Bought an acer 1683wlmi not too long ago and have noticed that when watching a dvd on battery power, playback will sort of stutter/pause for a few milliseconds every once in a while. I just purchased a hitachi 7k60 hoping that it might alleviate the problem but it's still there. This problem doesn't seem to be apparent when plugged in. I've just done a fresh install of xp pro with the brand new hitachi and have pretty much only installed power dvd 6. Any ideas on what could be causing this? I've also tried upping cpu speed via epowermanagement to max and turning power play off. Thanks in advance

specs as follows
PM 1.7
512mb
mr9700 64mb
hitachi 7k60
xp pro

oh and it doesn't seem to matter if the dvd is being played off a disc or hd, the stuttering/pausing is still there.

Player Problem?! Try NeroShowTime or WinDVD (if you have) or VLCMediaPlayer (free).

Wip

I've tried windvd 6, acer arcade, and it was the same thing. Thanks for the reply though

Battery issue maybe? Battery might not be supplying enough current to supply the entire system so it starts surging causing power to go in and out in spurts. Try switching to a diffrent battery if you have one lying around.

I'm starting to think that it has to do with the hard drive parking of these hitachi drives. My old drive (80gb travelstar 4200rpm) did the same thing, hence the upgrade to the 60 hoping it would fix the problem. I tried to install the intel application accelerator because it apparently allows you to disable parking but I couldn't get it to install. Keeps telling me that the driver is installed incorrectly.

scrap that, IAA isn't supported on my chipset :/

I had this problem and was looking around for quite a bit...
Well, my problem was the that PIO mode was selected instead of IDE (dunno what does PIO stands for)
Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > IDE controller > Secondary IDE Channel

I set the mode to DMA if available..initially it was set to PIO only...after restarting...it worked smoothly without the skipping parts..even on battery...

Another thing was my winDVD had its own battery profile, which i disabled....

Thanx..hope this helps

thanks for the reply kalte. I checked DMA settings and I'm in DMA mode. Do you know what HD you have in your notebook? it is a hitachi also? I'm thinking of scrapping this drive and going with a momentus 80 5400 rpm.

I too have this problem with my 8104. I'd like to think it's my HDD but I'm not an expert. I'll probably upgrade to a 7200 before long anyway to improve map load times on games. This is my second 8104 (my first one had driver issues so I sent it back) and I can honestly say that both of them stuttered during dvd playback and games. I've said this before but it might be the games I was playing but Halo and NFSU stuttered. I'm going to load a different game and see if it might just be the games.

Don't forget that only when running on battery do I have problems. It totally sounds like an energy saving feature of the hd or some other component in the laptop. The hitachi's are known to be annoying with that clicking sound (head parking) as well.

Could this issue have something to do with the Ati Powerplay feature. Try enabling performance settings for battery use from display properties.

My TM 4502WLMi has weird lag sometimes. It can be reproduced by moving mouse pointer over the battery meter in taskbar. Computer (and mouse pointer) lags for half a second or so. I am sending in the battery to be replaced. I was wondering, do you have this kind of issue?

br, Unclezam

powerplay is off when I'm having these problems as well

Well...? Solved yet?
I'm having these problems, except that I'm not running on battery.
Travelmate 4501WLMi.

This is a problem common to many laptops. DVD decoding takes a lot of processor power. I recommend you check your Power Management settings, which frequently call for cut-backs in processor power when operating on battery power, since thats a great way to increase battery life. If you use ePowerManagement, check the "CPU Speed" setting when you are on battery power, and make sure its at 100%. Thats a very likely cause of DVD stuttering.

I have the same issue on my Ferrari 4005, and it happens when it is plugged in. I am not using ACER's ePowerManagement...I am using PowerDVD as my player.

It seems this is a common problem with no real resolution?