I've got a Toshiba DVD drive, and I'm having playback issues. It's a bit jittery, and the sound crackles a lot. What can I do to fix it??

How fast of a machine is it in? What OS? What playback software?

Or do you mean a player?

I've got an Athlon 2100+, so speed shouldn't be a problem. I'm in Win2K, so that migght be, and I'm using the DVD player in ATI's multimedia center (a pretty current version, too).

Win2K: Does the DVD drive appear in device manager as DMA or Ultra DMA (versus PIO)?

I cant find any mention of DMA anywhere in the device manager or the drive's properties. Where do I find it?

I cant find any mention of DMA anywhere in the device manager or the drive's properties.

My bad. That setting is actually under the "Advanced" tab on the IDE controllers. Whichever IDE channel your DVD is on (assuming it is IDE) should show DMA or UltraDMA. If not, you may have some BIOS/CMOS tweaking or other tweaking to do. That's where I'd start, anyhow.

Toshiba drives are known for being solid performers, and the recent ATI MMCs are also pretty solid. I'd also guess that DMA is to blame.

I'd recommend investigating zoomplayer (www.inmatrix.com) for a DVD app front end though.

Thanks guys, it was the DMA. Now it works just fine, and I'm enjoying Tim Burton's superb "Nightmare Before Christmas" at the moment. Danny Elfman is my hero.