DVD and G400 max?

[ccoltas]

I have a G400 max, Asus K7M with an AMD 550 and a Pioneer scsi 6x DVD player.

I am going to rent a DVD and try it out. What should I expect?

[ayoub_ibrahim]

depends on if you have any DVD playback software installed!

[This message has been edited by ayoub_ibrahim (edited 18 December 2000).]

[ccoltas]

That's cool. I'll be using the Matrox DVD software that came with my G400 max. Of course I could update it if there's any updates out there, or patches. I got this thing like in Jan of 2000.

How is the dual-head playback to a TV? Is it any good?

[Maggi]

Originally posted by ccoltas:
...
How is the dual-head playback to a TV? Is it any good?
...

Nope ... it's excellent !!!

[Grego]

Maggi I totally agree on that!

About upgrades, I think some negotiations is going on between Matrox and Ravisent about providing a cheaper upgrade for the g400 owners, I have seen some posting on the support fori on Matrox's own site - but so far no new info

You might wanna visit www.7thzone.com for an even cheaper upgrade

[ccoltas]

Right, but do you need a really good high quality TV for the DVD output to look good or what? My TV is 12 years old and using it as a dual-head second desktop looks horrible. I can't read a bloody thing!

Do you need a really high end TV for the DVD to look good or what?

[Maggi]

well, the better your TV, the greater the benefit from feeding it with DualHead ...

On my Sony 28" 16:9 TV for example, I can read my icon's texts up to 1024x768 when using s-video connectors. When using composite, I'd have to drop the res down to 800x600 to maintain readability.

[Grego]

I get perfect playback with my current system. With my old system featuring a K6-3 450 picture quality was also perfect, but because of the not so powerful cpu there was some stuttering once in a while but nothing serious.

The dvd-player supplied with the g400 is quite good, so the quality should be great.



------------------
System:
Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1004.c
AMD Thunderbird 800@840 fsb 105
SBLive retail with liveware 3.0
Matrox g400 MAX
LG Flatron 795FT 17" monitor
IBM 13.5 GB 7200 hdd
Pioneer 103-s dvdrom
Win98 1.st edition
directx 7.0a
128mb pc133 cas2

[IcedEarth]

Well, I have a PII-350 with 128Meg RAM and a G200. DVD's run very smooth on my system so I guess you should have no problems at all.

[ccoltas]

Cool. I am in the middle of watching MATRIX right now. A friend called so I stopped it. I like the DVD playback. I only once saw a distortion and the rest is great.

I am trying it out on a new 19" monitor but I'm not liking it so far. Its great for the DVD, but right now its blurry text wise. I've used a 14" all year and it was .28 dot pitch and looked sharp compared to this .25 dot pitch monitor. I don't get it. This monitor also looks blurry compared to the 17" .25 I used before.

Maybe its because the montitor is bigger? I don't get it. I hate returning stuff.

[alessandro]

Matrox DVD Player sound is NOT so good.
I can't get a decent bass sound from it.
Just look in the read.me file:

"NO EXTENDED AUDIO SUPPORT
MPEG-2 extended audio is not supportedin this release. MPEG-2 audio will playback in stereo mode only, with reduced volume."

The drivers are from May 17, 1999 so MATROX GIVE US a Cinemaster 2000 upgrade!!!!!!

------------------
Athlon Thunderbird 1.1Ghz@1.2~1.3+GHz Socket A 256Kb,Asus A7V dipswitches,GlobalWin FOP32-1 heatsink,GlobalWin 802 Advance ATX Case, 17" Sony Multiscan 200PST,128MB Crucial PC133 CAS=2,Matrox Millenium G400 MAX 32MB 5ns SGRAM,IBM Deskstar 75GXP 15Gb UltraATA/100, Quantum Firebal EL 10.2Gb,Hewlett Packard DeskJet 970Cxi,Sound blaster Live!,Cambridge Soundworks 5.1,Creative PC-DVD 5X,CDR-RW Ricoh MP7040S@MP7060S(Tweaked from 4x--->6x with no problem),Adaptec SCSI 2920C,Diamond SupraExpress 56e PRO,Iomega Zip Drive.


[This message has been edited by alessandro (edited 19 December 2000).]

[ccoltas]

Have you ever used a software DVD player that was on a DVD you rented or bought? I used the one that was on the MATRIX DVD that I rented and it was pretty cool. It was called EasyPC. I uninstalled it for some crazy reason. Come to think of it I haven't actually used the Matrox/Ravisent one.

[Rags]

The "EasyPC" one is, I believe, called "PCFriendly" and it isn't really a player, you still need to have installed a player for this to work.

Rags

[Snowfly]

Can anyone tell me what resolution I can watch dvd's on my sony vega?
I'm waiting for my dvd to come in and wanna how high i can go

------------------
ABIT BXR2
P3 450@525 256RAM
G400DH32MB 190-142

[Maggi]

Originally posted by Snowfly:
Can anyone tell me what resolution I can watch dvd's on my sony vega?
I'm waiting for my dvd to come in and wanna how high i can go

[*] 720x576 in PAL[*] 720x486 in NTSC

... disappointing, isn't it ?

Cheers,
Maggi