I have had my PS2 ever since it came out back in October 2000, but I just started recently using it as a DVD player. Everything is fine and the sound is great with an optical cable, but whenever I come to the layer change in the movie it keeps pausing throughout the rest of the movie every couple of seconds and is unwatchable. If I stop the movie and skip to a chapter after the layer change, everything will play fine throughout the rest of the movie. What is the problem? Is it because my PS2 is an older model? I have heard that the new drivers on the PS2 remote will fix this problem. Also, the pan & scan doesn't work, not that I would ever want to use it.

I was in the same boat as you were. I have a launch PS2 as well, and certain DVD's were a bit flaky when I played them: like T2:UE gave me disc read errors all the time. But I bought the remote with the new drivers, and now every DVD I've put in there works just fine now.

With layer changes, I noticed that mine pauses (sometimes as long as 2-3 seconds) but it never becomes unwatchable or anything, just a nuisance that it takes so long...

I would get the remote and load the new drivers. the remote also makes the PS2 into more of a dvd player since you now have a remote instead of using the controller

Since you say it does play fine when you go right to the second layer i will rule out a laser problem having trouble with reading the dual layer.