So what’s happening when a DVD has sudden hangs for about 2-3 seconds every minute or so? It seems to be peculiar to certain discs, as opposed to the drive itself. A cure?
Is the disc dirty? Is there a common attribute of all the discs that do it, like the studio or manufacturer?
This issue can occur because some movie discs consist of two layers and the second layer access specification may be different from the first. For instance, a layer may be read from the inside of the disc to the outside or vice versa. If this reading order changes from one layer to the other it can generate a pause of a second or more, which is normal. This varies from disc to disc.
Cheaper players will also continue to pause after the initial layer transition (here and there for a second or two).
Google with DVD layer pause and you should find enuff information to answer any specifics.
If it happens every minute or so, it’s not the switch between layers. If the disc isn’t damaged, it could be that your computer isn’t fast enough to decode DVDs without a decoder card. However, almost every computer purchased in the last 3 years or so should be fast enough to do it without a decoder…if you have a really old machine that could be the case.
Jman
Your drive could be spinning down automatically after a “lull” in data transfer.
I hate it when my DVD drive spins up to 16x when I’m trying to watch a movie or a DiVX. So I use “Nero DriveSpeed” It runs in the tray and fixes my drive speed at (whatever you want) 4x and a spin-down time after (whatever you want) 4 minutes.
No hiccups here!