G400 DVD

[Zoe]

What's the best software DVD player for the G400?

[Brian R.]

I use WinDVD 2000. Excellent

[hominid skull]

PowerDVD 2.5 or higher is also good, works in win2k also..

[antdude]

I used both, and from what I heard WinDVD 2000 has better picture and audio (if you have a nice sound system).

I have to use PowerDVD v2.55 because WinDVD makes the video choppy on my poor P2 300 system.

[Maggi]

Is there any reason why you folks don't use the Cinemaster player that comes with the G400 ?

Performance is very good and picture on my TV is crystal clear and has vivid rich colors shaded by very decent contrast ...

All I did was gain a bit more saturation and lightness to the default DVD Max settings.

Cheers,
Maggi

[fds]

PowerDVD's best point is that it just works and has a rich feature set.

WinDVD worked in Win2000 on one of my machines, not on the other.

My favorite used to be PowerDVD until CineMaster 2000 came along. It is quite a fragile thing, requiring you to set up things the right way. But when it is running, you get a nice interface, still the best rewinding plus support for playing IFO files off your HD.

I use SPDIF out so all the players sound the same.
As for video quality I would be hard pressed to spot a difference between the three.

I doubt anyone would recognize which of the three players are you using just by glancing at the picture quialty while running it full-screen with the interface hidden.

Try them all, or just get CineMaster 2000 because it doesn't really like to have other players around.

[Brian R.]

I don't use the Cinemaster player that came with the G400 because it had a serious stutturing problem on my two computers. WinDVD doesn't.

[dZeus]

I just installed Cinemaster 2000 on my Windows 2000 pc, and only use the codec: I use Media Player to play the vob files, and I use DVD Genie to configure cinemaster settings

[Bad Sector]

When my DVDROM ( Hitachi 8x/40x GD5000) was in my Matrox box, I experienced the same stuttering probs. Once I switched to Cinemaster-2K (Elsa branded) they went away. DVD Genie is the shizz for setup.

------------------
600e@866 450(Katmai)@600
Asus DDR G400 Max
Soyo 6BA+IV Soyo 6BA+IV
128 MB Siemens 128MB Siemens
WD Expert 20.5 IBM 22GXP 13.5
SB Live SB Live
20" Sony 19" Sony
8x Hitachi DVD 56x Afreey
8x/20x Panny CDR

[jerryka6bwz]

Zoe
What are you using for a CPU? If it is and AMD the the PowerDVD has native 3DNOW! support. It works very well on my MVP3G-M with K6 III 450, and even better on my Asus K7M mother board and Athlon 750, both with G400MAX.

[lindberg]

I use Cinemaster and I haven't had any problems with that, I've used PowerDVD2.55 but it seemed to demand more processorpower than cinemaster (I used to run it on a AMD K6-II 450 MHz). With Pd5.52 Cinemaster works perfect, crystalclear picture and working subtitles (!!!). Above that I've got a nice little IR-box named IRMAN and a sweet little program wich interfaces with cinemaster (among others) so I can relax in my sofa and watch movies and toggle trough menus using my universal TV-remote I recommend cinemaster if you have small processor (Non athlon, non p-III) and if you have processorpower cinemaster is also the one..

------------------
My system:

• Athlon 700 MHz
• 192 Mb Ram
• Asus K7V mb
• Matrox G400 (oc @ 150/200)
• wester 10.2Gb and seagate 6.5Gb (removable) hdd
• Soundcrapster PCI64 (soon Aureal A3d )
• Logitech Force Feedback wheel (cool)
• 300W atx case