Anyone ever use a Samsung SD-616T? Please comment

[DVD Enthusiast]

Dell shipped me the Samsung SD-616T in my new Dimension 4600 as the "16X DVD-ROM" option. Ever since I got the system, during DVD movie playback, it randomly will "skip forward" for 1-3 seconds, as if I'd lightly tapped the fast forward button. Extremely annoying and unsettling considering the system is twice as fast as my other PC which plays DVDs flawlessly.

The system is a P4 2.8G 800FSB w/ HT, 512MB DDR400, Audigy Sound Card (latest drivers), Samsung SD-616T (DMA enabled), Radeon 9800 PRO w/ 3.4 CATS, is freshly formatted with WinXP Pro w/ SP1+patches, DirectX 8.1, and PowerDVD XP is the only piece of software installed at this time.

I'm trying to figure out if it is the drive or not. My first assumption was that my system was TOO fast to play DVDs, but that's unlikely. The only other thing I can think of, which is also unlikely is some kind of conflict between the Radeon 9800. But I say unlikely because when it skips, not just the video skips, audio too, and movies stay in sync leading me to believe it is the drive. I tested with 3 different movies that play fine on other drives.

Does anyone know more about this drive, or have any experiences to share? I couldn't find much about this drive on the web, and the only thing I found in these forums was a comment about it having high seek times and not handling Fast Error Skip correctly.

Any help will be GREATLY appreciated! By the way, what exactly is "Fast Error Skip"?


Cheers,

[Bhairav]

I have a Samsung SD616Q and it works fine for me. I'm running it on an Asus A7N8X Delux mobo, with MS Ide drivers, and a Tbird 1133 CPU and 512 MB Kingston RAM. Vidcard is an Asus GF3, with Detonator 44.03 drivers.
High seek times? I think they're pretty okay, but hey.. I use my LiteOn 52246S mostly for my CDrom needs.
Maybe you should downgrade to the 3.2 Catalyst drivers? Or even try some other drivers for your sound card - read http://www.driverheaven.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8874[/u]

for more info.
Else, I think a call to Dell is in your immediate future