Poor audio quality when playing DVDs

[slarti]

Hi,

Been trying to set up my folks computer to play DVDs (they've just got an external USB DVD drive). The quality is very poor --- both audio and video are very choppy. I then discovered they think they only have USB 1 which could explain it. I can play the same DVDs fine on my laptop using their drive.

However, it's not just the USB speed: If I copy the .vob file from VIDEO_TS for one of the clips off the DVD and onto their hard drive then play it then the video quality is fine but the audio is still choppy. It's not drifting out-of-sinc, it's just cutting in and out. Their machine is nearly 5 years old, so it could be that, but when I've had problems before elsewhere it's always affected the video quality at least as much as the sound. Seems a bit weird to only hit the audio quality when surely the video is more resource intensive? (I should have mentioned that we've been trying with genuine, commercial DVDs, not home-made ones so I'm fairly confident the problem is not the DVD itself.)

I could just tell them to get more RAM but I'm wondering if there is anything else likely to affect sound and not video quality? Is it more likely to be fixed by RAM or a new sound card? I'm not after cinema quality surround sound, just something where you can make out what they're saying!

The specs of their machine are:
2.2GHz Intel pentium 4 (512K cache)
256 Mb RAM
40GB Hard drvie
ATI Rage Ultra 16MB Graphics
AC'97 SB Compatabile integrate sound
They're running Windows 2000 Professional (with all the updates) and using vlc to play the DVDs

Any advice gratefully received.

[guns1inger]

RAM is on the low side, and Win2K isn't really built for playback.

First two things I would do is up the ram to 512, which should be fine for Win2k. Then add a cheap Sound Blaster Digital and disable the on-board audio.

While you are waiting to do that, defrag the HDD and make sure there is enough space free. If possible, defrag the swap file as well.

[ranchhand]

^ What da' Gunslinger said... In addition, if you still have problems, enter Task Manager and End Process on any irrelevant crap you have running that is needless. Your system is a little weak for movie watching, so this tip may put you over the top if it is still a little slow.

[cd090580]

You could also try another playing program such as PowerDVD, Windvd,... They can use Hardware acceleation and they are generally less cpu eaters then VLC.

VLC is very choppy for me, WMP or Power dvd give smooth playback