newer dvds and skipping help...URGENT

ok heres my conundrum... i have a dvdrom.. and i can play dvds.. but whenever i try to play a new dvd (lord of the rings, spider man, or bill and teds excellent adventure, for example) they skip.. i dont think its the fact that theyre newer.. but i dont know why they would.. ive played new movies like clockstppers and eight legged frieks ... then they dont skip at all.. im wondering y in the hell these dvds skip.. if anyone has any idea please write back.. this has been bugging me for awhile and i dont know why its doing it.. im gonna try and upgrade my dvd decoder.. but i kind of assumed that being winxp its the most up to date

I'd say its the decoder. And I wouldn't trust Windows to do it for you.

Get your own dvd decoder

how.. i use windvd 3.00... i also have interactual and it still skips n that.. or is the decoder a plug-in like thing.. that is a file you install to change how the system proesses dvds ... kind of like the plugins in winamp... or is a decoder the prog u use to read dvds?

Just a thought...

Check you're not slaving your DVD with your hard disk...

I did once by mistake, and it caused quite a few annoying problems. Always run the DVD seperately if possible, but never slave it with a DVD/DVD-RW or CD-RW. It really can cause problems.

Next...

Flash your motherboard BIOS & upgrade the fimware on your DVD drive. Check you have a firmware upgradable DVD drive first.. then check the manufactures website for further details.

Also...

If you have a VIA chipset on-board, make sure you DON'T use the 4in1 drivers they provide. Awful, buggy & slow patches which do more damage than good. In some cases, you can actually lose both your IDE's, which can only really be fixed by formatting.

If all else fails, feel free to give me a call, and i'll gladly help if i can.

Regards,

Paul.
Christmas Wishes...

If you are going to buy a hardware decoding card, I'd suggest the Hollywood MPEG-2 Decoder... I don't have one, but know a few people that do.

Have you patched the DVD-ROM so that it's region-free? I know that doing so can cause problems like this one (some DVDs wouldn't play, but after he unpatched it somehow, it worked).