WinTV card and duel heads (Hiag maybe?)

[Elvon]

I have a Hauppauge WinTV card and a G400 Max. It works perfectly, but then I went a pluged in a old second monitor thinking I could use it as a TV. Nope.

You can move the window containing the TV signal on to the second screen, but the actual picture stays on the first screen. Mirroring the postion of the window on the second head.

I know that the Hauppauge WinTV card bypasses the CPU and writes straight to the video card, that would explain the TV signal staying on the first screen.

Is there a way round this? I am aware that this is not really the fault of the G400, hense the fact I have not emailed straight to matrox tech support. I don't think Hauppauge will know anything about the G400 so I have not emailed them.

I have the latest drivers/patches.

Any help would be great,
Thanks,
Elvon

[Diddl]

There is a program called 'Primary' installed with WinTV. Select 'Force Primary' instead of 'Allow Overlay' and you should be able to see something on the second monitor.

[Elvon]

It was already on force primary.

Did this work for you? I have a BT878 chip, perhaps you have one of the older WinTV cards with the BT848 chip?

Also: changing it to Allow Overlay didn't help, as when the Window was moved to the second screen the box went pink and no signal came through on either head and the application had to be restarted to get it to display the TV signal.

Thanks for the reply,
Elvon

[AlanOgilvie]

Elvon,

Think yourself lucky that you were able to get the Hauppauge card working at all with your G400!! I spent a couple of frustrating weeks talking to Hauppauge and Matrox tech support, since any attempt to initialize the WinTV card in my system resulted in instant lockup. Yes, I had the latest drivers for both cards. Yes, I had the latest system BIOS. Yes, I had the latest G400 BIOS. Yes, I made sure there were no IRQ conflicts. Still nothing. My system is as standard as they get (Chaintech 6BTM board with Intel 440BX chipset & Award BIOS). In the end, I had to return the Hauppauge card...

[CrazyBee]

Ooooo... i seriously doubt it will transfer over to the second screen with that card. reason being, it uses video overlay for the TV out. Like the DxR2 DVD card.. it bypasses your video card and outputs the video stream to the window for it. Hence, it will only work on that bypassed video signal.

Now, i am pretty sure the Matrox add-on for video input will transfer over since thiers goes through a header on the G400 so the card will be able to do what it has to do to move the window from one box to the other.

CB

[Elvon]

"CrazyBee Ooooo... i seriously doubt it will transfer over to the second screen with that card. reason being, it uses video overlay for the TV out"

Yes, but you can change that to the primary desplay mode, which Diddl said worked for him.

AlanOgilvie, I just puged it in and it worked straight off. I'm using Windows 98 SE.

Elvon

[Diddl]

Evlon, I tried to reproduce the configuration and of course also could not get it working

My default configuration is Clone/Zoom/DVDMax, with TV connected. Did some experiments with dual monitor config after initially getting my G400 and seem to have mixed up the dual head modes that worked/didn't work.

After again spending some more time on this I found the following:
With overlay mode I get the pink window (as expected). With primary mode the video is simply always positioned on the primary monitor, relative to the postion of the video window on the secondary monitor. If the window is visible on both monitors (half/half), the part of the video that should be on the second monitor is displayed on the left side of the primary monitor. I can imagine that winTV simply uses PCI bus-master tranfer to the video memory on just one card. Maybe this could be handled in their drivers to also support the video memory of the secondary card (or dualhead). Ideally they should split the video in two part and do a transfers to both cards.

What works ok with WinTV is DVDClone/Zoom. Selecting overlay I get the pink window. Selecting primary I get the video. DVDMax (requires overlay) does not work. TV-picture simply freezes. Probably because it uses an overlay mode incompatible with DVDMax.

Btw, I have a relatively new WinTV Theater with BT878.

AlanOgilvie, sorry to hear that you never got it working. Don't think however that its a principle problem between G400 and WinTV. Like I posted to you earlier, my instalation was plug and play. Also Elvon did not seem to have problems (or did you?). As usual whit home cooked PC's the change that everythings works well is about as big as the change you end up with some kind of unlocatable hardware conflict.

[This message has been edited by Diddl (edited 25 October 1999).]

[Elvon]

That fits in with what I'm seeing. Is there any way to get the WinTV card to do the nmormal thing and run through the CPU and OS?

Elvon

P.S. I had no probs getting it to work.

[AlanOgilvie]

I wasn't alone in failing to get the Hauppauge WinTV card and the G400 co-operating: another MURC user (BugAlugs) had the same problem: in his case, he had to disable G400 busmastering to get the TV card working (though he was using a different motherboard...)

On the positive side, since returning the Hauppauge card, I've learnt a lot about AGP 1x/2x, busmastering, registry hacks, badly-seated cards, etc. just by reading these forums, so I may be tempted (or foolish enough ) to try getting the Hauppauge card again, and applying some of my new-found knowledge to the task of getting the two cards working together again. I'll just have to set aside a few evenings (again)...

[elsub]

I've got a miro pcTV with a bt848 chip.
I'm in the dvd max mode with a tv connected.

When I use the tv software provided with the miro the picture is frozen on the telly.
However I'm able to use the infamous MoreTV (ver 2.2) in either the window-overlay or full-screen-overlay mode, it works both on the monitor an the TV.

[Elvon]

I tried MoreTV. We version I had had software decycripting which meant I got the sports channel, but the program is all in German.

Yes, I did german in high school, but I'm not that good. Any pointers.

Elvon