Naruto playback degredation...

I'm not sure if this is the right place...But, I have a question hoping someone can help. I backed up all my Naruto episodes onto CDs in the case that my system decided to give me the good old finger (which happened to be today). After reinstalling XP and SP2, WMP 10, and all that necessary crap...I dug out the Naruto CD box to watch while I am dl'ing drivers and updates. I noticed that the quality of the videos are now considerably crappier than last I had remembered. The only thing I haven't installed is the DivX codec...but I figured XviD was able to decode that...Also I swapped out vid cards from FX 5200 (stepped on it and cracked in half...) to a gf4 ti4400. Don't think the vid cards make a whole lot of difference here. Ah hell, I dunno if I am seeing stuff but it's like watching a small res video through a 56k connection blown up to full screen. I dl'ed a few first episodes to test and it's the same result. Anyone know what I'm missing? Some help would be great.

Thanks

P.S. DivX dl'd while I was typing this and play back didn't get any better.