what video card do you have? at the time it was common for the video card to accelerate DVD decoding,
but you will want to use proprietary software (like powerdvd) from the time for that and not VLC
also dvd is mpeg2 afaik.

there are lots of benchmarks that can test l2 speed, or even by the super pi time or any other basic cpu benchmark you can easily notice if l2 is on or not...
sisoft sanda, or the much newer aida64 have l2 cache speed tests that are easy to run on windows

CSS, on top of decoding MPEG your CPU has to unscramble encrypted data stream from the drive? no idea how legit players handle that, I always played ripped files from hdd (DeCSS, file sharing)
you can also try another player, like https://www.smplayer.info is agui for mplayer and mpv

You need MPEG2 acceleration support. It's going to come from either Video Card + Software Player Support, or MPEG2 Accelerator Card + Software Player Support. A cheap cool way to get support is with something like a Creative DXR2.

I don't think VLC is a particularly good choice.
Using a DirectShow-compatible player would give you a better chance to use as much hardware acceleration as possible.
Something like PowerDVD would be a good bet.

I'd bet if your L2 cache wasnt enabled it would be performing slower than the previous P2/400.

PowerDVD does work well on Windows 98SE. It certainly works for playing DVDs on my Pentium II 266 and a Asus M3800 TNT2 M64 graphics card (without stuttering) 🤣 .

One thing you haven't mentioned is the amount of RAM you have. PowerDVD likes to use a lot - on my system Win98SE + PowerDVD use up 194 MB of RAM.

Have you attempted to update the bios ? This might solve the cache issue, isn't it ?

You can check the L2 cache with Everest's memory / cache benchmark.

Lavfilters are great, efficient codecs for use with WMP; they're configurable and I know of no media they can't play. I've never tried them under Win98 but someone apparently was on an old version https://msfn.org/board/topic/153566-windows-9 … y-video-player/

For just DVDs, PowerDVD, as already suggested, seems an obvious choice.

OK, thanks for the advice guys -

I tried PowerDVD 4. It works! No stuttering; everything just plays splendidly. So how about that. I wonder what's hobbling VLC.

I have 544 MB of RAM in this thing (32 MB onboard, plus two 256 MB sticks). Yes, I've limited the file cache so it doesn't die after 512.

I'll look into tools to test the L2 cache. But yeah for now at least, I'm pretty happy with PowerDVD.

The next thing is to see if I can stick a higher-resolution file on a dual layer DVD.

keenmaster486 wrote:

I wonder what's hobbling VLC.

It's a cross-platform solution, which especially in the early years didn't do much to leverage hardware acceleration, because that requires platform-specific APIs.
So on early hardware, VLC is mostly a software solution, and will require a fast CPU.
PowerDVD is based on the DirectShow API, which was the first common API to offer video acceleration via so-called overlays.
So for old hardware, a player like PowerDVD is much better. It can query for specific DirectShow filters that your IHV has included in the video driver package.
On current hardware the difference is smaller. Firstly, modern VLC also supports hardware acceleration reasonably well under Windows. Secondly, CPUs and GPUs are much faster these days, so video playback isn't as critical. Playing DVDs entirely in software is no issue anymore.

Scali wrote:

It's a cross-platform solution, which especially in the early years didn't do much to leverage hardware acceleration, because th […]
Show full quote

It's a cross-platform solution, which especially in the early years didn't do much to leverage hardware acceleration, because that requires platform-specific APIs.
So on early hardware, VLC is mostly a software solution, and will require a fast CPU.
PowerDVD is based on the DirectShow API, which was the first common API to offer video acceleration via so-called overlays.
So for old hardware, a player like PowerDVD is much better. It can query for specific DirectShow filters that your IHV has included in the video driver package.
On current hardware the difference is smaller. Firstly, modern VLC also supports hardware acceleration reasonably well under Windows. Secondly, CPUs and GPUs are much faster these days, so video playback isn't as critical. Playing DVDs entirely in software is no issue anymore.

As I was thinking about it, I figured it was something to this tune. Thanks for clarifying!

I thought Media Player Classic used hardware acceleration and DirectShow filters (I do have the K-Lite codec pack installed), but trying to use MPC results in worse performance than VLC.

keenmaster486 wrote:

I thought Media Player Classic used hardware acceleration and DirectShow filters (I do have the K-Lite codec pack installed), but trying to use MPC results in worse performance than VLC.

PowerDVD also includes some of its own optimized DirectShow filters (which can also be used by Windows Media Player or other DirectShow-applications if configured correctly).
DirectShow itself is no guarantee that things will be optimized and accelerated, but with the right codecs, filters and such, it can be. And PowerDVD does that.

I had a Pentium II @350Mhz (333MHz slightly overclocked) with a card that couldn't accelerate video. With a stripped down Linux (GeeXboX 0.9) I could play DVDs without any troubles, and some DivX (others played as slideshows).

I guess any computer that can do more than 500 MHz should play any DVD without acceleration, and slower computers should work provided they had the right software (PowerDVD) coupled with a supported video card.

Zup wrote:

I guess any computer that can do more than 500 MHz should play any DVD without acceleration

I think that depends a lot on the target resolution. Scaling video is very expensive without acceleration. So playing a DVD at 1024x768 or higher resolution is going to be very CPU-intensive.

Scali wrote:

Zup wrote:

I guess any computer that can do more than 500 MHz should play any DVD without acceleration

I think that depends a lot on the target resolution. Scaling video is very expensive without acceleration. So playing a DVD at 1024x768 or higher resolution is going to be very CPU-intensive.

Does anything from the P3 era NOT have overlay/scaling/YUV support? Even my old Gateway Pentium MMX laptop with C&T 65554 could play low-res video full-screen if I set the right option in VLC. My Dell Lattitude L400 laptop at 500MHz could play 640x480 XVID files scaled to fit the 1024x768 LCD and that only had the mobile version of Rage Pro.

The only problems I can see with playing a DVD on a coppermine CPU is if the DVD drive were connected at USB 1.1 speed then it wouldn't be able to keep up, or if the video player was trying to do proper deinterlacing and output 60hz (but that's usually not the default, much to my dismay)