I just posted this in GH...but maybe it's better suited over here
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This is nothing but a little info...I was just comparing these 3 player for my personal interest and I just though I'd share my finding. Quite possible you won't give a sh1t, and if you don't move on then. I've seen a few people other than myself wondering what DVD player does what...so here's my rundown:
Edit: powerDVD 2.55 is conspicuously absent...if anyone would really like to see it, I suppose I can give it a run next to these 3 tommorow, I just didn't have it handy. The main reason I left it out is because I was pointed to WinDVD 2000 for Radeon hardware assist support, no on mentioned that powerDVD had that, and WinDVD is rumoured to have the best 5.1 to 4 channel downmixing quality, so that's why I was investigating it compared to the two I already had.
Test system:
Athlon 550, 128MB PC100 2-2-2 SDRAM, Asus K7M
ATi Radeon 64MB Vivo, SBLive! Value, WD Expert 7200rpm 9gig, Pioneer 10x DVD ROM, and Win98SE.
That's all that should matter...if you for some sordid reason want more specs you can find them here, noting that I've replaced the V3 with a Radeon and haven't updated the page yet.
All this was done in 2 speaker output mode, using Chapter 29 of the Matrix (everyone's favourite: the lobby killing spree), and fresh reboots between each (D.net client was shutdown for these tests). I was in 800x600x32x85Hz, and all playback was in a Window at 100% size (732x486 or whatever it is..)
My CPU usage guage was the Windows System Monitor, not the best monitor perhaps, but it should do for comparison purposes.
WinDVD 1.2.99d which came OEM with my Pioneer drive spent most of it's time in the 40-50% CPU usage range. There were a few spikes and dips, but over a 5 minute period at least 95% of the points were in this range.
The ATi DVD Player v7.0 spend most of it's time in the 10-20% CPU usage range. Again ignoring the few spikes and dips...
WinDVD 2000 was quite happy running below 10% CPU usage for most of the time. There were 2 spikes to the 15% mark and one to the 20% (when the explosion in the elevator happened, not much motion compensation to eleminate in the first big fire scene).
As I've been told many times WinDVD 1.x does not support all the Radeon's hardware Assist features. But it seems clear that WinDVD 2000 does. ATi's DVD player lacks 4 channel downmix option, but with the aid of DVD Genie WinDVD 2000 can support this handy feature.
Image quality is a very subjective thing, and being clinically blind in one eye I'm probably not the best person to make conclusions on something like that. To my eye I didn't notice any particlar difference in quality between the 3...but again..I'm not really qualified to make that conclusion.
Well there you are. This is not meant to be any kind of formal review or any such thing, just my personal experiences and I thought I'd share them with you all.
Have a good day now, Jon, aka Noriaki.
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This is nothing but a little info...I was just comparing these 3 player for my personal interest and I just though I'd share my finding. Quite possible you won't give a sh1t, and if you don't move on then. I've seen a few people other than myself wondering what DVD player does what...so here's my rundown:
Edit: powerDVD 2.55 is conspicuously absent...if anyone would really like to see it, I suppose I can give it a run next to these 3 tommorow, I just didn't have it handy. The main reason I left it out is because I was pointed to WinDVD 2000 for Radeon hardware assist support, no on mentioned that powerDVD had that, and WinDVD is rumoured to have the best 5.1 to 4 channel downmixing quality, so that's why I was investigating it compared to the two I already had.
Test system:
Athlon 550, 128MB PC100 2-2-2 SDRAM, Asus K7M
ATi Radeon 64MB Vivo, SBLive! Value, WD Expert 7200rpm 9gig, Pioneer 10x DVD ROM, and Win98SE.
That's all that should matter...if you for some sordid reason want more specs you can find them here, noting that I've replaced the V3 with a Radeon and haven't updated the page yet.
All this was done in 2 speaker output mode, using Chapter 29 of the Matrix (everyone's favourite: the lobby killing spree), and fresh reboots between each (D.net client was shutdown for these tests). I was in 800x600x32x85Hz, and all playback was in a Window at 100% size (732x486 or whatever it is..)
My CPU usage guage was the Windows System Monitor, not the best monitor perhaps, but it should do for comparison purposes.
WinDVD 1.2.99d which came OEM with my Pioneer drive spent most of it's time in the 40-50% CPU usage range. There were a few spikes and dips, but over a 5 minute period at least 95% of the points were in this range.
The ATi DVD Player v7.0 spend most of it's time in the 10-20% CPU usage range. Again ignoring the few spikes and dips...
WinDVD 2000 was quite happy running below 10% CPU usage for most of the time. There were 2 spikes to the 15% mark and one to the 20% (when the explosion in the elevator happened, not much motion compensation to eleminate in the first big fire scene).
As I've been told many times WinDVD 1.x does not support all the Radeon's hardware Assist features. But it seems clear that WinDVD 2000 does. ATi's DVD player lacks 4 channel downmix option, but with the aid of DVD Genie WinDVD 2000 can support this handy feature.
Image quality is a very subjective thing, and being clinically blind in one eye I'm probably not the best person to make conclusions on something like that. To my eye I didn't notice any particlar difference in quality between the 3...but again..I'm not really qualified to make that conclusion.
Well there you are. This is not meant to be any kind of formal review or any such thing, just my personal experiences and I thought I'd share them with you all.
Have a good day now, Jon, aka Noriaki.
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