Compatibility with TV tuner cards?

[AlanOgilvie]

Hi Fellow Matrox Users,

Having just bought a system with G400 installed (32MB DH), I have been *very* happy so far with the card. However, I have been unable to get the Hauppauge WinTV Radio (TV & FM radio tuner) card working on this system. I spent a week talking to Hauppauge tech support (making the usual checks (IRQ conflicts, etc., etc.)), but in the end I had to return their card. Have any other G400 users been able to get any TV tuner card working on their system? It's not clear to me whether the problem lies with the TV card (latest drivers), DirectX (6.1), the G400 (latest drivers & BIOS) or my system (450MHz PIII on a Chaintech 6BTM mainboard). I even went as far as reinstalling Win98(!), but the problem (system hang) still occurred. *Please* tell me it's not a G400 incompatibility...

[Helmchen]

Hi Alan!

I've the WinTV/Radio too but only a G200 at the moment, wanted to update next week to G400DH or max and now that???
I really hope it's not the G400!

Have you tried it with another graphic card? I'm using hauppauge since my Mystique1 and never had any problems except some early hauppauge driver issues. And I see no reason why it shouldn't work with the G400. Are you sure there's no other failure in your system? I'm very interested in that!!

Hauppauge phone/email support was terrible (at least 1 1/2 year ago) but when I sent it back to let them check it! They swapped it to a new 878 with remote control only for a handling fee. Great !!

Helmchen

[BugAlugs]

My God,

I've done the same, not satisfied with waiting for G400 I got the WinPCI jobb

Would it work NO, did I try all the stuff YES
did the card work in the other machine with no MAtrox stuff YES

Do I hate the fact that Matrox has let me down YES

any help would be nice

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BH6 (LN Bios)
P3 500 @ 5x112
G400MAX
SB live
ISDN card
Ethernet Card

[AlanOgilvie]

Well, I feel better now that someone else is having the same problem! ;-)

Perhaps I should have expected this sort of problem buying a bleeding edge graphics card! Mind you, I would have thought that, since the G200 seems to have no problems with the Hauppauge cards, Matrox would have done a better job of compatibility testing the G400 with the most popular TV/video/capture cards. Has anyone brought this problem to the attention of Matrox and had a good response? I spoke to Matrox UK during my "testing" of the Hauppauge card, and their tech support guys said they "weren't aware of any problems". Yeah, right, if you don't test these things, you won't be "aware" of the problem. <Sigh...>

Do any Matrox employees follow these forums?

[P. Adelt]

Well, may I add that I didn't have any real problems getting the combination G400/ Hauppauge WinTV Radio to work. I've had a lot of problems with the combination G400/ SB!Live though.
This has been confirmed to be a DirectX issue as the SB!Live software installs another version than is (was?) supported by Matrox.
In any configuration I tested (and I tested a lot!) the neither Hauppauge's nor Matrox' card showed any such problems.

I've written Alan via email and we didn't find any clue to solve it. Maybe you could post the specific configuration (cards, versions etc) that the G400/WinTV won't run in? Waybe that shows up something!?

Regards,
Philipp Adelt
Bielefeld, Germany

[This message has been edited by P. Adelt (edited 09-19-1999).]

[Ron]

Philipp
What version of the SBLive drivers are you using? I found that it was necessary to upgrade to 2.1 to avoid problems with the latest Matrox drivers.

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BX6r2, 128MB PC100, C300A@464, Pan DVDwHollywood+,Pan 4X SCSI CDR, WangDAT, Quantam UDMA HDs, Fireport 40 UW, SBLive!Value (attached to bi-amped TEAC/Hitachi multimedia system), SMC Intel 21041 NIC, etc. G200 Mystique as well.




[This message has been edited by Ron (edited 09-19-1999).]

[Bent]

I don't have a Hauppage TV card, but I have been unable to get my G400 and Hollywood+ to work in my system, and I have been trying for many hours now.

Maybe the problems are the same as for the Hauppage?

On my system, the display becomes garbled or Win98 freezes shortly after/during startup. If I remove and uninstall the Hollywood+ card everything works fine. I have tried Powerdesk v.5.13, 5.21 and 5.25 and the only difference is that with v.5.13 Win98 crashes *everytime* on startup, with the later drivers it is only 95% of the time.

Configuration:
Celeron 300A o/c 4.5x103, Abit BX6-2, SB Live Value with Liveware 2.1, G400 32MB SH with Powerdesk 5.25, and Hollywood+ with v.1.7 drivers (well, would like to :-)).

[jdw]

i have had some problems with the hollywood+ card crashing with data exception in 'smartvsd.vxd'. found out it had to do with older drivers for the promise ultra66 card. when updated drivers, everything worked fine. i am using the diamond dtv2000 tv tuner card and never had any problems with the g400 (driver version 5.25).
current system - pIII 450, aopen ax6bc, wd cavier 20.4, promise ultra66, hollywood+, sony ddu220e dvd, soundblaster live value (liveware 2.1 drivers). if you are using the promise card, make sure you get lastest drivers for it.

[AlanOgilvie]

Hmmmmmmm... the plot thickens...

I noticed that one of the main UK system suppliers is currently selling a system containing the G400 and Hauppauge WinTV PCI card, so I phoned their tech support department to ask how they did this. Can you guess? Yes, they disabled busmastering on the G400! The engineer I spoke to said that he thought that it was not possible to have two cards busmastering in the same system: is he correct??

[Helmchen]

He's WROOONNNGG!
Running my WinTV and G200 both busmastering!
Are you sure you called techsupport??
Sounds more like the janitor! LOL!

Helmchen

[This message has been edited by Helmchen (edited 09-21-1999).]

[BugAlugs]

It is not the G200 that has the problem, just the G400 and with me the G400MAX

BDisabling BusMastering is not an option to much of a performance hit

------------------

BH6 (LN Bios)
P3 500 @ 5x112
G400MAX
SB live
ISDN card
Ethernet Card

[Helmchen]

Told that only because that ???TECHSUPPORT??? said only one busmastering device is possible! LOL!

In 2/3 days I can tell you what my G400 is doing with the WinTV!

Helmchen

[Zypher]

I have phoebe TV tuner card (based on brooktree848 or bt878 or something like that) and it works fine. Looks fairly decent, but conventional tv signals weren't exactly made to stand up for computer monitor scrutiny. Looks like regular tv quality when I use g400 tv out.

BTW, whoever told someone that bustmastering BS is a fricking idiot. My 390F uwscsi adapter is busmastering, and so is your ide controller if you have any semi-recent (basically tx or newer) motherboard!!!! ROFL

[AlanOgilvie]

Yeah, I realised that tech support guy was talking BS when I got home and used PCIList to verify that I already had several busmastering devices in my system (USB bus, modem & sound card)! <Sigh...>

[Buuri]

Not 2 cards busmastering the same system? That's bull! If you have IDE drivers installed in Win and DMA/33 adapter, that already has busmastering implemented.

I can't believe that someone from tech support would say something that thick.

Bus mastering = a device can access other devices (including mem) via bus without any help from CPU. Before there was any bus mastering, CPU was in control of the bus and if one wanted to read from HDD to mem, all that data was first transferred to CPU and then from CPU to mem.

_
B