DVD and Matrox, What do YOU have?

[jedimasta]

Kruzin,
Are you sure about that. My Marvel has two internal connectors on it, one that says daughterboard and another that uses pins identical to the ones you would connect a decoder card up to. I'm sure the one is for the matrox add-on, but the other one? Guess I'll have to RTFM.

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JÊÐî /'\å§tå
-“Artificial Intelligence has got nothing on Natural Stupidity!”

[miloche]

Thanks for the good news Grego, I have the same drive in route. It's good to know that they work well together.

[SteveC]

I also have the Pioneer 103s IDE DVD Drive, works a treat.

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[Grimace]

I have a Pioneer DVD-113 (tray version of the 103s) with a G400Max and it looks great. I had a TNT card previously and using the same cinemaster software that Matrox uses, the output via the TNT was crap compared to the Max.

[rylan]

I also have a Pioneer 103S (6x) dvd drive, and it works very well with my old G200. I'm using the software cinemaster decoder and the card and my cpu have more then enough juice for it.. can't wait to see it on a MAX.
btw.. I have an AMD K6-3 450.. no problems with via chipset or agp 2x :L) woo hoo!

[DirtFarmer]

I also have a Pioneer 103s and I dropped in my new (vanilla) G400DH 32Mb today and I am very happy I didn't waste any money on a daughtercard for my Marvel. Much better software decoding and TV output than my G200.

For some reason when I set to DVDMax it automatically scales the TVO to 4:3. Everybody looks really tall. Can't seem to get it to go to 16:9 unless I use DualHead Clone. Anybody have any ideas, suggestions, good recipes for beer?

System is PIII500, ECS mobo, G400DH, SB-Live, 128Mb PC100, Maxtor 17Gb, Viewsonic P775, yadda, yadda, yadda. Powerdesk 5.21

All my racing sims/games look FANTASTIC.

--Al out

[Grimace]

Has anyone with a 103s ever gotton a DVD stuck? Does it have a mechanism for manual ejection, like if the power was off? From all pictures, it didn't seem like it did so I went with the tried and true tray version. It has the paper-clip emergency eject hole...

[Ghydda]

I've two slotin drives from Pioneer and neither one has ever swallowed a disc. And yes, they both had a emergency eject hole.

By the way, I'm using a Marvel G200 to play DVDs from my Pioneer U03S SCSI drive. Looks fantastic and CPU usage is between 50 and 70%.

Ghydda

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A slowly desintegrating nobody with an Athlon 500 MHz on a FIC SD11 with 256MB Memorycard, Adaptec 2940UW, Adaptec 2904CD, 3 SCSI HD, JVC cooking equipment, Plextor 40Max, Pioneer DVD-U03S, SBlive Value with homemade S/PDIF I/O-card and last but not least - Matrox Marvel G200 AGP 16MB SD with PowerStrip@110/147

Only thing missing: Matrox RT2000

[Ghydda]

#]£¤/&%*(/@$"!=? double post.

Just boosting up my post count

[This message has been edited by Ghydda (edited 09-14-1999).]

[SteveC]

DirtFarmer - in the Matrox Powerdesk, Dual Head Tab, DXDMax Options button, select 'preserve aspect ratio', then '16:9 wide screen' then 'detect based on video window size'.
That should sort it out.

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Cheers,
Steve

PS: Some or all of the above message may be wrong, or, just as likely, correct. Depends on what mood I'm in. And what you know. ;¬)

[jedimasta]

My configs are pretty cose to your Ghydaa except that I'm waiting for my STUPID EXTRA 8 MEGS to come in for the Marvel. I ordered it a month ago! Anyway. I'm happy. I'm still expecting to see that creative labs decoder card to come my way very soon now, to see if theres a difference, but other than that I'm a happy camper /|==\

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JÊÐî /'\å§tå
-“Artificial Intelligence is no match to Natural Stupidity!”

[Ghydda]

jedimasta

What do you want with an additional 8 Megs on your Marvel? It's of no use to the video section, you don't get to choose any higher resolutions, it doesn't add any speed. In fact, the only place where you will get a difference is in 3D games/programs at very high resolution ie. 1280x1024x32 with 32bit z-buffer. And who has that kind of demands now a days and still uses the G200? Nobody!

Cancel that order, use your money elsewhere.

Then you ask why I have it. I will tell you: If there is a plug or connector which is not used in or hasn't something plugged into it, then I get this itching and scratching feeling. A desire to go out and buy anything that would fit the free socket. I know, it's an adiction. That's why I'm attending AM* meetings. This has kept me from getting the DVD module yet.

Ghydda, AM

*Anonymous Matroxaholic

[jedimasta]

Well I have that kind of need, and I'm using a Marvel, thank you very much. I'm a 3d modelor/animator who requires video out and the Marvel is perfect for that use. I just want faster screen rendering performance.
So there, nyaaaa!

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JÊÐî /'\å§tå
-“Artificial Intelligence is no match to Natural Stupidity!”

[Danfoss]

Well, i have Aopen 9632 (identicall to pioneer, only diff. name and firmware) with Max and works great..

about dvd getting stuck in de drive: i have Lethal Weapon 4 DVD, and that's the only one that won't go in and out smoothly, the drive accepts the cd, then swallows it half, and it gets stuck. i don't know why it only happens to this dvd though...

Dan.

[IceStorm]

DVD on the G400/MAX. Now here's something I've been playing with for the past two weeks!

- DVD from the G400 MAX works great with my Toshiba 6x DVD-ROM drive (SM-1212, I believe).

- DVD via a decoder card (Hollywood+ - a.k.a. Creative Dxr3) looks fine, but the passthrough cable degrades image quality a bit at 1280x1024. 800x600 works fine.

- DVD WILL NOT WORK ON THE SECOND HEAD AT ALL. No hardware support for DVD playback, so it won't work, not even with a decoder card. Not even with a different video adapter. This sucks, but there's not much to be done about it.

-Half-Life runs, but is a bit jerky, when the DVD is running via a decoder card. I ran my DVD output into a Jamm (http://www.aimslab.com/Products/JAM!!/jamhome.htm) then into the second monitor and was able to playback the DVD movie without a problem. HL hiccuped quite a bit, but that's due to interrupt servicing, I believe.

What I've learned is that if you want to be a wiseass and do DVD via your PC, get yerself a second machine (I'm using the P200 now) to play it back via the DVD passthrough to a second monitor, or via a Jam. Works fine that way. Now I'm just wondering how a Desktop Theater will handle Digital in from the P200 and from an SB Live on the PIII...




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Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster 32, Altec Lansing AC5 spkrs, 2nd Parallel Port, WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba XM-6102b CD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 96MB of non-parity RAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C900, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Hollywood Plus DVD decoder card, Toshiba 6x DVD-ROM, OS of the week

All specs subject to change.