DVD Decoder card

[Barild]

HEY There

I am thinking of buying a DVD Decoder card,
But how do i installe it, does it efekt the agp graficcard
and does it work with the matrox g400 doual screen.
and how does it work?



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Intel 440bx, pentium 3 500mhz, 128mb pc100, 13gb, windows 98dk, lan and isdn cards, MATROX G400 32 agp, 17"triniton, Sound
blaster 128pci, logitech wingman extrem and a 6xdvd drive.

[Brian R.]

I have a Creative Labs Dxr3 DVD decoder card. It installs in a PCI slot and uses an external pass-through cable from the video card to the decoder card. The only effect it has on the graphics card is the additional cable and connections downgrade the monitor image slightly at higher resolutions.

It works quite well with G400 dualhead. In my computer, the output of the Dxr3 is superior to the DVD output from my MAX. I may be able to improve the MAX's DVD output, but I haven't yet figured out how.

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Win98SE, 600 PIII @672 MHz (@2.40 V) w/Alpha P3-125 heatsink/fan, ABIT BX6-2 MB, 128 MB Siemens PC100 SDRAM, G400 MAX, Diamond V2 SLI, Diamond MX300 with Senheiser HD-600 headphones, Sennheiser DSP360 Dolby processor, and Shure FP22 headphone amplifier, CL Dxr3 Decoder, Adaptec AHA2940 w/uw SCSI, IBM 9ZX 9.1GB 10K UW SCSI HD, WDE 4360 4.3GB 7.2k UW SCSI HD, Pioneer 303s SCSI DVD, modified Supermicro SC750A case with PCP&C Silencer 275W PS, and a partridge in a pear tree.

[birdy]

i uise a realmagic (hollywood+) decoder card and i have had no problems with that and the g400 dh fitted t my system. I have deviated from the pass through cable solution however, If you are going to watch dvd on your monitor only then you are best off using your graphics card for dvd. If you are going to watch on the tv then use the decoder card. If you want both well then tough you will have to use either the pass through cable on the decoder card or the g400dh. basically on my system i have just installed the dvd card and not put the pass through cable on to it. I still get the player controls come up on my moniter but the dvd image will only come up on my tv screen. If i use the vga option for the decoder card all i get is a large blank area on my monitor where the image should be if i had used the pass through cable. I am ahppy with this setup as i didn't fork ou 130 gbp on a g400 just to have it spoilt by a crappy piece of cabling yo my monitor. The picture quality of the hollywood card is at least equal to and possibly better than the g400 output and if you are using a pal tv the latest drivers enable you to get around the pausing problem asociated with ntsc productions.

[Brian R.]

I think the Realmagic Hollywood + and the CL Dxr3 are the same hardware.