Frustrating - freezing film playback problems

Ok, first of all I should say that I was one of the many I saw on these forums who was having big problems with the 10.6.8 OS with my Mac, the too numerous to count problems of freezing/crashing/hanging being one of the reasons I recently downgraded to 10.5.8 (archive and Install). So far, it seems to have been running a lot better, but I will be working back up to the 10.6 (maybe not 10.6.8 though) maybe starting today. I may return to the forums to add my voice to the 10.6 problems very soon i predict...
However, one problem (which was also there with 10.6.8 and became another reason to downgrade) is that all my downloaded films/series were suffering from incredibly frustrating freezing problems (most of them are avi. files) - I can't complete a full episode or film of anything. The film will reach a point, and freeze - for many minutes or so long, sometimes I have waited 20+ mins, that I simply exit the application. Initially, I thought this was maybe a VLC problem, but this also happens with films I burned to DVD many months ago (and which I have enjoyed countless times without any problems with playback before). The film will reach a certain point (often the same point) and freeze and not continue. Skipping forwards/backwards does nothing as does moving the slider around. The same happens in Quicktime (maybe even worse). Sometimes the critical freeze is preceded by moments of stuttering playback, but these more often than not go back to normal after a few seconds, a minute or so (still annoying though). The only option I have left is to exit the player. Same thing all the time. I had never experienced this problem before on the Mac (well, before 10.6.8 that is) and now all of a sudden both my burned DVDs and my downloaded film/series are suffering these problems, I'm close to tearing my hair out.
It can't be corrupt files because, as I said, burned DVDs that were working fine and I played without problems so many times before, are suffering this problem too, although they tend not to freeze and never recover, they do freeze for many seconds and sometimes a couple of minutes. When I thought it was a VLC problem, I went through all the options there (deleting the preference files, resetting the cache, getting the latest version, uninstalling and redownloading) and no joy. I have reset the PRAM (two chimes on startup is it?) ran verify disk, repair disk, verify permissions, repair permissions - I downloaded Onyx and did all this again and again till I was going insane. When I thought it was maybe a lack of disk space, I bought an external hard drive and now have 77GB free on my Macintosh HD and still this happens. I had thought that archiving and installing 10.5 would mean that this problem, like the many other problems I was having with 10.6.8, would correct themselves, but this is now a major frustration for me. When I can't enjoy films I have downloaded or films burned to DVD, when I have so many many times in the past, it makes me mad. This is a basic feature of any computer - Mac or PC surely?
What on earth is going on, can anyone help me please? I feel like I'm going mad here.
2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo
1 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Capacity on Macintosh HD: 232.57 GB
Available on Macintosh HD: 77.61 GB
I am no tech-head as well, so please help!

HI MGD:
Welcome to discussions!
What type of media did you use? Verbatim DVD-R 4x or less seems to work very well.
Len Goff (iDVD Guru)often suggests this:
Suggest you create a disc image and then burn the DVD. File/Save As Disc Image...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=164927
This will isolate any encoding/burning issues you may encounter. Once the disc image is created, double-click the .img and burn the virtual disc that should appear on your desktop, using Toast to burn the DVD. Disk Utility to burn the .img file. Usually, you can select a burning speed in Disk Utility.
There are variations to this process based on which OS X you are using...
Open Disk Utility (in Utilities folder in Applications folder), click on the virtual disc (maybe the .img) in the left-hand window. Click the Burn icon. A new window should drop down and your SuperDrive tray will open after clicking the Burn icon. Insert a recordable DVD. (Verbatim DVD-R preferred by me.) Click the Close button. Wait. Select a burn speed. If you hold your mouse cursor over the pop-up it says: "Select a slower speed to work around burn failures," so select 4x or slower for best results. Then click the Burn button.
-->If the virtual disk selection won't allow you to click the Burn icon, use the .img file instead. This may have changed in 10.3.9 and did change in Tiger.
Also, you can use DVD Player to play the virtual disk to check your iDVD project before burning to DVD. Launch DVD Player. File/Open VIDEO_TS (Open DVD Media... in Player 4.6). Find the VIDEO_TS folder and open that. (The audio folder is for DVD-Audio disks.)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93006
Sue

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