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**ccoltas** · 14 January 2001, 17:22

For starters, what, in your opinion and hopefully from experience, is the best SOFTWARE DVD player for minimum noise and cleanest playback for a Matrox G400 MAX equipped PC?

**alessandro** · 14 January 2001, 17:38

Try WinDVD 2000 v2.3:
Best Audio quality of ALL softDVDs
Very good picture quality

**ccoltas** · 14 January 2001, 18:43

OK. Thanks. If I can't find it, where do you suggest I look for it?

**xortam** · 14 January 2001, 20:37

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by ccoltas:
OK. Thanks. If I can't find it, where do you suggest I look for it?</font>

http://www.intervideo.com/

**Grego** · 14 January 2001, 23:28

Imho the Cinemaster which is supplied with the g400 or the new version (which will soon be for sale at the Matrox-shop) produce a great quality.

Im not quite sure what you mean with a frame of noise, but if you mean that the output sometimes is stuttering, I can only say that I have experienced that too. So far the best version of pd for dvdplayback (on my system anyway) is pd5.52, the new versions sometimes stutter, which anoys me.

Your cpu is not too slow, and a hw-decoder will prevent the noise, since I believe it is driverrelated, but I have heard (never seen one in action myself)that most hw-decoders can't produce similar picturequality compared with a running g400.

What os are you running?

------------------
System:
Asus A7V rev. 1.01p bios 1004.c
AMD Thunderbird 800
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

**ccoltas** · 15 January 2001, 16:14

My OS is WIN 98 SE.
The first few movies I watched were fine but now the video sometime isn't great.

The noise I am talking about is hard to explain if you don't know what I mean already. While watching a DVD. You will see a frame of incorrect video. The image will have blocks instead of a proper video image, or horizontal lines making up a person or object, mostly dark objects and only for a brief moment. I think its just one frame that you see goofy. Its kinda almost like Satellite TV distortion. Your know, those blocks. When I first started playing DVD's, I rarely noticed the distortion or noise as it rarely ever happened. Now I notice it because it happens regularly. Its only for a brief milli-second, I'm sure its only one single frame, but it totally ruins the enjotment of the movie. Sometimes there won't be a screw-up for quite a while, but often it happens every 3 to 4 minutes.

Perhaps it is stuttering that I see.

Pd5.52? As in Power-desk? I am using very old Matrox drivers.

I could try a newer certified Matrox driver?

Is there no updates to a newer Matrox DVD player? I couldn't find one on the website! My DVD player is by Ravisent?

Also, my Matrox driver is 5.41. Very old and the BIOS is original. I have downloaded 6.04, 6.10 and 6.21 but haven't installed one of them yet. I was waiting for a reason.

So should I upgrade my Matrox Bios? Display Drivers to a newer version? I could try 5.52 rather than the ones I have.

Any other ideas?

[This message has been edited by ccoltas (edited 15 January 2001).]

**cerb** · 15 January 2001, 16:28

I've always used PowerDVD and just upgraded to PowerDVD 3.0

I had noticed some occasional stuttering when watching it on my monitor at 1280x1024 with other apps running (when I use DualHead Clone on my TV I log in as a different user so there's nothing running in the background and ran at 800x600) but I recently ran PowerDVD's diagnostic utility. I discovered with some surprise that I didn't have DMA turned on for that drive. Turned DMA on, and now I can even play Quake3 with a DVD playing in the background with no stuttering.

I've never seen any frames of static. I'd suggest the latest drivers, plus maybe download the trial versions of other DVD players and see if there's any difference.

Oh, for the record I have never managed to get hardware DVD working on my G400, so mine is all software - about 70% processor utilisation while watching a DVD.

------------------
Athlon 700
ASUS K7V
192Mb RAM
32Mb G400 DH (Win2k driver ver 5.14)
SBLive! Value
26.4GB Total HDD
Actima 8xDVD
LG 32x4x4x CD-RW
CTX VL950T 19"

Purrin' like a kitten.

**cerb** · 15 January 2001, 16:29

Hmm... should update my signature coz I'm not sure if I'm still using 5.14 win2k drivers anymore...

