Announcement

**Tony Lai** · 18 January 2000, 03:21

Hey I don't mind answering DVD related questions! It's what I bought the g400 for primarily.

I have a g400 vanilla 32Mb d-h sending a vga signal to a data grade projector - all r1 dvd's except for some r4 testers (r4 is PAL btw.)

When playing back NTSC r1 dvd's, you really need components to be NTSC compatible all the way down the line ie. your vcr must recorded NTSC 3.58 on tape, and your TV must be NTSC capable. As it stands, the g400 cannot do any standard conversions unlike the Hollywood+ and Creative standalone cards.

Basically make sure your next TV is fully multistandard. When you play back NTSC r1 thru the TV, the TV will autodetect and switch and vice versa for PAL r2. I have a 70cm and 80cm NTSC/PAL direct view tv and they both do this invisibly with the TV out on the g400.

What I suggest you do to be 100% sure is to take your PC down to the shop and play it back on their TV - saves you trouble later on. And ask them point blank for what you want - if they don't no, try another store. You'll probably pay slightly more for the better TV but it's worth it.

T.

ps. since you're in Europe try the European brands like Loewe, Grundig, Metz and Thomson-RCA, all are multistandard these days.

**Kristian** · 18 January 2000, 03:30

Thanks Tony

I will you all know if and when I get a new TV-set if it works okay.

reg

Kristian

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Striving for perfection

**whiplash** · 18 January 2000, 08:59

Hi,

I can confirm that switching the MAX output to NTSC does get rid of the jitter on region 1 DVD's in europe.

My wide screen TV autodetects PAL or NTSC.

Mind you the NTSC quality on the TV is slightly downgraded.

Have fun...

W.

**SteveC** · 18 January 2000, 09:44

The problem is that one in every six frames is dropped to fix the frame rate. The hollywood+ cards had this problem up until the latest (v1.8) drivers too, but as they've fixed it, why can't Matrox?

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Cheers,
Steve

"The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one", he said.

**Tony Lai** · 18 January 2000, 17:56

To be quite honest, I haven't used the TV-out on the g400 all that much - I have a deck sized player.

However the problem of the dropped frames is something that afflicts almost every dvd decoder, be it software or hardware.

DVD of film sources is set at either 24 or 25 frames (NTSC/PAL respectively). DVD on video sources is 30 fps. The native fps for dvd is 30. In theory you need an upper refresh rate that is a multiple of either 24 or 25 for zero dropped frames.

For NTSC r1, I find 72Hz to be perfect (ie. 24 x 3).

In a perfect world 120Hz is optimum (ie. divisible by 24 and 30).

120Hz projectors are not cheap however!

PAL is a problem that I can't solve and don't care to since I'm 100% r1 NTSC dvd.

So that is the answer, 72 or 120Hz. Of course how sensitive you are to dropped frames comes into it. I find 75Hz to be very close with 85Hz exacerbating the problem!

It's not exactly a problem Matrox can fix, not even thru clever programming.

T.

**Kristian** · 19 January 2000, 03:00

I don't think that I can agree with you there Tony Lai. As SteveC stated there was a similar problem with the Hollywod+ card a while ago, and since they managed to fix it why shouldn't Matrox be able. And also, this is not a problem that everyone faces. Before my G400 I had the Rage Fury from ATI, and while the actual tv-out was crap (banding, bad dithering) the fps was perfect - no parkinsson like hickups or stuttering or what you want to call it.
My system otherwise is the same since I switched so all settings in Windows are the same.

Regards

Kristian

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Striving for perfection

**adamhamilton** · 19 January 2000, 03:21

I live in the UK and own a Sony KV-25K5U TV. It supports PAL and NTSC 3.58

Using the DVD Max the TV displays R1 and R2 DVDs perfectly (execpt for the damn overscan). It also doesn't seem to matter wether or not I select PAL or NTSC for the TV type in the Matrox display settings - both work fine.

I don't have any experience of other manufactures, but I know most of Sony's equipment is NTSC 3.58 compatable (my video recorder is too).

**Tony Lai** · 19 January 2000, 03:33

I'll be clear on this; I've never had any frame rate problems with my Hollywood+

Using it's TV-out it was always perfectly smooth, I'm not interested in the VGA performance of the H+ since it looks crap.

