Hi guys, Everytime i watch a movie with PowerDvd, the background downloads slow down and eventually stop. I run XP -pro and PDVD 4. Anyone else experience this ?

yup!! i sure do! Just like you this has happened to me in the past with watching movies on with WMP8. But it mainly happens when i cut a cd......all internet activity ceases until burning stops. I did a previous post: http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/13606.html But as yet no answers. If anyone knows what is happening then id certainly like to know! :-) Thanks

It's simple, you're using a LOT of CPU time when you run Power DVD. Are you surprised that it might affect the rest of the computer? If you press ctrl alt del then the "performance" tab, you can see CPU usage. Try it with power DVD running and not running, and you'll see why things slOOOOOw down. John

John, its not that simple. I personally think it is to do with MS policy of making activities such as burning take 100% of the resources. This NEVER used to happen in win98 so why would they make it happen in XP? It is an operating system policy im certainly not happy with.

DVD usage is different than most applications in that it has to use most of the clock cycles to work seamlessly. I agree that you may not see this in '98, but then thats what happens when you've got a different operating kernal as well. If you hunt around in XP, you will find that you can still prioritise the apps. to get more performance from the net at the expense of the DVD performance. Good Luck, John Good Luck