well I installed different software and now the DVD plays but has a slight hesitation.
I have tried everything I can think of to resolve it such as updated drivers,updated direct X,updated bus master drivers even used a different DVD (Creative 12X)
checked and unchecked DMA in the CDROM properties.

Now I am not completely ruling out that my DVD I test with is worn out so I plan to bring one from home to doublecheck but the same DVD worked fine with a decoder card.

I suppose I could also have some bad hardware but so far I have swapped Voodoo card and memory.

what am I missing?

TIA