ST20G5 media centre problem

[stotten]

Hey guys - I've currently got a stock shuttle ST20G5 running XP media centre on a 1080i screen. I have no TV tuner card - I more use the PC as a server for music and photos, but am having lots of problems getting the box to play DVDs correctly. I have PowerDVD 7 installed (straight thru SPDIF output). When I play DVDs within PowerDVD itself all works well, but when I try to play them through the media centre interface everything just grinds and stutters, particularly the sound.
I have 1GB ram and a 3000+ athlon 64, and CPU usage never seems to go >50%, and as I say - when playing direct in PowerDVD all is ok. Are there any additional media centre settings I need to set to get any decent performance?

Thanks for your help,
- Steve

[nichomach]

First thing I'd say is update the BIOS to the latest version; that helped with similar issues. If you've tweaked the memory settings to run at 1T - don't . It REALLY cacked the graphics output on my 4. Also, remember to do a clear CMOS after the BIOS update. Also get the latest Cat 6.8 drivers for Media Centre (and make sure they're the Motherboard/IGP drivers - see https://support.ati.com/ics/support/...e&folderID=294 ).

[stotten]

Already had the latest bios, but I updated to the 6.8 ATI drivers. Unfortunately still no joy - PowerDVD runs well, but MCE still stutters.

Only thing I haven't done is clear the CMOS, as I'm not sure how.

Surely I don't need to upgrade my video card just to play a DVD?

[nichomach]

The ST20G5 has a BIOS reset button at the rear of the case. You can play a DVD just fine with the integrated graphics; also make sure you've got all the latest rollup patches for MCE from MS.

[stotten]

Found the problem - for some reason the pc wouldn't detect DMA on my primry master IDE port, so was stuck in PIO. I flipped the DVD drive over to slave and it started working fine. Thanks for all the help though.

As an aside I was thinking of putting in a new card in order to play Blu-ray disks - any recommendations for a low-power, low-heat single-slot card with HDMI that can handle the decoding?