I have the following setup: Pentium 4 @ 2.4G, 512 MB Ram, ATi Radeon 9550. My PC is connected to my 10-year-old Sony Trinitron and to a VGA monitor.

If I play a mpeg4 file (whether XVID, DivX or h.264) or a mpeg2 file (720x480 (16:9) 29.97fps 12000Kbps), the pictures on the TV is perfectly fine. I use the latest ffdshow with Media Player Classic. But if I play a DVD disc (720x480 at 7Mbps) whether with PowerDVD or Media Player Classic (but not with ffdshow), there is some jittering on the TV, especially when a large bright object is moving across a dark background. (Please see bottom of this post for full info of the DVD and my setup.) The jittering on the VGA monitor is not as prominent. The jittering goes away if the DVD is of a lower bitrate (say, 4Mbps).

Is this because of a slow CPU? Or is there something tuning/tweaking I can do with the software or the Radeon card?

Thanks.

-----

Display Information:
Video Mode: Bob
Display Mode: DirectDraw
FourCC Code: YUY2
Surface Type: Overlay

Video Attributes:
Video compression mode: MPEG-2
TV system: 525/60 (NTSC)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Display Mode: Only Letterbox
Source picture resolution: 720x480 (525/60)
Frame Rate: 30.00
Source picture letterboxed: Not letterboxed
Bitrate: 6.67Mbps

Audio Attributes:
Audio Coding mode: LPCM
Sampling Rate: 48kHz
Audio application mode: Not specified
Number of Audio channels: 2
Bitrate: 1536 Kbps
Number of Audio streams: 2

Subpicture Attribute: Not Available

Hardware Information:
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU running at 2394 MHz
3DNow! Technology: Not Detected
Enhanced 3DNow! Technology: Not Detected
3DNow! Professional Technology: Not Detected
IA MMX Technology: In Use
IA Streaming SIMD Extensions: In Use
IA SSE 2: In Use
Video Accelerator: DirectX VA (not in use)
Multispeaker Audio Device: Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit (in use)
SPDIF Output Device: Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit (not in use)