I'm looking for a "low footprint" software DVD player.

Fenster

I think that's probably the best term for it. I need something for a rather old and slow laptop that takes up the absolute minimum of systerm resources. It doesn't need any bling, if it plays it and has the basic features (chapter selection, subtitles, the usual suspects), its good enough for me.

All help is much appreciated.

parsi

What about the VLC media player form www.videolan.org/vlc - it's free so you could try it out...

maxheadroom

What operating system? And are you particularly attached to it?

Fenster

Its for XP Home, OEM (eww, I know, not mine thankfully )

maxheadroom

Fenster wrote:

Its for XP Home, OEM (eww, I know, not mine thankfully )

Hmm - well, I was going to suggest some flavour of linux + svgalib + mplayer from a console..

But on windows XP, it doesn't make much difference, because pretty much any player is just a front-end for directshow...

Try BSPlayer

Fenster

I'm using Xine on Red Hat right now and it does the job I want, so no complaints from me.

maxheadroom

I should probably have given you a link: http://www.bsplayer.org/

I've always founf mplayer better than xine - and it is handy to be able to run it on a console so you don't have to load X.

KdjaCL

Stick windows 98 on the laptop , XP hogs system resources and Win98 is faster


kdjac

Fenster

I've never liked 98. Yeah, it doesn't hog resources like XP does, but when it comes to stability...?

maxheadroom

how old and slow is this laptop? What are the specs?

Fenster

Its a rather new, but cheap laptop. Some Toshiba model that plays films glitchily (it'll read data discs perfectly though), so I'm trying different players, as I can't find anything wrong with its settings.

maxheadroom

What have you tried so far? Trying on AC power or batteries?

Fenster

Only on the mains so far as that's pretty much the only place its used. Playback of films is slow and glitchy as hell right now, but as I said, absolutely no problems with any data discs.

maxheadroom

And it happens regardless of software? Have you tried increasing any buffering settings in the software?

Is it an internal or external drive? If internal, is DMA enabled for the drive? If external, what kind of connection does it use?

Fenster

Its an internal drive. I won't have access to the laptop until tomorrow. Is there any sort of troubleshooting utility out there? The laptop belongs to a complete tit and I got asked to look at it as a favour from a manager at work, so I'd be perfectly happy just to slap some utilities on it and hand it back.

Stephen

Is it riddled with porn diallers/viruses/adware etc?

Chalk

is hardware accelartion for the graphics card / chip set to full ?
it usually can be accessed through the advanced options of most media players.
if so drop it down notch by notch till you get it smoothed out

try media player classic aswell, that usually plays dvds even if power dvd is having a bad day

Fenster

Stephen wrote:

Is it riddled with porn diallers/viruses/adware etc?

Nah, but I did sneak a look at his cookies.

Syth

Fenster wrote:

Nah, but I did sneak a look at his cookies.

And?

Gossip is fun.

Fenster

Much as I'd love to, I'm ethical in odd ways.

I absolutely hate any violations of my computer privacy, so I respect that of others.