I haven't used the TV-out on the g400 all that much, except to see if it works. From the test I've done, which is admitted pretty much all NTSC r1 dvd -> multistandard TV; it looks good.

I have used the g400 VGA DVD output a lot and that's where the problem lies.

The VGA DVD signal is a bit different to the the TV-out DVD signal. The VGA is obviously not formatted for NTSC/PAL.

The frame skipping on the VGA output is not a really big problem. It might drop one frame every 30 secs or so to keep up if you don't use 72hz (again refer to my explanation about why it has to drop frames).

I'm much more interested in DVD VGA performance since a lot of devices can play back DVD perfectly on s-video or composite rca out.

T.

**SteveC** · 19 January 2000, 03:36

I believe that Sigma Design (hollywood+ people) used some sort of clever look ahead at the forthcoming frames and just blurred or merged some frames together.
If Matrox was a eurpoean based company, they might have more incentive to do it, but I fear that this will never be too high on their priority list.

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one", he said.

**Kristian** · 19 January 2000, 03:47

Tony Lai

Im a bit confused by all this refresh rate settings so I amgoing to ask you for some advice. Sooner or later im gonna buy a modern TV with NTSC but for now (when the money isn't here) I am looing for a solution.

Can you in a pretty simple straightforward way tell me if there is anything I can do right now to improve DVD performance? For me the stutter is every second or so. Its pretty hard to call it a stutter actually, its almost not even noticable (my girlfriend hasen't seem to noticed). Can I change the refresh or something, im not sure?

Regards

Kristian

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Striving for perfection

**SteveC** · 19 January 2000, 04:03

Kristian,

(I know you asked Tony, but I'm here and bored... )

NTSC plays as 30 fps
PAL plays at 25 fps
Native DVD plays at 30fps

So, to play back a NTSC video with no frame drops, the refresh rate of the output device is a multiple of 30, such as 2x30 = 60Hz (as in USA TVs). This means that for each three redraws of the screen, the video frame only changes once.
Similarly, PAL (as used here in the UK) plays perfectly back on a 50Hz TV set.

Now, the problem: when you play back a NTSC video on a PAL tv, one in every 6 frames has to be dropped in order to get 25fps which gives the output of 50Hz.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

To answer your question on what can you do:

Get a TV which supports both NTSC and PAL
Wait till Matrox fix it
Watch only PAL DVDs
Get something like a hollywood+

------------------
Cheers,
Steve

"The chances of anything coming from Mars, are a million-to-one", he said.

**bogie** · 19 January 2000, 06:32

Kristian,

I was asking you a simple question: brand and type of your TV set.

I was telling you to set "Soft Deinterlace" in your DVD genie at "more Options"/"surface flip mode".

Checking the DVD MAX option doesn't solve your problem!

Hope this will help,
Bogie

**Kristian** · 19 January 2000, 06:43

Hi Bogie

<ul>[*]As I said, the TV brand is PANASONIC and the model is unknown, its 10 year old PAL so who knows.
[*]I have always had "soft-deinterlace" in DVD Genie.

Regards

Kristian

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Striving for perfection

**Kristian** · 19 January 2000, 17:23

Thanks SteveC

At last I got a straight answer, the odds of Matrox fixing it are perhaps minimal, even Haig suggested that. So I guess that I will have to get myself a new TV, pretty bad since I paid so much for this card - oh what the hell.

Have you ever thought how much we computercustomers have to put up with? I mean, if you went down to your local car dealer and bought this new modern roadwhammer. And after a few miles you notice that whenever you turn left - your door falls of. No car buyer would accept that, yet we have to <u>BEG</u> the manufacturers to fix some issues that they just should fix straight away. <U>Thats sick!</U>

Anyhow, SteveC, I noticed some weird thing the other day. When watching a PAL DVD "Storm of the century" I couldn't get subtitles with MatroxDVD - did you ever experience the same with a PAL disc? PowerDVD worked but that proggie sucks.

Regards

Kristian

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Striving for perfection

Announcement

Is this a solution for the jittery DVD on G400MAX?

Is this a solution for the jittery DVD on G400MAX?

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