G400 & DVD

[Krider]

I have a G400 vid card and pioneer 10x dvd player. I heard the G400 has good quality when you output to a tv. I want to know how i go about setting up my G400 to play dvd's on my tv. What software do i need to use to play the dvd's as well? Thanks for your time.

Krider
krider@g256.com

[xippo]

The G400 card is excellent for playing DVD titles. The TV output quality is as good as I have seen from any DVD player.

I hope that you have the DualHead version of the G400, if so the setup is a sinch. First, enable the DualHead Clone/DVDMax option in your DualHead tab - reboot. Install the DVD software package that came on your Matrox installation CD. Attach the TV connector adapter cable that came with your vid card on the second video output. Purchase a S-Video or RCA cable to connect your computer to your Receiver or TV. The S-Video cable is better for it will result in a slightly better picture - but is considerably more expensive. If you use a RCA cable to connect, you will have to use another pair of RCA cables for sound; from the sound card.

Thats it! Your watching DVD's from your comupter on the TV. It's amazing. I luv Matrox. The G400 is a killer card, gaming, DVD's. Whew!

[Krider]

I have everything setup now. The only thing is when i tried to install the dvd software from the matrox cd, my system froze up solid. I'm going to give it another try now. I want to test out a dvd tonight. You wouldn't happen to have the dvd software zipped up or something would you?

I'm also having a bit of trouble with quake 2 and my g400. could you please email me so we can chat about it?

here's my email: krider@g256.com

Thanks

[Krider]

UPDATE: I actually get the dvd software to install. But when i go to run it, a little gray box comes up in the middle of my screen that says DVD IS LOading... but it just freezes up. Any ideas?

[Maniac]

Hey xippo right now my sound output is to my desktop speakers. Does that mean that everytime I want to watch a DVD I would have to unplug that, and plug in the RCA???

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Celeron 300A@464 2.0V, Abit BH6 G400 16meg DH@150/200, Western Digital Expert 18gig, Ricoh mp7040A, Pioneer 6X DVD slot load, Motorola Cable Modem w/DEC ethernet card, Soundblaster Live Value Ver. 2, Viewsonic GT 775

[birdy]

with regard to the sound. the answer is yes. Unless you buy a spliitter so you can run two lots of speaker outputs.

Make sure that you have the correct region for the dvd disc.

try setting agp1x if you haven't already, don't worry dvd performance won't be effected and quake might run better.

[birdy]

Me? A Murcer? with my reputation?

yeah baby!

[Krider]

UPDATE ON MY SITUATION:

I found a dvdplayer that works, not a very good one but hey it works for now. When I play dvd's, i have it on my monitor and my tv screen now. The picture on the monitor is perfect, but the picture on my tv starts off bright, then gets really dark, then gets really bright, then gets really dark...etc Are there any options in the matrox settings that i can change to fix this?

[waxling]

What you're seeing sounds like the effects of macrovision, a method used to prevent recordings from being copied. Try not running the cable through a vcr or other equipment. Just use a direct connection to your TV.

[Krider]

I have to run it through my vcr cause i cannot hook it up directly to my tv. I've heard there are programs that will disable macrovision for my video card.. have you heard of these utils?

[Krider]

UPDATED:

Seems that my second cdrom drive was not liked by my dvd drive. I removed it and made my dvd primary slave and it worked like a charm.

Thanks to everyone who helped me.

[Goc]

Hey Krider...

Looks like you should make changes to your DVD software...
I suggest you get Cinemaster with engine version 1.0.28. That engine hasn't got macrovision protection implemented (supposedly).
Someone could post something about those engines... I think there are three different versions of Cinemaster engine that lack macrovision protection, but I can never remember the exact numbers, DOH...

Matrox DVD software is also based on Cinemaster DVD engine, but version 1.0.29 that has macrovision...
Your way out of this is getting a Cinemaster DVD player somewhere, and fiddling around with different engines. Also find a program called DVD Region, that helps you set up a lot of stuff (I think you can find it on www.dvdutils.com )