DVD playback issue

[rdh]

Hi,

I've searched the forum but have not found any posts that address this specific issue, so here goes.

My T42p and T41p have been great machines, running flawessly except for in one relatively minor but somewhat annoying way. When playing DVD movies, when there is horizontal panning going on the playback gets much less smooth--its almost as if there is a small click every third of a second or so, like the camera hesitates for a moment before it continues panning across. It's kind of choppy slow in the background, while everything in the fore ground remains smooth and perfect. This ONLY occurs during horizontal panning; at all other times the playback is great.

This problem happens with WinDVD, Windows Media Player, and on VLC player, so the DVD player applications don't seem to be at fault. I've switched the CD drive to another known "good" drive and the issue still exists, so the hardware isn't at fault either. Horizontal panning plays flawlessly on my A31p with a FireGL 7800 video card, so I'm wondering if it has anything to do with the FireGL T2 cards in the T42p and T41p.

I've made sure that DMA is enabled. I've also verified that hardware acceleration is at maximum and have installed the latest IBM graphics and audio drivers. I've checked to see if anything is running in the background or using high CPU loads while playing movies and nothing is sapping the CPU power.

I know this isn' t a hugely important problem but it matters to me since I'm away from home a lot and like to watch 2 or 3 movies a week on the Thinkpads. I'm stumped--I'd appreciate any suggestions!

[GomJabbar]

I have read here that some users were reporting that the Ati HotKey Poller service was causing choppy playback of DVD's. Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services, and scroll to Ati HotKey Poller service. Double click on the service, Stop the service and then Disable the service. See if that helps.

[rdh]

Thanks, GomJabbar--yeah, I tried disabling ATI Hotkey poller and it made no difference with the choppiness problem. This may be something I just have to live with.

[GomJabbar]

You can bring up task manager (ctrl + alt + del), and look at the Processes tab. See which processes are using the most CPU resources. Do this while a DVD is playing, and see if anything shows up. Any type of polling service would be suspect in my opinion.

Go to Start > Control Panel > Power Options > Advances tab. Try changing CD-ROM speed to High Performance. Normally the other two settings on that tab should be set to Automatic.

Double-click on the green battery icon in the notification area at the lower right. The page should open up with the battery power settings. I have my CPU speed set to Adaptive (a mix between Slow and Maximum). While on this page, click on the AC plug icon. Now you will be looking at the AC power settings. I have my CPU speed set to Maximum.

Power DVD has a display setting for a Vivid color profile. If you choose the Original color profile, that uses less resources. Also, on the Audio settings, I choose stereo rather than dolby or directx to lessen resources used. I realize you may not be using Power DVD, but maybe there are simular settings on your video players.

[rdh]

I appreciate the suggestions--I'll try those things out. I did already check for processes using CPU resources on the task manager and nothing significant showed up. Also, I'll see if I can download a free trial version of PowerDVD--maybe that player will handle the horizontal panning shots more smoothly.