Realmagic PLUS + G400 Max

[pearle]

Has anyone used these two cards together succesfully? I'm thinking of buying the Realmagic plus dvd decoder...just wondering if there are any problems with the combination.


thanks.

[harrisl]

I am using the Hollywood Plus with the G400Max under windows 2000 with no problems using their beta driver.

[Pelle]

I use them under Win95; if I use the H+' loop-through to get DVD on the monitor, the whole system crashes when changing refresh-rates (like, when switching resolution). But since the G400 has a far better DVD on the monitor anyway, I just connect the H+ to the TV and don't use the loop-through.


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Asus P2B, P2-350, 128 MB, Matrox G400 Max, Sigma Hollywood Plus, Haupauge WinTV, Adaptec 2940, AVM A1, Soundblaster AWE 64
IBM DCAS, IBM DDRS, Quantum Fireball, Seagate Barracuda, Iomega Zip, Phillips 2600, Hitachi GD-2000, Toshiba 3401TA

[KaosDG]

I used them both successfully under 9x, NT4 and win2k... no problems at all except driver issues with the older NT4 RealMagic drivers. But its quite good.

[Goc]

I am not sure why you really need the Hollywood + card with G400MAX already in your system. The only reason that occured to me is that digital coax audio out, but don't use it for video, since G400 gives same or better quality and you don't have to use that sucky passthrough cable that screws up the picture on your monitor...
Get a soundcard with digital output if Dolby Digital is what you are after, but use the MAX for video...
And to answer your question, the combo works fine. I've tried it with G400MAX, Vanilla 16Mb SH and G200 8Mb SDRAM and didn't have any problems, if you forget about sucky picture quality on your monitor...

[KaosDG]

Actually Goc, I use it only cuz it was on my system. ;-)

I have a stand-alone dvd player...

[pearle]

I want to get a Realmagic PLUS because it supports more hardware dvd features than the G400. The G400 is an accelerator, not a complete DVD decoding solution. Additionally, from my personal exposure to both solutions, the Realmagic PLUS seems to have better video quality.

[KaosDG]

pearle: It has very nice quality in TV Out, and very good quality in fullscreen modes.
Also, because it's a DVD Decoder (not an accelerator) you can actually do other things while watching a DVD with little to no performance hits. (I sound like a salesman now)

The best part about it is that RealMagic has an Infrared remote for the player, for like 20 bux. (Only win9x, for now though)
that itself is pretty darn cool.
(you can see it at www.realmagic.com)

[Pelle]

Additionally, the H+ supports PAL 60, has a pretty good NTSC->PAL conversion and there exist hacks to disable regio-codes and Macrovision