DVD crisis

Rhisiart

Rhisiart

Registered
Well, maybe crisis is to strong a word.

Here is what I have:

(i) A 800Mhz PowerPC G4 with 768 MB DRAM

(ii) La Cie DVD-RW (Porche Design, no less)

Apple only supports DVD playback on Macs with a built-in DVD/CD drive (OK, I can dig that).

Therefore I installed VLC, which is fine for playing low quality DVD recordings.

However, on attempting to play SpongeBob/SquarePants Halloween Special this evening (for my 3 year old daughter I hasten to add) the image was hopelessly choppy, as was The Incredibles and my wife's DVD on Understanding Men (don't even go there).

I suspect my CPU is lacking Viagra (and no doubt me).

However, La Cie recommend a High Powered USB connection (which will no doubt involve inserting a PCI card somewhere in the grey fancy-looking box thing that sits under the monitor).

Does any creative mind out there have anything advice to offer me (and please leave my wife out of the equation)?
 
Well, you're probably plugged into a USB 1.0 connection, unless you've upgraded. I'm surprised it's working at all, to be honest. USB 2.0 is about 5x faster. Assuming you have a G4 Power Mac, you can install a PCI card with USB 2.0.
 
eric2006 said:
Well, you're probably plugged into a USB 1.0 connection, unless you've upgraded. I'm surprised it's working at all, to be honest. USB 2.0 is about 5x faster. Assuming you have a G4 Power Mac, you can install a PCI card with USB 2.0.
Click to expand...
No, I haven't upgraded.

Can you explain how you go about acquiring the required PCI card and driver?
 
eric2006 said:
USB 2.0 is about 5x faster.
Click to expand...

I agree with the rest of the remarks, but USB 1.1 is maximum of 12 Mb/S, and USB 2 is maximum of 480 Mb/S, which works out to 40x! faster (theoretically, anyway) Then, 'No wonder my DVD is a little choppy!'

If you have OS X, and fairly up-to-date, you shouldn't need to add any drivers for a hi-speed USB 2 card. A decent shop for computer goods should have several to choose from. Something from Belkin should work, but other brands should be OK, too, even if sold for PC use. :)
 
I've used 3 different USB 2.0 cards, all generic windows PCI cards, and they worked automatically, with no configuring. I only had trouble with a firewire/USB combo card, which caused my Power Mac to stop from going to sleep. USB 2.0 is 480 mb/s, which is 40x faster, sorry. I was thinking wireless b/g..
 
Thanks fellow creative experts. Your advice is duly noted, and as always very much appreciated.

P.S. Do you know where you can hold of the the DVD Understanding Women?
 
A second to what's been said, i bought a generic 5 port usb 2 card over the counter from a highstreet store for about £10 and it worked perfectly. It did list OSX compatibility mind you.
 
A workaround would be to rip the DVD using handbrake to an MPEG-4 file. This process of course takes quite a while, so it's not suited for the "I now want to watch this DVD" cases, but with handbrake, you can make sure the movie fits on a CD-R, the quality will be good etc. - but a USB-2 card certainly should fix it as well.
 
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