Matrox g400 is the best software dvd card right now

[Tony Lai]

I don't know how many of you are interested but the g400 is now recognised by dedicated home theater enthusiasts as the #1 software dvd card available.

The previous #1 was the long defunct Chromatic Research Mpact2.

I've looked over these forums quickly but I don't see much reference to dvd performance.

I use a g400, a Vortex2 digital soundcard and WinDVD to produce a progressive dvd image thru a vga theater projector.

The OEM Cinemaster software is not as good as WinDVD which is smooth and faster and provides better ac3/dts digital support thru the Vortex and Live! cards.

The geforce and voodoo3 are reasonable cards for the purpose of dvd playback however the g400 has much smoother performance even though it lacks motion compensation and IDCT.

I'm unsure of the policy of this forum linking to other sites but you are free to check out the high praise and good support you will get from the people at AVSForum.com.
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi

The emphasis on this forum is pc-dvd performance in a home theater environment so you won't get all that much interest in game issues etc.

Peace,

T.

[SteveC]

Cool...
Now, where can I get WinDVD then...?

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Cheers,
Steve

"The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one", he said.

[SteveC]

My god! those people over in that av forum are rich!!!

...Some of us here are using $2,000 to $10,000+ high resolution displays, so that we can display high resolution video. For example, I paid a few thousand dollars for my NEC...

I wish I were one of them....

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Cheers,
Steve

"The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one", he said.

[This message has been edited by SteveC (edited 26 November 1999).]

[Le Bodge]

He's right you know! Check out http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/001175.html

Le B

[Himself]

The G400 also has the bonus advantage of being able to use third party utilities that upconvert non-16:9 letterbox DVD's for a 16:9 display. This is an advantage that the computer hardware DVD decoders do not have.

Hmmmm?

[DuRaNgO]

cool, that Pioneer 10x dvd slot load I've asked my wife to get me for xmas should be a treat, I'm sure I'll be searching for tips on getting it up and running
jim

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PIII-500mhz @ 620 ! with an Abit BE6 mobo
128mb pc-100
Mill G400 (YAHOO!!!) 32mb @ 165/205 with MGATweak-410mhz, (2.5, 2, 2.5), PD 5.30 & bios 1.5-22
Maxtor 14.3 gb Uata66 hdd
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
32 lbs. of fans, heatsinks and aluminum ductwork
3DMark Result 5954.69 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed 9325.69 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score 2791.72 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race 65.07 FPS
Game 2 - First Person 54.89 FPS
Fill Rate 268.79 MTexels/s

[Himself]

If you are concerned about region encoding, there is a one wire solder hack for the drive to disable write on the flashrom.
http://www.dvdutils.com/