----- Original Message -----
From: "Edward Dekkers" <edward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: poor dvd playback on Pentium M 750
Jack Howarth wrote:
Is there a particular reason why DVD playback is so choppy on
Pentium M laptops (a 1.86 GHz model 750 chip in this case)? I tried
xine, vlc and mplayer on Fedora Core 4 installed on a Dell Latitude
D810 and in all cases the playback stutters. This machine has the
ATI X600 graphics with the newest v8.16.20 driver livna packaged
driver installed. I am quite surprised by this since even a 450 Mhz
G4 with ppclinux could handle DVD playback smoothly leveraging
the Altivec support. I assumed that the mmx support on the Pentium M
would have provided as least as much performance but that doesn't
appear to be the case.
Jack
Check your hard disk/dvd rom parameters settings.
DVD playback can be notoriously slow when DMA is not enabled.
Regards,
Ed.
And to add to that, check your /boot/grub/grub.conf file and look that
"ide=nodma" isn't on the kernel line that you are booting from. Many people
including me have to boot at installation with the "ide=nodma" parameter set
to keep from getting media failures.
If you don't select advanced grub options during the installation and take that
out, after installation you won't be using dma.
If you have to remove that, reboot your system and you should notice a world
of difference in performance.
HTH,
Mike
