Commercial DVD Menu Problem

[dahveed3]

I'm having a problem with the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV series DVD menu's. The same fault exists whether using ATI MMC 9.13 or PowerDVD 6 Deluxe.

It's when trying to select the 3rd episode on several of these season DVD's. It will simply ignore my click and remain on the main menu screen. All the other episodes will play fine. It's only the 3rd episode that ignores my click.

This did not happen on my pc with a Liteon LTD167T. It occurs on my pc with a Liteon Combo SOHC5235C. I updated to the latest Liteon firmware but it didn't fix this.

The problem also does not occur on my home DVD player. It seems to be just a problem with this particular CDRW-DVD-ROM Combo drive.

I tried playing it with AnyDVD enabled as well, but this also didn't fix it.

I have no burning issues with the drive. It will play DVD's and VCD's fine, except for this one problem on these particular DVD's.

Is the likely solution to be purchasing a different DVD-ROM drive? I have searched for problems with DVD menus as well as some of the non-playing episodes and I haven't noticed anything like this mentioned before, here or on the net. But I did notice some comments here regarding pc hardware being not as friendly to different aspect ratio's on DVD's.

This particular series is in the 4:3 TV format, as this is the way it was mean't to be seen. Might this have something to do with it? If so, why do all but those 3rd episodes in the menu's play perfectly?

[Bjs]

So , you have updated the firmware and still no go .

These unit's are a plague , full of problem's , though the liteon's weren't bad initially , the problem is with unit's produced since 2003 .

As for another dvd player software , locate koolplayer , and use it , it's what I use when nero showtime stuff's up .

This same problem appear's in the playback of stargate series dvd's as well .

After ripping them I found 0 gop at the start of each title ... dont know what commercial tool's they used to create these , but it must be rubbish to do that .
Only ulead video studio was able to re-convert them to proper format ... nothing else would even touch them , and that gose for good old vobedit .

[dahveed3]

Yes, it must be the newer drive. I'm using the pc with the older Liteon now and the menu works fine. So I don't think a different software player would help. But on some DVD's with this pc I get that stop and go problem like that fella on the other thread. I think this relates to the Via chipset as the same DVD's played without playback stop and go on my SiS 748 board (with the newer Liteon Combo drive.) But all my Via boards have had occasional stop and go playback with certain DVD's over the years. The SiS board also behaves better with 2 drives (a cdrw and a DVD-ROM) on the secondary channel than the Asus A7V880 Via board.

I just wish some of the better board makers used the SiS chipsets. The chipset is better than Via but the rest of the motherboard components are really flaky on the cheaper boards like what Foxconn puts out. The Foxconn 748K7AA was giving me a problem when powering on. I needed to hit the power button several times and sometimes turn the power supply switch on and off to get the board to power up. Once up, it is very stable. This, on a good Thermaltake 480. I think it's cheap motherboard components combined with an awesome chipset. Something's not sending the signal properly from the system power switch to the power supply or something. That's what I get for a $35 motherboard I guess. I know it's not the case wiring since the Asus A7V333 that got replaced by the Foxconn used to power up fine in this case.

I thought it was my old power strip, but then I put my A7V880 back and it powers up perfectly everytime. So it's something in the Foxconn board.

Well, I guess I'll keep moving the DVD over to my TV when I get problems. Sound and picture are better on the PC apart from these occasional annoyances.