Radeon and DVD

R

radio1_mike

New member
Hi...

How does Radeon work for DVD performance? I'd like to pick up some DVDs of my favorite movies, but my TV doesn't have AV jacks. And of course, I can't run a DVD player through my VCR due to macrovision.

Anyways, I have a TBird Gig w/ 192MB and a Radeon DDR. If I pick a cheap 8 or 10x DVD will this be sufficient to run a movie, ie. without a decoder board?

So, if I got this straight, I pick up a DVD-ROM drive, hook it to my IDE connector, load in the DVD program on Radeon's driver disk and then watch a movie, correct??!


Thanks for you help!
 
I have a Radeon 64meg ddr VIVO and a 16X DVD drive...so far I've tried everyone's suggestions as to how to get the DVD to work but it looks like crap...pardon me, it looks okay except for the fact that it's jittery enough to make you sick, from what I've seen I'd say STAY AWAY from the radeon when it comes to DVD...I'm not impressed with this card in the least
 
Well speaking as someone who upgraded from a P3-450 with a Voodoo 3 to an 800mhz tbird and rad 64 I can simply say "amazing". DVD quality is spectacular , I would easily put in on par with standalone decoder cards. Thats not much of a surprise though since for the price I payed for Radeon 64 I could have had a very good DVD player.
 
It's not the power of my system...I have a 900MHz T-Bird with the 64DDR VIVO Radeon and 256MB pc-133 RAM. The DVD playback is very jittery, I've tried all the drivers old and new both DirectX7 and 8 I get the same problems. Is this hardware or software? All the problems I've pointed out on my system to tech support they say is probably the video card so just from what I've seen myself the DVD is crap. I've heard it's great but I haven't seen that form myself yet. I'll probably just get a GeForce2 and a decoder card...more expensive but my experience with nVidia chipsets has been great...not too much can be said about my Radeon so far :(
 
I too am having problems playing DVDs on my PC. Quality is excellent...when I can get the dang thing to work :mad: As I'm sure some of you know, I repeatedly get this message when I try to play a DVD, "DVD copy protection initialization failed. Playback is stopped." Stinkin' ATI support tells me to install the 3063 drivers (I'm currently using 3056), but the BETA drivers didn't remedy the situation. ATI tells me to install 3063s again, whatever :rolleyes: Oh well, maybe the soon to be released DX8 drivers will fix this. In the mean time, ATI Radeon DVD playback gets an A for quality, and a D- for ease of use.
 
Try switching to another SoftDVD player.

ATIDVD player is good but I too find it kinda jittery and the images not as crisp.

-S
 
If it's jittery, try enabling DMA for in the device manager list.

Right click "My Computer"->"Properties"->Device Manager->Go to your DVD-ROM->Properties->Settings->Checkbox beside DMA->Reboot.

If you reboot your machine and the box is still unchecked, you may need to go to your SoundBlaster LIVE! and place a checkmark beside "LPT something something something sharing" and then enable the DVD DMA box and reboot. That should fix your problem. :)

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Duron 700 on an Abit-KT7-RAID
256MB PC-100
Maxtor 20.4GB 7,200 ATA-100
Radeon 64mb DDR w/vivo (oem) 7020 and 3056 drivers
17" LG 795FT+ monitor
Acer CD-R/RW CRW6206A
Pioneer DVD-ROM
3Com EtherLink XL 10/100 PCI TX NIC (3C905B-TX)
D-Link DFE-530TX+PCI Adapter
DirectX 7.0A

SB LIVE! X-Gamer
Shaw@Home Internet Cable
Win98SE/Win2k dual boot

Runs like a charm.
 
mtymouse...

if you think its your card, pop it in another computer and make sure. Radeon DVD is excellent and far superior to any hardware player. The problem you are having sounds to me like a software configuration problem. are you running win2k or win98? If you are running win98 and still see these problem it is because:

1. DMA not enabled
2. you have a hardware conflict (most likely with you sound card)
3. your virtual memory for the hard drive is not set properly.
4. If you harddrive is spinning like mad while playing a movie then your virtual ram is kicking in or the drive needs to be defragged.
5. you have other system software that is conflicting with your dvd software.
6. Are you using ATI player, winDVD, or powerDVD? if you are running powerDVD and ATI software then you will get jitter playback (do a search for .ax file renaming).
7. Disable your soundblaster and see if improves your playback.

good luck.



