I have a powerbook, when i put a dvd in it opens idvd, then starts playing but its all chunky and unclear and just terrible. what is going on? do i need to delete some preference files to reset idvd or something?

Odd. How many background applications do you have running? Some CPU / GPU intensive applications may be causing DVD Player to jump, causing distortion.

What kind of PowerBook do you have?

I'd ask you to take a screenshot, but DVD Player (not iDVD... that's used to author DVD's) won't allow for screenshots while a DVD is being played (although there are hacks).

its a power book g4, bla bla bla 512 megs ram, 128mb video card. its not even 8 months old hteres no reason it is the cpu or anything..

and vlc works to play them but idvd is better and id liek to use it. but... yea.... and its idvd 4.5

Have you ran permissions? What version of OS X?

mac os x 10.4

just updated to it. still does it like it did in the last version of osx...