DVD and Matrox, What do YOU have?

[jedimasta]

I was curious to find out what type of dvd decoders and drives all of you are using and how succesful you've been. I bought a bare drive, matshita 6X and have been very pleased with the DVD clarity and FPS, even w/out a decoder card. I just today ordered a decoder card from creative labs, the ct7160 which from what I understand will work fine with my Marvel G200 as a friend of mine has been succesful. Anyone else have any feedback on this card or others.

In case you read this to find out what will and won't work, I found out the hard way that any STB dvd decoder cards will NOT work with any MGA based cards... That's my good deed for the day.

[cpld005]

Not using a decoder card, don't need it. I have a Toshiba 6X DVD drive and it works beautifully as is.

[Zypher]

I have an older dxr2 decoder card. Its tv-out quality blows goats compared to the max'es. The dvd quality looks pretty much the same to me, each is different, none is better IMO. If you factor in the passthrough...the dxr2 is worse. The only advantage I could see is cpu util. I don't really care though, I might check email or surf real quick in the middle of a dvd, but I won't play Halflife during a movie for sure

YMMV, but if the g400 is fine now, don't bother with a decoder.

[jedimasta]

Heh, Half Life during a movie. What? Don't you have the attention span or are you missing the extra pair of eyes on the side of your head!

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JÊÐî /'\å§tå

-“Artificial Intelligence has got nothing on Natural Stupidity!”

[Adrian Hensler]

I have a G200.
I use various software decoders; and for the longest time; the cinemaster decoder was the best by far. Great sound; great picture. But some of the other decoders have hammered out some of their problems. The very newest 1.2.97 version of WinDVD is pretty good. The newest PowerDVD 2.0 is also pretty good.
I also bought a "MagicStar Decoder" which is actually a Hollywood+ card.
Not exactly a stellar product. The only reason I bought it was for the TV-out abilities; which are quite nice. But the quality of the playback on screen pretty much blows compared to the software decoding. And the passthrough cable... I removed that in a hurry due to the terrible degradation of the signal. Text at 1024x768 was so fuzzy I could barely read it. Also, it cuts off the edges of the movie due to TV overscan, and there is no way to adjust this via software.
Another oddity; the CPU usage is about the same with the software decoder as the hardware decoder. Go figure.
So I happily use the software for monitor playback; and use the hardware for TV-out. I think I should have saved my money for a new video card rather than the H+ decoder card. Maybe the new drivers later this month will help.

---Adrian

[mlody]

I agree with Adrian. In this time almost every new video card has a lot of power to handle DVD decoding with out any lose compare to old creative DVd decoder or real magic!!! So don't bother you and forget about Hardware decoding unless you really need TV out if so you can buy cheap stand alone DVD decoder (~$300) and you can sell you DVD-Rom and forget about all this tricks and you don't have to worry about software/hardware decoding buying new video card.

[Kruzin]

Originally had a G200/Dxr2 kit. Hated the Dxr2 passthrough.

Using just a G400 DH now...no nead for a separate decoder with this..TVout looks great, and the DVDMax function on G400 rules

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P2-450(112*4.5=504), Asus P2B (1010), 128meg pc100, MillenniumG400 32meg DH (5.??), 3com 3c905b-tx, SB Live!value, Dual USR 56k Sporsters, WB 8.4&6.4 UDMA, CL PC-DVD, Mistumi CD-RW

[jedimasta]

I just find that normally the G200 TV-out is great for games or recording my animations for demo reel purposes but I find that the dvd out is a little blurry. Besides I got the creative labs CT7160 decoder for 35 bucks. I'm hoping the SVideo out is much better quality. I'm glad I opened this topic, I'm learning a lot.

[VooDooD]

I can't get the CT7160 to work with my G400 Max. I don't think the VGA feature connector is compatible?!?!?

[Grego]

Im using the g400 dh with a 6x Pioneer 103-s and it works perfectly - Im very satisfied with it!

[Duke]

Hi.

Maybe my DVD-Solution is the oddest in the world .

I'm using a Dxr2 for DVD-playback. But because I'm usually looking Anime-DVDs recorded in NTSC-Format, I have to convert them to PAL. I'm living in Germany btw. The NTSC-to-PAL-conversion of the Dxr2 is really ugly. It gives a flickery, unstable picture. If you are about to be reading subtitles you're going to become nuts.
So I loop the NTSC-Signal through my Marvel G200 which is doing the NTSC-to-PAL-thingie.

Effect: Crystal-clear and stable picture on my TV.

The reason why I'm not going with Software-Decoders is because they somehow cannot address the Overlay-Functionality of my G200, thus ain't displaying subtitles.

...now I wait for a Marvel G400

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I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere...

[This message has been edited by Duke (edited 09-12-1999).]

[Kruzin]

VooDooD-
I told you the other day in a thread you started...that is NOT a standard VGA feature connector on the G400 or G200. Those conectors are ONLY for Matrox add-ons...

[Blade Runner]

Hello, do you know how to make the cinemaster and the matrox player to work together? because the picture quality on the monitor is great with the matrox player but I have a single head G400 (
and when I use the cinemaster card, on the tv it's good, but on the monitor really ugly (

[Zypher]

I'm sure if I did, either the movie or HL would seriously chalk up

[Tom]

I have the PioneerDVD-103S and a G400MAX
and they work perfectly together.

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MatroxG400MAX, AsusP2B-L(rev.1010), Celeron266(SL2QG@400MHz), 128MB PC100 SDRAM, QuantumFireball(ST)6.4, ADI MicroScanG66(19"), MonsterSoundMX200, PioneerDVD103-S(6x,32x), MotorolaCyberSURFR(cable), Windows98(4.10.1998+SP1)