Power DVD and Dualhead

[mdhome]

Chaps, I'm am having problems trying to get PowerDVD v3 to play on my G400. I have 2 monitors (of different resolutions) running under Win2K with the 5.52 drivers. If I have dvd max/clone dualhead mode set then Powerdvd seems quite happy displaying dvd on both monitors. The problem with this is that both monitors have to be the same resolution. However, If I decide to have different resolutions then the only way I can get the dvd to play is to lower the resolution on my primary to 800*600. Even then it will not display on my secondary. Is this a limitation of the G400.

regards Michael

[Rags]

DVD's weren't intended to be displayed on the second monitor with a G400, it's because the second display doesn't use overlay (properly), so I don't know what this equals, but there it is

Rags

[mdhome]

Thanks Rags.
Do you know if this limitation has been overcome with the G450.


regards MD

[fds]

Actually some people say the G400 used to support that while the G450 didn't, so as not to make the G450 look worse in DH functionality, Matrox simply disabled it for both in the next driver release.

I never used my DH so this isn't based on my personal experience, just found this interesting when this topic came up last time.

[Pace]

Do you mean that DVDMax isn't working right?

Or just that you can't play it using normal methods on the 2nd monitor?

P.

[Indiana]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size="2">Originally posted by fds:
Actually some people say the G400 used to support that while the G450 didn't, so as not to make the G450 look worse in DH functionality, Matrox simply disabled it for both in the next driver release.

I never used my DH so this isn't based on my personal experience, just found this interesting when this topic came up last time.</font>

Yes, the G400 did have fully working overlays with the PD5.x drivers, this support was suddenly dropped with PD6.x - and since then Matrox tech-support claim that this is the way it's supposed to be, even though it's clear that this is not the case, at least not with the G400
The coincidence of dropping this with the first drivers that supported the G450 as well brought up the speculation that maybe the G450's hardware can't do this - and to avoid making the G450 looking worse than the older G400, overlay-support on the second head was dropped for both cards.

Still, if you have a G400 and use Win98, simply return to PD5.52 or PD5.55 and you should get functional overlays on the secondary out.
Unfortunately for Win2k I don't know if there's an old driver version that supports overlays on both outputs, since I never tested this. But for a start I'd go with the oldest Win2k driver you can find (note: the Win2k 5.x drivers are PD6-equivalent, you'll need PD5) and see if it works. When it does you can successively try newer versions to find the latest Win2k driver that works

See also: http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/010101.html
and http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/010150.html


[This message has been edited by Indiana (edited 22 April 2001).]

[Rags]

Please note I said properly. I believe that working on the second CRT somewhat was due to a bug, not by intention.

Rags

[dZeus]

it's still unclear to me what is not working in your setup. Most importantly, what do you want to accomplish in which dualhead mode?

in DVD-MAX, you can play back overlay video on the first monitor output of the G400/G450 full-screen to the second output, either TV or monitor, without a single problem.

in Clone mode, you can clone the primary output to the secondary G400/G450 output, and you can only clone the overlay video from the primary output on a G400 with 'keep optimal refresh' disabled in Clone properties. As said in this thread before, there are old WIn9x drivers that don't have the 'keep optimal refresh' problem disabling this cloning of overlay video. The G450 won't clone overlay video... period.

In multi-display mode, you won't be able to use overlay on any other output than the primary monitor in windows.. this is a limitation of the OS.

I'm not sure if overlay support on the secondary output in the old win2k Multi-Display mode is technically possible, where the OS would see the output as a single monitor... I would guess not because of bandwidth restrictions... but you never know ... not that it actually will make one single difference

[Daniel C]

I have a similar problem. I am using the G450, but cannot get it to output the DVD to the second head no matter what, either to a TV or a normal monitor. Any suggestions?