[This message has been edited by oxide (edited 11-13-2000).]
 
I have a very similar system to MyTMouse and my DVD runs great, ATI is unmatched for DVD performance. I use POWERDVD...

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-Take 1 to 2 tablet(s) every 4 hours.
 
My dvd is jittery as well. I have a celeron 466, on a 440lx motherboard, with 128 megs of ram.

With my old V3 card (good riddance) windvd worked flawlessly.

But my radeon is jittery. What other soft-decode programs make use of the ATI's iDCT?
 
Runs fine on mine, but I'll also recommend using WinDVD or PowerDVD for better quality image and sound.

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PIII 550E->733 . 256MB . Abit BE6-II . Radeon AIW . Samsung 900NF . Aureal SQ2500 . WD 20GB . Windows ME/2000 Dual-boot
 
I am using Radeon 64MB DDR and ATI's own DVD software...

BE SURE TO GO INTO YOUR CONTROL PANEL AND SELECT FORCE PROGRESSIVE IN THE DE-INTERLACING SELECTOR...

If you do not do this, the video will look horribly jittery and blocky...

When it tells me that "DVD copy protection initialization failed. Playback is stopped." it is usually caused by the DVD not being spun up before it tries. Try hitting play again... all of my DVDs will play with ATI software using the 3063 drivers.

DVD is freaking great with the Radeon. If it ain't for you, you are screwing it up, it ain't the Radeon's fault.

------------------
Carbon
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Abit KA7
700MHz Athlon Classic
256MB Corsair PC133 SDRAM
Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO(Retail)
DiamondMM MX300 Sound(Vortex2)
Windows ME
 
Radeon 64 VIVO, Pioneer DVD 16x, DMA enabled, looks wonderful.

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T-bird 700
A7V
300 watt PS
DVD 105S
Radeon 64 VIVO OEM
SB Live! Value
17" Samsung 753DF
15 gig IBM GXP
Zip 250 USB
Razer Boomslang 1000
Floppy
Aopen NIC
128 megs PC-133 RAM
 
Doh, you have to use the ATi DVD player to take advantage of the Radeons DVD decoding features. I've you're using PowerDVD or WinDVD, you aren't using any of the features of the Radeon. I'm not sure if the original question was ever answered...so Yes, you can plug in the DVD drive to your IDE channel, install the Radeon and all the software, and it "should" work. Personally, I already had a SigmaDesigns Hollywood Plus hardware DVD decoder before I got my Radeon. It does awfully well...so I haven't dealt with the Radeon decoding problems. The main thing is that you SHOULD use the ATi DVD software, and not use any other DVD software. I hear you have problems if more than one DVD software package is installed on your machine also...

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"You gotta get in where you fit in..."

· Asus K7M · Tbird 800=>956(106FSB*9x) · 128MB RAM · Win2k! · Radeon 32MB DDR · SB Live! Plat · IBM 7200RPM 20GB · Pioneer 10x DVD · Ricoh 4x4x20 ·
 
In another post on this board (http://www.rage3d.com/forum/ubbhtml/Forum13/HTML/002356.html),
It said that WinDVD could use Hardware Assist and that the Radeon was supported, can anyone confirm that?

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386, win3.1, 80megs
 
confirmed. same HWMC support as with the other rage products. de-interlacing not supported. However i belivee Cinemaster2K does support radeons features. I dont use ATi player because lack of DD/DTS out.
 
That was my post on the other thread. I read that on various review of WinDVD and on WinDVD website that it does support ATI video cards with the MPEG2 HW-assist decoding. I just take a look at the CPU usage, and seems that WinDVD uses the same, if not less, CPU time than the ATI software. And I like WinDVD more because it has 4-speaker downmix with SBLive and Vortex2 sound cards.

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PIII 550E->733 . 256MB . Abit BE6-II . Radeon AIW . Samsung 900NF . Aureal SQ2500 . WD 20GB . Windows ME/2000 Dual-boot
 
Not sure what problem this guy is having. His system sure seems powerful enough for DVD playback, although it is an Athlon and it seems to me fewer people with Intel based systems are having problems.

Like many others have said, the DVD playback on ATI cards is AWESOME. I've yet to see another card (including any from nVidia) that can match the quality. Maybe this guy is just an nVidia advocate trying to talk trash about the Radeon. If anyone out there has doubts, just read any review. The one thing they will all say is DVD playback is top notch.
 
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