DVD playback

[Shaftatplanetquake]

I own a voodoo3 2000 AGP card and have just purchased a dvd drive, the creative dxr2. (2x20x i think), well the playback sucks with powerdvd, if i remember correctly 3dfx mailed out cds with a program that took advantage of the Vodoo3's hardware dvd decoding abilities. Does anyone have this cd and would be willing to make a copy for a nominal fee? Or does anyone know where I could pick up this program?

 

[IamDavid]

If ya hve the DXr2 decoder than you should DL the Creative DVD player for it, otherwise you are still using software decoding..

 

[BCYL]

DxR2 is Creative's DVD decoder card... Did u get the DVD drive only or does it come with a PCI card? If there's a card, there should be a DVD player inside the package that will use the decoder card for playback... You won't need software players like PowerDVD then...

 

[Zucchini]

Do yourself a favor and rip that dxr 2 card out. Then prompty throw it at the wall and stomp on it a few times. It is a peice of junk I know because i had one. It can't decode with any kind of quality, and hell it can't even handle animorphic video correctly. If you have powerdvd, i think you are running software decode, not hardware. What version powerdvd? You have to realize that software players have improved with time, and older versions are basically horrible. Also remember that nothing in hardware can't also be done with software. Especially with the fast processors we have today. As long as you have a p2 400+ you could be fine with full software decode. That being said, its always nice to take some burden off The best software player is windvd2000 2.3. This has the best sound/video around. Cyberlink powerdvd 3.0 is a close second. Anything before 3.0 was ugh..not good to say the least. Also, voodoo cards aren't optimal for dvd playback Their video acceleration/resizing is not the best and hardware dvd decoding? hehe they use a broad definition i guess. I think either anandtech/sharkyextreme/firingsquad did a comparison of dvd playback on different video cards.

Also, with that passthrough cable, you are only deteriorating your image quality.

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

I didn't get the decoder card that came with the box, bought it from someone mainly for its ability to read cds at the price of $25.

I'm not sure of what version I am running of powerdvd, I'm going to download that new version of windvd though. I believe that might have been the program that 3dfx mailed out now that the name was brought up.

BTW, the system I have that dvd drive installed in is a celeron 400 with 128 megs of ram and a voodoo3 2000. Should be reasonable for software decoding.

 

[BCYL]

Celeron 400 is borderline for software DVD decoding... That means you probably can't have any other programs open when you watch DVD movies...

I have a PII 300 and most of them time watching DVD is fine with both winDVD and PowerDVD... however I do encounter some slowdown at certain points in movies (esp. during action scenes, when there are tons of stuff moving on the screen)...

I ended up getting a Sigma Hollywood Plus DVD decoder card... It works great, and you can probably get it for $60 US... I highly recommend it... You can check it out at Sigma's Website

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

Yeah, I downloaded win dvd and its still crappy, lots of slowdown.

I got a message that I needed to enable DMA on the drive, I did so, and got no improvement. Was wondering if you guys think updating the Firmware for the drive would help? Also, should I install drivers for the dvd drive? It is working off of generic microsoft drivers right now, I searched for about 15 mins for updated drivers/firmware and downloaded a few files, finding out that none of them are compatible.

Any tips?

BTW, for $60, I might as well upgrade my slot1 celeron 400 to a 566 or something...

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

Whoa.. did a search on cpus.. apparently amd comes down more on a 3 month old cpu than intel does on a 2 year old cpu

Cheapest you can get a p2 450 for is around $100 ! And you can get a duron that does 900 Mhz for $60.. Hmmm.. but that discussion belongs elsewhere.. anyway the point is, I'm not upgrading that cpu

Best way to upgrade performance (if I'm going to spend money) is probably to sell my v3 for ~$50 and buy a radeon for ~$130.

 

[Zucchini]

eh? slow? It must be your system then. Your running the celly at 66mhz bus speed right? Whats the rest of your system. Seems like you need a big upgrade. As for chip prices, yes obsolete chips like the p2 450 don't drop all that much. I'm sure you can get a c2 that can hit 1ghz for less then 100 bux

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

slot 1 only board

i could drop a sloket in there, but like I said, different forum to discuss that in

 

[Zucchini]

Well does your videocard support overlay at the resolution at which you play back dvds? That alwayas helps. On my geforce ddr it goes up to 1600x1200 Smoooth hehe

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

Oh, and I know I need an upgrade, but that computer is mostly my dad's; I'm not going to put very much if any money into it, I've got my computer im on right now for the money pit