Anyone know if ATI 9700 Pro with TV connected can be used 4 RT Preview?

[jeepman]

I am probably going to purchase MSP 7.0, and I am wondering if my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro will be of use. I can have a monitor connected, and also have TV through the S-Video out. How will I know if that will be considered a secondary display by MSP?

Thanks.

[Kris1]

I asked for ATI compatibility some time ago and according to Jack Hu, it should work, though I've been unsuccesful so far in doing that too. I've just started looking at it though, so I might still stumble accross the solution. I'll tell you as soon as I find something, in the mean time any hints are welcome.

Kris

[Kris1]

Got it

It took me a couple of minutes, beeing essentially an Nvidiot when it comes to VGA cards with a soft spot for Matrox due to the years they brought me pleasure. (though keeping an open mind, and accepting ATI's technical dominance at this point in time).

1) you MUST have Catalyst 3.1, no other will do.
2) you of course also must download the appropriate Control Panel soft.
3) hook your composite screen to the 2e output, power it and start your pc.
4) in Display properties, click "advanced" and go to the tab "displays". The "TV out" has two blue buttons : the right side one activates the "Clone" mode. Do select that, the result should be a clone of your Desktop on the composite monitor.
5) now go to the tab "Overlay". There you can select "THEATER MODE" by the Properties choice. Select that one. It's something like Matrox's DVDMax feature in terms of feature.
6) you're ready !

Now when you start MSP7.0, you can select "dual head" as Instant Playback target, and the moment you start Instant Playback, you have full screen analogue out in RT. Works excellent. (Thanks Jack for the confirmation last week, otherwise I wouldn't have kept looking for it and simply would've dismissed it as a "Matrox Only" feature).

Hope this helps.
Kris
-------------

[Kris1]

I've done a couple of tests now.

1) 9700 no problem, neither with the 9500. (DX9 core)
2) 9000 no problem (DX8 core)
3) 8500LE + 9100 : "squinted". Somehow, the picture looks wrong in terms of aspect ratio, no matter what I do. I remember I've read something once about a problem in the Theater Chip on the 8500 series, but don't know enough about ATI's products to clearly identify this problem. Haven't been able so solve it.

Thus, new cores (9000, 9500 and 9700), no problem, 8500 and 9100 tests inconclusive.

[KRSESQ]

Does TV output with those units still have the black borders around the image?

This was my main beef with the Radeon 7500 All-In-Wonder that I tested a while back. Couldn't get rid of those black borders when outputting to tape, no matter what.

Kevin

[Kris1]

The 9x00 don't have a border anymore, but as said, I've got troubles getting a good result on the ATI's with the separate Theater chip (8500 and 9100).

Note : I had installed Tweak3D, and one of the things this thing unlocks is the Overscan capabilities of all Theater-equipped ATI's. As such, I don't know what the result would've been without this little program, but I'm looking at a clean, black-borderless screen on the 9000, 9500 and 9700 too.

ATI is not the turf I dwell on too much, so my knowledge is limited and I have to try and do everything before I can make a statement. At least you know I've really tried it myself. Just to make sure, and have a better way to judge the imagequality, I dragged my 4:3 28" BlackLine Grundig to my PC (a standby-set, long story, nearly threw it away once, but it gives an excellent picture _WHEN IT WORKS_) and switched channels from AV-in to "snow-no channel" just to make sure the screen was completly filled during RT playback. It is, and it looks great.

Hope this helps,
Kris

[LvR]

Kris 1

My searching skills must be up the creek .............just cannot find a copy of "Tweak3D" anywhere.

Can you post a link to the source of that tool please?

[Kris1]

Nah, It's me beeing dislectic I guess.

http://www.rage3d.com/r3dtweak/

Sorry for the confusion. As I said, I'm an Nvidiot.

Also please note, the screen is _ony borderless_ when doing video playback, IE, when video data is played back on the analogue port like in Instant Play. Otherwise, I still had a slight black line at the bottom and top of the screen when the cloned display was presenting a copy of screen 1's desktop.

Sorry for the confusion,
Kris

[LvR]

Cheers for the link.

[Hulk]

Kris1,

Just want to confirm:

Black border when using "clone" mode.

No black border using the ATI version of DVDmax mode AND tweak3D program.

I'm looking at a AIW 9700 and that's a lot of money to drop if it can't do what I expect!

Thanks,

Mark

[prophet]

Kris: So for Radeon 9xxx series the overscanned TV image on Theatre mode (a.k.a. DVDMax) is without deformation (on 8500 I had slightly stretched image in vertical direction)?

[Kris1]

... that's the problem I was talking about with the 9100.

It seems this bug is caused by a problem in the cards with a external Theater chip only I've been told.

On the 9500, I could choose to get 4:3 or 16:9 support depending either on my wishes or the type of output of the source material itself. When set correctly, the image looked natural.

[Kris1]

... as I'll be home tomorrow, I can conduct a couple of picture ratio tests if you like. Are your main interests towards 16:9 or 4:3 ?

[prophet]

I am interesting in 4:3 mainly, but 16:9 also does not hurt.. I was told by some ATI technician about this bug in Rage Theatre chip too.

[Patrick]

From a different forum, but...

Might be something in This thread that could be useful.