Hardware DVD Decoder Card

[Action Jackson]

When I watch DVD's using a LiteON 163D and PowerDVD 4.0 XP, the picture quality is excellent.

The annoying part is that the green light on the LiteON drive is constantly blinking and the harddrive light does the same thing.

I can understand the HD light blinking constantly b/c it's a software decoder, but the LiteON? My older Toshiba SD-M1202 DVD didn't do this.

Will the Sigma Hollywood Decoder Card help reduce the HD and DVD's annoying habits?

[cfitz]

No, a hardware decoder won't help the blinking light on the 163D. Nothing will (other than a custom firmware update or a piece of opaque tape). The light is blinking because the drive is being accessed to retrieve the movie data. That is normal operation. No blinking light = no data transfer = no movie.

The more curious aspect is the blinking light on the hard drive indicating hard drive access. There shouldn't be any need to hit the hard drive, even with a software decoder. Perhaps Power DVD is doing a read-ahead on the DVD-ROM and caching data on the hard drive to prevent drop outs in case of temporary slow downs in data extraction from the DVD-ROM. Or maybe you have something else going on. For what it is worth, on my system Power DVD doesn't access the hard drive during playback.

cfitz

[Action Jackson]

Thanx for the reply.

I was hoping there would be a way to reduce the fast blinking on my DVD drive.

I'm curious as to why your PowerDVD doesn't access your HD during playback, whereas on both of my systems, it does.

I'm just looking for a way to reduce the accessing which seems like it's constantly instead of intermittently doing.

[Ian]

The "hard drive" LED is probably lighting up because your DVD-ROM is connected to the onboard IDE controller. Not because its accessing your hard drive.

[cfitz]

That sounds like a reasonable possibility. On my systems the DVD-ROM is connected to either the secondary channel (with the hard drive on the primary) or on a separate controller altogether.

cfitz