8500DV DVD playback issues!!!!

[Ph33zy]

has anyone gotten this to work correctly. My dvd skips a lot (on several disks) and the AC-3 audio is not in sync with the video. Im running windows xp on an asus cusl2-c. I had a geforce 3/PowerDVD on this machine before and it worked flawlessy. I'm also using the spidf passthru to my Dtt 3500 so i dont think my audigy is a problem.. Can anyone help me out! I'm using the 6025 drivers..

 

[Ph33zy]

up

 

[UberNeuman]

Is DMA enabled on your DVD drive - and do you have more than one DVD software player to test on?

 

[AA0]

in win9x you can go to control panel, and ati has a multimedia centre where you can test out the dvd performance, see whats failing the test.

 

[Ph33zy]

im running win xp but the in the control panel, my dvd passed all tests. I also have dma enabled... AND im testing it on powerdvd and it works fine too... is anyone else having problems..

 

[Adul]

tried powerdvd 4?

 

[GL]

I have heard there is a problem with the DVD software in MMC. What version of MMC are you using? You can always use PowerDVD again - it will utilize the ATI DVD decoding hardware.

 

[Ph33zy]

hi yea i jes installed powerdvd and noticed that it works great.. looks the same as the ati dvd player but no skips..the only reason why i wanna use the ati one is becuase it has the remote. damn ati need to get their sh*t together...i dunno if i should have sold my geforce 3 =(

btw im using mmc 7.5 (which was included on the cd)

 

[AA0]

I thought there were bugs with winxp and the ATI player on the CD, wasn't there? I don't run XP but I think the website has a updated version... I know there is an updated XP version someone for sure.

 

[GL]

<< hi yea i jes installed powerdvd and noticed that it works great.. looks the same as the ati dvd player but no skips..the only reason why i wanna use the ati one is becuase it has the remote. damn ati need to get their sh*t together...i dunno if i should have sold my geforce 3 =(

btw im using mmc 7.5 (which was included on the cd) >>



Well, MMC 7.5's DVD works fine for me. But as I said, it doesn't work fine for everyone unfortunately. ATI releases about 1 MMC every 6-7 months, so I wouldn't hold your breath on them fixing your DVD unfortunately. I would try a driver reinstall this way:

1) Remove these entries under "Sound, video and game controllers" in the Device Manager:
-ATI WDM Rage Theater Audio
-ATI WDM Rage Theater Video
-ATI WDM Specialized MVD Codec
-ATI WDM Specialized PVD Codec
-ATI WDM TV Audio Crossbar
-ATI WDM TV Tuner

2) Under Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, uninstall the ATI Display Driver

3) In %WindowsRoot%/inf (i.e. C:\Windows\inf), look in all the oemX.inf files (i.e. oem1.inf, oem2.inf, ....) and delete the ones (and their corresponding .pnf files) that contain ATI references.

4) Reboot your computer and allow WinXP to install the basic ATI drivers if it wants to.

5) Re-install the 6025 drivers.

I've found often that some people unknowingly run mixed driversets for the ATI AIW series because ATI's uninstall routines for their multimedia drivers sucks! So they end up having an updated display driver with older multimedia drivers. This may or may not be your situation, but I suggest doing the above 5 steps anyways to see if that fixes your problem.

 

[HouRman]

The Radeon 8500 is the talk of the town on home theater PC forums. Issues here and there, people are fed up with the DVD quality. Until there are driver fixes I don't think there's much to do.

 

[TMTCC]

According to ATI this could be a bandwidth problem...

 

[Ph33zy]

well i tried everything and no go.. powerdvd is flawless and im gonna stick with that until ati gets their drivers right

 

[rbV5]

<< powerdvd is flawless and im gonna stick with that until ati gets their drivers right >>



If PowerDVD is working, the drivers are right.

 

[Ryan]

<<

<< powerdvd is flawless and im gonna stick with that until ati gets their drivers right >>



If PowerDVD is working, the drivers are right. >>



RBV5 is right, if power DVD works, it's not the card.

 

[GL]

In all fairness, I think Ph33zy meant MMC when he spoke of ATI getting their drivers right. As good as MMC 7.5 is, it has bugs that I have verified and I've come up with workarounds.

1) MPEG-2 files play with audio at a higher pitch than they're supposed to.
Workaround: regsvr32 -u "c:\program files\common files\ravisent shared\DSCinemAudioDecoder.dll"
Hassle: If you want to play DVDs via MMC, you have to re-register this DLL.

