Might be the drive itself. I had one of those Ricoh comobos once, and after I flashed it, i got 9 coasters out of 10 possible, lol. It played DVDs still, but it had to go...
 
Also, what color depth is your desktop at?

Desktop is set at 32bit - and I will think ahead and try 16bit
 
drive burns CDs fine, in fact I've done 4 today with no problems. Don't know why it's doing the whole skippy thing tho
weird

Some guesses: -stop Screen Saver; -unmark "Enable CD Recording on this drive" in Computer, CD-RW, Properties; -remove Fraunhofer IIS Mpeg Codec in Device MAnager, Sound Video and Game Controllers, Audio Codecs.
 
Lowering resolution is right because 32 bits and even 16 bits steal the bandwith from the video overlay which operates solely in the remaining video memory. 8 bits has been recommended for DVD playback.

-unmark "Enable CD Recording on this drive" in Computer
 
 
hmm..I didn't think of that one. Seeing as it's a combo drive you may be onto something there. I'll give it a whirl.
 
(btw setting to 16bit didn't work)

Seeing as you can burn fine with the drive this may not be your issue, but I had almost exactly the same problem until I replaced the cable I was using to connect the drive. IDE cables can go bad, and are almost always overlooked when they do. Can't hurt to try. Mine is smooth as butter now that I've replaced the cable.

This is a page that will test the drive. It might help: http://www.cdspeed2000.com/go.php3?link=dvdspeed.html

Eurgh.
That program did not like my drive at all
It wouldn't read ANY dvd past the 0.00GB mark, and gave a read error code (056F03)
Seek time test worked, and ranged from 127ms to 211ms
 
Is this an indication that the drive is broken?

Most DVD Video's use a copyprotection called CSS which locks the disc and makes it impossible to read data from it.
If such a disc is used for testing the drive with DVD Speed, the test will abort with error code 056F03.
A solution for this is to unlock the disc by playing the video with a software DVD Video player which will unlock the disc.
The disc remains unlocked until it's removed from the drive or until the system is restarted.
You can immediately shut down the DVD Video player after you started to play the disc.

Nero DVD Speed
 
09 April 2002 - 20:27:39
 
Drive information
Vendor RICOH
Product DVD/CDRW MP9060
Firmware Version 1.90
 
Disc information
Type DVD-Video
Length 5.76 GB
 
Test results
 
Transfer rate
Average 3.31 X
Start 1.83 X
End 3.23 X
Reading type CAV
 
Seek Times
Random Seek 132 ms
1/3 Seek 142 ms
Full Seek 209 ms
 
CPU usage
1X 1 %
Max Speed 1 %
 
Interface
Burst Rate 0.61 MB/s
 
Spin Up/Down Time
Spin Up Time 3.20 sec
Spin Down Time 1.70 sec
 
Disc Eject Time 2.55 sec
Disc Load Time 10.60 sec
Disc Recognition Time 0.01 sec
 
I assume that's about right for a 4x DVD drive.
 
Any other suggestions?

This is a patch for your firm ware. Risky, but since it is a zip, you can look at its components - http://digilander.iol.it/firmware2/9060_190_RICOH.ZIP

Quote:
Drive information
Vendor RICOH
Product DVD/CDRW MP9060
Firmware Version 1.90


Already got it mate

You've probably already done it, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Have you looked at how your IRQ's are assigned given that XP and 2000 under ACPI like to string a bunch of PCI devices to the same interrupt. Most of the time, there isn't a problem. Sometimes giving a device its own interrupt resolves it.

You'd be right when asking if I'd already done it
 
All of the major devices on my computer have their own IRQ, these being sound, gfx, IDE etc
 
Anything else?

This is Microsoft's "Lab" Address for driver testing: http://www.microsoft.com/hwtest/device/videodecode.asp

What exactly am I looking for there?
It looks like some kind of developers resource to me.

It is. You have first class equipment. It is connected by the book, so you are really down to the technology itself. There can be all kinds of reasons for this flipping, but you've ruled out so many of the common ones. There are software issues in relation to sound and video at this point.
 
Windows is not a real time environment.
 
Problem 1 of frame dropping) On DVD's the sound can be carried down one channel and the video on another. Timing to have them intercept properly is key. If the sound is ready (or "too quick") and the video isn't, frames are dropped from the video to connect to the next "proper" intersection.
 
Problem 2) There is a serious demand on memory and video memory. There is a kind of look ahead process to create the sequential frames to be shown. They create an "overlay". A lot of software now use DirectX functions, one of which is flip(). In other words, frames are cued and flipped to create the motion. If for whatever reason the cue of overlays cannot be processed and flushed from the buffered memory, frames are dropped to permit the overlaying framing process to continue at the expense of frames ready to be viewed. Either timing of the flipping or the memory buffer limitation of the software or hardware can cause this. Result, frames are dropped.
 
ATI and Nvidia apparently handle these things differently. You could try a software package for DVD movies that is theoretically VGA independent. Ravisent is one. There are probably others.
 
In reading your hardware specs with the latest Bios, drivers, etc., with no other conflicts and given the performance of your machine, unless some widget has been overlooked, its the last road I know to travel.

hmm, overall a general pain

a 4X DVD is kinda slow, i had the same problems on with a SCSI 4X DVD. Seemed like it didn't like newer DVDs, would always skip. Got a 16X DVD and haven't seen a skip yet.

well the "access" light is never always on - it blinks in regular intervals when playing discs, so I assume it's not being taxed to it's full limits.
This in my view proves that it's fast enough.
 
Why wouldn't 4x be fast enough anyway, all DVD-Videos are 1x anyway. All standalone players have 1x drives (unless they are expensive and have decent scan facilities).

Here's a news flash.
I was playing an MP3 CD just now, and the same thing happened. The track skipped ahead about 1-2 seconds.
 
This seems to be related.
It never happens when playing off the hard disk, but playing from CD does it.
 
 
any suggestions now?