Shoutbox

Whenever I play a DVD on my laptop, after about an hour or so it starts skipping and jolting and becomes highly irritating and inaudible. I suspect it might be due to the C: drive becoming too hot. Any ways to keep it cooler?

Are there any other possibilities? (It happens with all DVDs, even brand new)

Thanks

It does sound most probably like a heat issue - the first things which may make a difference if you haven't tried already are to provide maximum airflow under the laptop while watching (if that's possible) and if your laptop has any controllable CPU scaling, you can experiment with that to see if it helps.

If you only watch DVDs occasionally like on a long trip, it's also possible just to rip it to the hard drive, although this is generally a hassle and doesn't really solve the problem.

Apart from that, I can't think of any simple solution apart from drilling, but at this point it's probably best to stop taking my advice

Try updating your firmware kierant. It sometime solves problems like these.

hahaha I was talking to HP about this cause mine was doing the same thing. I was using PowetDVD, I switched to WinDVD and all was fine.

Try using a different player and see if it happens.

Thanks for the replies...

Well the laptop is pretty much brand new so I don't think it's anything to do with the firmware...although I shall look in to it just in case.

I suspected it might have been the player Matty ( I have been using either WMP or RealOne Player) but they each have the problem. I might give Win DVD a try when I have time.

Peace x

I would recommend Media Player Classic. A lot of the DVD pros say it's one of the best.

Try using a different program. If it still does it, then update your firmwire.

Note: It is always good to have the latest firmwire updates.

wen i used hav problems with over heating in comps.(not saying i ever had a lab top or watched DVDs on one) i kept a fan going or u culd just trying cleaning the DVD

The problem can be heating... but this is rare...
The problem can be the player... but this is also many times not realy the cause, although it can fix it (temporarly).

The most common problem (note, I say "common" as many other things can cause it though) with this is your combination of CPU and HDD which can't handle the datastream.  This sounds strange but when you are playing a dvd, you most likely aren't doing much else. This can cause your HDD to go into diagnostic mode and eating up some resources. Or another background task can sometimes keep the CPU accupied for a brief moment (long enough to drop the resources available for the player and thus cause hickups).

This could be solved by some players, although this is not realy solving the problem as all players have this. That's to say, with all software it can happen as it is simply how Windows works; it devides its resources among its running programs. It is only a matter of how intesivly a program is running.

A very quick fix and which I found always worked in whatever situation is simply to increase the priority level of your player in Windows Task Manager (right click the process and choose priority level. Set it higher as "normal"). Doing this will tell Windows to arrange his resources more to the player than to other possible running programs.

Another common cause is a HDD diagnostic/defrag/monitoring program which kicks in; because you don't use your HDD for quite a while it thinks it can do some stuff. Note that some of these diagnostic programs are put into the hardware itself (S.M.A.R.T diagnostic feature) and can only be disabled by specialized software. And because some players do use the HDD as a cache this again can make that the player experiences hickups.

A more rare cause can be your DVD player which has some troubles reading the most outer parts of a CD/DVD. As the CD/DVD is read from the inner circle to the outer circle, the speed of spinning needs to increase a little to keep the data flow consistant. Some DVD players could have troubles with that. But as said, this is rare..... but it can happen...