**ccoltas** · 15 January 2001, 18:41

Reservoir Dogs runs well. Not many glitches. Jaws is ok, but some. FREEWAY has poor playback. Lots of glitches. I wish I knew what to call the noise I am seeing. Its like a skip or frame of incomplete video wih horizontal lines or blocks where there should be image.

My Pioneer 303s DVD is SCSI. No DMA for me. I have an PCI Adaptec 2930U running it no probs so far. I just noticed that I have NO DRIVERS loaded for the Pioneer DVD 303s. Kinda weird considering its been working fairly well except for this new noise thing.

Anybody else with ideas?

**xortam** · 15 January 2001, 18:47

You don't use drivers on SCSI devices.
Make sure you don't have any background tasks running.

**Grego** · 16 January 2001, 00:37

I really think that you should upgrade your drivers, PowerDesk v5.52 works wonders for me, and I guess they should be your first pick.

The newest version of Cinemaster (2000), should be available from the Matroxstore by the end of the month for a small amount about 5£ (I think)

As for upgrading the bios on your card, that might help, I have never been able to upgrade the bios, so before you do it its extremely important that you make a bios-recoverydisk, just in case.

Have you tried changing the settings in the DvdMax options-tab? For me it works best having "Scale only on page flip" and "Preserve source cropping" tagged; I havent got any idea as to what they do, but who cares?

btw are your overclocking your g400? If you are I suggest decreasing the speed a little, since your problems could be heat related.

**ccoltas** · 16 January 2001, 10:09

I assumed something I should not have. I haven't been using DVD MAX. I used it before and had disconnected the TV and have not been using DVD MAX. Infact, it was disabled completely. I have a 19" monitor that I will be using soon, but I have been watching my DVD's on a 14" monitor. In full screen or a large window and that resulted in poor playback with lots of errors, stuttering, skips, jitter or whatever you want to call it. Every few seconds I see a frame of poor quality with artifacts in it like blocks or groups of horizontal lines where there should be DVD image.

I reconnected the 20" TV and re-activated Dual-Head/DVD-Max. I no longer have any errors on the 14" monitor or on the TV. I will just leave dual-head on and thats fine with me. Everything plays flawlessly now. No errors. Not one yet. I am watching gladiator as I type this and there are so few screw-ups I have to review it in order to check and i don't see it again. It looks pretty near perfect and I am running dail-up connection and Windows Internet Explorer and Editpad. I'm happy. Simple enough solution for me.

I can't see any reason to persue improving the DVD playback quality unless it appears to be worse during dual-head DVDmax playback.

later and thanks for the hints, I'll try those DVDmax checks on the tab to see if it helps should I have probs again

**ccoltas** · 16 January 2001, 14:56

Everything was fine last night. I try some DVD's today and lo and behold! Errors are back again!!! Rebooted, doesn't fix it. Matrox DVD player even crashed. Looks like film getting stuck in the theatre except you see blocks and lines. My conclusion? Computers suck. I don't know anybody who does not have a PC that crashes and screws up and has to be "fixed" by installing new BIOS's, new drivers, new patches, this and that. Either WINDOWS sucks or PC's are not engineered to work the way they are marketed. They are sold as though you can mix and match peripherals and they all say they work and they rarely do. I guess I'll have to upgrade my DVD drive bios, and my motherboard bios and my VIA 4-in-1 drivers and my Matrox display drivers. But which ones should I use? Who knows? With my equipment, which is not the same as yours, its anyones guess which one will work. (But I will MOST DEFINITELY try the 5.52 FIRST! Thanks for the advice.)

Now I have to go over to a friends house and fix his modem. He's had the PC for 7 months, a K7V with 700, Matrox 400 (my spec of course) and an Aopen modem. Everything has always worked ok modem wise, and now, all of a sudden, every time he clicks on the dial-up, it crashes and reboots.

Compatables? HAH! Yes I am Venting!

Why? because updating bios's, drivers, patches and all this crap is a colossal waste of my time!

[This message has been edited by ccoltas (edited 16 January 2001).]

[This message has been edited by ccoltas (edited 16 January 2001).]

**xortam** · 16 January 2001, 15:06

Buy a Mac.

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