2) Massive amount of dropped frames at the beginning of a recording?
Workaround: Set the audio input to "what u hear" instead of "line-in". Ensure that the line-in on the sound card is unmuted and selected as the recording device. No more dropped frames at the beginning of a recording.

3) AVI files don't actually record.
Workaround: None. I have this problem in addition to a few others but haven't been able to pinpoint what causes it.

4) Even though Guide+ is set to auto-update, it doesn't actually auto-update!
Workaround: None.

5) AVI codec settings are not exposed to the user
Workaround: None.

6) The aspect ratio of certain DVD movies aren't correct
Workaround: Manually set them.

7) DVD menu-ing system is buggy (the cursors don't work properly)
Workaround: Lots of patience and guesswork as to where the cursor actually is pointing to on the screen!

You can add this DVD playback issue to the list of bugs in MMC. If ATI is going to continue developing their own multimedia software to bundle with their cards, I think they should start addressing these bugs with more effort than they currently are. MMC 7.5 isn't officially released for my card so I don't have an official right to rag on it. But MMC 7.1 and 7.2 had their share of problems that were far worse than those present in 7.5 and ATI looks like they're taking their time in releasing an official update to address these major issues.

I might add...
That I haven't seen one hardware website properly review the AIW Radeon/8500DV the way it was meant to be reviewed! Most reviewers just skim over the multimedia package and assume it works. Most of the time it doesn't. I've tried PowerVCR and I know that for MPEG-2 recording, it is worse than MMC 7.5 as far as dropped frames are concerned. And MMCs prior to 7.5 couldn't even record at the advertised 720x480 resolution with PIIIs. So, if any of the AnandTech reviewers are reading this, please take some time (at least a few days) to use the multimedia software that comes with these cards and report back with your findings. A lot of people (myself included) ended up purchasing these cards after reading glowing reviews on hardware websites only to find that they are very finicky pieces of hardware.

 

[rbV5]

<< In all fairness, I think Ph33zy meant MMC when he spoke of ATI getting their drivers right >>



Well yea, no question, but it helps to isolate the problems you are having with the particular component that is giving you trouble in order to troubleshoot it. The AIW cards are a very complex mixture of various components. It helps to understand their function in order to work through problems.

*PowerDVD is not magic, it can't make bad drivers perform well. Given that PowerDVD is working fine, you can rule drivers out as a cause. That alone narrows it down quite a bit.

*The Rage Theater has nothing to do with DVD playback, the Hardware assist is a function of the GPU, Rage Theater controls VIVO functions only, so you can rule that out as well. (AC-3 audio, however IS controlled by Rage Theater IIRC, so RT is not completely out of the woods)

*I would concentrate on MMC itself, it almost has to be MMC IMHO

I totally agree about reviews, complete nonsense. I have yet to see a comprehensive review of the multimedia features, sad really.

about your bugs (well not YOUR bugs hehe)

1. Never seen this myself, but I have heard about audio getting out of sync, which would happen with a pitch change. Not a bug for everyone.

2. I have noticed this, my workaround, reinstall MMC. Also, I've noticed if you set the MMC service priority to a LOWER priority, you(well, I) won't drop frames.

3. I capture to AVI most of the time, have never noticed this at all.

4. Guide Plus gives me trouble updating even manually sometimes.

5. True, just like most other Direct Show capture utility. My workaround, the only codecs I use are Huffyuv and divx. I use a little utility called mp4def to change the settings for the divx codecs, works great. You can also set the codecs in VirtualDub and the will stay for MMC I believe.

6. I do have to change some options at times.

7. I'm not a big fan of the way menuing is handled either.

I wish MMC was better too, but compared to anything else I've used, its the best there is by a long shot. I would also say, that properly configured it is more than capable. Video capture is working very well for me.

I would say, start with reinstalling MMC.

 

[Ph33zy]

i think it might have something to do with the rage theatre chip.. becuase when i go to audio options and tell it not to pass it to the rage chip, the audio is fine (but not ac-3). And the dvd menus are indeed buggy (you do have to guess where the cursors are). I checked my friends comp too and he's running an athlon/a7m-266 combo. I think powerdvd works because it doesnt pass the audio to the rage chip but straight to my audigy which in turns passes it straight to my dtt3500 decoder...