beginner, give support please

[Bibolo]

i decided to connect my g450 dual head to my tv set to enjoy thequality of my dvd rom directly on the tv screen, when i bought the card it was given me a cable with two connectors, a s-video, that i cannot use because my tv has not s-video input, and a video out one, it's a rca plug, so i managed to use a rca scart adaptor to connect the card to my tv, finally i solved it, but nothing works, the screen was black at all.
How do i need to set the matrox dual head system to get images on my tv screen? i have set up dual head as clone, but nothing works. In your opinion the cable that has been given me is capable to do waht i'm wondering to make?

Thanks in advance for your help.
p.s. : where can i find a good freeware dvd software player?

[Tempest]

Hi Bibolo, and welcome to the forums.

It would help if you told us which country you live in (so we know if your TV is PAL or NTSC) and what operating system you use? Did you install the drivers that came with the card, or did you download newer ones from the Matrox website?

I'm not sure, but to use a SCART adapter you might have to connect both the S-Video and the RCA to the SCART adapter. This is because if you use an adapter, the colour information will travel in RCA, and the picture (in black and white) in the S-Video cable. This could explain why you have no picture - you might currently only be sending the colour information to the TV.
Your TV might also have some kind of settings for choosing the format of TV input, especially if it is of the newer kind (which I don't think it is if it only supports SCART)?

Anyways, if you are using a newer version of the Matrox PowerDesk drivers, then you probably need to assign a hotkey for DualHead Clone in order to turn it on. For DVD viewing the DVDMax function is recommended though, as it doesn't need a hotkey (DVDMax activates automatically when an overlay is created by a program such as Media Player or a DVD player) and gives a better picture quality.

I don't know of any freeware DVD players for Windows, but PowerDVD is reasonably priced and has pretty good quality in my experience.

ps. I hope you realize that this is not the official support forum of Matrox Graphics, just a forum for people using Matrox graphic cards. If you want to contact Matrox's official support, the right forum is http://forum.matrox.com/cgi-bin/mgaforum/Ultimate.cgi

[Dr Mordrid]

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.....

The AVID forums are full of people falling all over themselves & giddy over DualHead/DVDMAX......

Dr. Mordrid

[Sciascia]

AVID forums??? Where at?

I need some help, I got a Mac based Newscutter that just went down last week and I need some help. I don't have my ACSR training yet so support is very limited and I realy need to get it back up.

What AVID system is using the Matrox cards, usually in the past we would pull the Matrox card out of the IBM Intellistation and throw in one of those Revolution Number 9 cards. Didn't care for them, but they worked pretty well. Of course they may have gone out of business or something. Wouldn't surprise me, AVID and their proprietary stuff has been a real issue over the years.

[Bibolo]

Hi guys and thanks for the wellcome that you have given me. I'm living in italy, so my system is pal, the european standard, i'm using all the software given me with tha card, i have connected to the scart adapter only the "video out" plug using a rca cable, but i haven't any result. I'm a bit sad, today i'm gone to rent a dvd, i got "the fast and the furious" i watched it on my pc screen, it's a good screen but it's just 17inch. My syustem is win98se, i tried using dual head clone, but i haven't asigned any "hot keys", the player that i use is matrox dvd player. I think that i'll have to try using the dvd max function, to see how it actives the second video out.

[Dr Mordrid]

On AVID's site.

The posts are about using DVDMAX in a system with XPress DV. Most of 'em like it. The rest seem too lazy to adjust the output to their liking.

Dr. Mordrid