flic playback
Odds are you have purchased Pentiums equipped with MGA or equally
shameful Windows accelerators. A number of manufacturers have begun skimping
on DOS and VESA modes, which results in slow / non-existent support for movies
and multimedia games.
If you do have an MGA (Matrox) and cannot return it, you can purchase
additional VGA cards ($100 tops) and disable the MGA's VGA emulation. This
allows the computer to find your $100 VESA card before using your $500 SVGA
card.
If you need details, let me know via e-mail.