Crashes

[trashcanman]

Hi. I have (2) questions:

1. When I play my Mpeg2, Mpeg1, SVCD, or VCD on my computer (Win98 SE), it plays just fine for a while. Then, the computer freezes up, and I have to reboot. I have 656 mb ram, 750 mhz athlon processor. My video card is an agp type, 8mb memory. Could my video card be the problem? Do I need one with more (how much?) onboard memory?

2. When I try to play most DVD movies in my DVD drive (Cendyne 16x 40x), the movie stops. A message appears saying that my tv out port on my display card is enabled and must be disabled in order to play the movie. My card doesn't have a tv out port! What does this really mean? Some other movies play just fine.

Hope someone can help.

-- TC

[Prospero424]

Well in answer to your first question, I would suspect your video card before anything else, especially if this is the only persistent crash you are experiencing, although unfortunately it could be almost anything. Before anything, make sure you have the latest drivers for you videcard as well as your motherboard chipset, buggy vid drivers seem to cause this more than anything else. If you don't know where to get these, find out what kind of card you have, open up the box and look at it if necessary, and if you are still in the dark, respond to this message with the make and model and I'll find them for you.

If you are looking for a new video card anyway, then I would suggest that you do this, especially since an 8mb card is getting a bit dated these days (although it should be fine for movie playback, the RAM really doesn't matter as long as you havge at least 4mb onboard) It depends on what you want to use it for. If you are going to use it mostly for business and media playing purposesd, I would suggest either a Matrox or an ATi card since these have excellent quality through both monitor display and TV-output. If you want to use it for gaming, nVidia -based cards are always reliable and fast with acceptable image quality on the TV-outputs. Let me know if you want more specific information (such as specific cards, etc.)

On your second question, I suspect that all of the movies causing this error message are copy protected using an analog method (Macrovision) and that for some reason the player thinks that your video card has a non Macrovision-compatible TV-output and is therefore refusing to play so that you can't copy the DVD to a VCR. What software player are you using to read the DVDs? I would suggest that you try a different player or an updated version of your software and see if that fixes the problem.

Good Luck,

Prospero

[trashcanman]

I have since determined that I can play an svcd, vcd, mpeg1 disc without a crash. Mpeg2 or the DVD movie will bring on a crash. I find this curious. Any ideas? I now have a new video card with 32mb onboard memory.