DVDmax

[Echo|Fox]

Is DVDmax tied to the cinemaster DVD player that comes bundled with the G400, or are there any other players that work?
I'm not entirely clear on how it works, whether it is a function of the MPEG2 decoding (then, would it work with MPEG1 vcd's? what about .ASF files, which are MS's bastardized [but in a good way] MPEG3 implementation]).
I'd do some tests myself but my old TV here is on its last legs, and doesn't have any inputs, so i'd need to rip the VCR out of the other room.
I'd be interested to hear of anyone's experiments and anything interesting they found.

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P3-450@558mhz@2.1v, ABit BE6, 128megs 7.3125ns PC133 SDRAM, SB Live! Value, G400 32meg Dualhead (@120%), Acer ALN-201 PCI 10bT NIC, 6.5gig Seagate Medalist Pro 7200rpm, 13gig Quantum Fireball CR, Yamaha 4416e Burner, Pioneer 10x DVD-ROM, Panasonic e70 17" Monitor

[Kruzin]

DVDMax will pipe any directdraw video overlay to the TV...

[Diddl]

Hi Kruzin,

Will DVDMax only pipe to TV (some special TV-out hardware) or also to a second monitor?

I would like to play DVD's and other video on a second monitor but somehow can't get it to work in a usefull way. Only way seems to be using PowerDVD, switch off the use of overlay and use DHZoom to copy the DVD window to a second monitor. Means it also has to be displayed on the primary monitor and that much of the quality is lost because of the scaling.

[Kruzin]

Nope. AFAIK, there is no way to use DVDMax on a second monitor, only a TV....

[This message has been edited by Kruzin (edited 24 October 1999).]

[thecurse]

i actualy used dvdmax for the first time yesterday sinc ei finaly got a pioneer scsi dvd drive. i toke one of my old monitor switch boxes and set it up to switch from my secondardy monitor to the tv out cable.

[Echo|Fox]

Hmm, anyone (Haig?) know why it only works on a TV?
I don't quite understand =)
The only thing I can think of is the second "head"'s controller is able to detect whether its a TV or another monitor that's attatched to it, and responds accordingly.
So I guess the real question is, is it a hardware or software limitation?

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P3-450@558mhz@2.1v, ABit BE6, 128megs 7.3125ns PC133 SDRAM, SB Live! Value, G400 32meg Dualhead (@120%), Acer ALN-201 PCI 10bT NIC, 6.5gig Seagate Medalist Pro 7200rpm, 13gig Quantum Fireball CR, Yamaha 4416e Burner, Pioneer 10x DVD-ROM, Panasonic e70 17" Monitor

[Diddl]

Somehow this restriction seems to be missing in the G400 doc. Reading http://www.matrox.com/mga/press_room...f/dualhead.pdf you surely get the impression that there is no difference between TV-out and a second monitor.

Now if there exists such limitation I can live with it because the G400 has many other features that make it a great card. But like Echo|Fox I would only like to understand where this limitation comes from and if its the software, if there are any plans to support this in the future.

Anyone of Matrox that could answer this? (please ...)

when I think of it, would DVDMax be supported via the DVI module? If not it would disturb my dream of someday (far, far future) having a big TFT or Plasma panel connected to my G400, showing perfect quality DVD... (would hate to have it connected via Composite or SVIDEO). Well by than I probably have a G800 (or something like that) that will surely support Digital MaxDVD (or not?).



[This message has been edited by Diddl (edited 24 October 1999).]

[bacid]

the dvd max feature doesnt seem to work withmedia player? i tried ti and when it try to put the desktop media player window in the background the TV image just freezes, doesnt play at all, the sound keeps going but the image just freezes until you bring the player back to the foreground

[Spire]

That's a limitation of the way DVDMax works with some apps that are not "aware" of DVDMax. Windows Media Player must be displaying at least a partial image in order for the video to be relayed to the TV. This is because when Windows Media Player is not displaying anything on your monitor, it doesn't see any need to to decode the video -- so it doesn't. After all, it doesn't "know" that you're trying to pipe its overlay output onto your TV.

Note that the Windows Media Player window does not need to be in the foreground; just make sure that it's not minimized, and that it's not fully obstructed by other windows, and it should work just fine.