Older DVD Software Players

[galahs]

http://www.freeweb.hu/doscdroast/dvd4dos.htm

This might help It isn't really working but - providing info about the existence of something like this...

Wow!

Low system requirments!

Minimal requirements:

-486DX computer (486 with built-in FPU)

-4/8/16 or more MB of RAM (I don't know...I have 64MB...)

-SVGA card (640x480 resolution and 8/15/16/24/32 color bits/pixel)

-SB Pro or compatible soundcard (11025 Hz, 8 bit, stereo)

-DVD drive with drivers installed (CDROM.SYS included in the package)

-a single layer and region-free DVD movie disc

-lots of spare time because DVD4DOS Beta1 is not a realtime player

and very slow...(tested with my Pentium 120 MHz computer...

transcoding 1 min movie takes cca. 1 hour)

I have been trying to modify my DVD-ROM read ahead cache to see if that makes a difference.

First I set it none. Tested and Later used Cacheman 5.50 to set it to 4638kb .

Performance was bad with it set to none, but I couldn't tell any difference between 4638kb and the standard setting of 1238kb's.

Cacheman says the following:

DVDs primarily use the Universal Disk Format (UDF) for their file systems, this means the Disk Cache is responsible for most DVD-Discs, not the CDFS Cache!

What disk cache settings would then be best for DVD playback?

[galahs]

Does anybody have the trial versions of WinDVD 2000 and/or PowerDVD 2.55 that they can send me?

[eidenk]

Have you tried using the Fraunhoffer DVD codecs ?

[galahs]

Yep. I had Media Player Classic using them.

What I don't understand is currently I have MPC using PowerDVD 3's codec but PowerDVD 3 can play the files so much better than MPC can.

Does that mean the program overheads of MPC are higher than PowerDVD 3?

[rainyd]

Which version of MPC you're using?

If 6.4.9.0 you could try latest beta from here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=205650

[Mijzelf]

Can anyone tell me why playing a dvd causes hard disk activity?

My hard disk light is constantly flashing throughout playback.

Are you sure it's the harddisk light? It could be the IDE light also, marking the DVD activity.

[galahs]

The light doesn't synchronise with the DVD activity light.

After some reading online I now think dvd programs cache the data to disk before reading it. I wonder if I could optimise that so the program buffers further ahead. Anyone used DVDIdle with good results on slower systems?

I am using Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1

[galahs]

Testing with cacheman again I noticed my Paging File (Virtual Memory Swap File) jumps by 18MB when I start playing a dvd with MPC and Lalim DVD player.

Currently I have ConservativeSwapfileUsage=0 (off)

might retry it with ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1 (on)

Edit: PowerDVD 3 does not seem to increase the paging file size. Maybe this explains its higher performance?

Edited December 23, 2007 by galahs

[eidenk]

Here you have the last free version of Zoom Player with DVD support (around 2002). It's only an advanced front end for whatever DVD playback filters you have installed though but it might be helpfull.

http://rapidshare.com/files/78509492/zoomp...r_2.90.exe.html

[glocK_94]

No matter how hard I try, it's almost impossible to find old PowerDVD versions than aren't on oldversion.com or oldapps.com.

Good luck finding v2.5. The 2.5 to 2.55 patch is avaible but that's all.

Anyway, after a long search, I still managed to find the trial of what's supposed to be version 2.0915. Here you go: ftp://195.228.240.135/pub/multimedia/egye...d20915trial.exe

[galahs]

Thanks glock, I will give it a try.

I tried Zoom player and it is on par with MPC. Still not as good as PowerDVD 3.

[galahs]

I can't distinguish and performance difference between PowerDVD 2 trial and PowerDVD 3. Both play ok.

PowerDVD 3 has the edge on picture quality however.

[PsyCrow]

Hmm ... Try to set HIGH priority for your DVD player's process. There are plenty of tools, that capable of this under 9x. TaskInfo98 for example. Try it on Lalim DVD Player or PowerDVD 3, they seems to be most fast players as I can see from your posts.

Edited December 25, 2007 by PsyCrow

[RainyShadow]

Try Gom Player.

Also you could try ffdshow-tryouts as an update to the old ffdshow.

The IDE light should flash even when the system reads from the cache integrated in the DVD drive, even if the drive isn't spinning.