playing dvd's with radeon 8500 - a little help please

[raftman]

So here's the deal - I installed the radeon 8500 drivers, multimdedia center (with ati dvd player) and directx 8.1

I try playing a dvd in windows media player (or real player) - video looks good but no sound.

I try using ati's dvd player - i get an error that says 'failed to load the video decoders'

the dvd drive is connected to onboard audio chip (cd's playback fine). nothing is muted in volume control.

When I run ati's PC check (comes with multimedia center) i pass all the tests except that it says directx is not installed properly! My sound setup says directx 8.1. i've tried reinstalling directx from ati cd, same thing.

anyone able to help me understand how exactly the dvd is (or should be) decoded and how i can fix?

thanks

my setup (at least what is pertinent):
athlon xp 1800 on ECS K7s5a Pro
512 ddr
radeon 8500 128 MB

 

[Isezumi00]

how new/old are your drivers/media center??

 

[raftman]

I have ati dvd player version 7.8. i'm pretty sure the media center is version 7.08 or so - it's not high enough to download version 8.6 for free off of the wesbite.

The radeon drivers are 6.14.10.6378 (dated 8/12/03). Is it possible for me to have installed the dvd player without ati's decoders? Do you know what these files are called so I can search for them (on my system or the cd)?.

My audio info: audio codec - CMI 8738; audio controller - sis7012 series audio controller. directx version 8.1

Ok, now here's something weird I found - i ran dxdiag and it said I'm running directx 9.0. Any idea about the apparent conflict between directx versions reported in dxdiag and my sound controller?


Thanks for your help - i'm next considering installing a 5.1 sound card and seeing if that helps.

Thanks for your input!!

Andres

 

[Isezumi00]

the sound controller might only be reading the version of Directx it supports while the Dx Diag is reporting whats installed.

Because (as i know it) envariably DirectX contains both DirectDraw and DirectSound libraries.

Also form the looks of it 7.08/.8 doesn't support Dx9...which could be the root of your Evil...do you think you can get your hands on 8.6??

 

[crypticlogin]

When I run ati's PC check (comes with multimedia center) i pass all the tests except that it says directx is not installed properly! My sound setup says directx 8.1. i've tried reinstalling directx from ati cd, same thing.

I did an install of basically the same thing you did and like you, ATI's PC Check turns up a "directx not installed" error when you're using MMC series 7 and DirectX9. That in itself doesn't turn out to be a problem since I've got the DVD player working OK with a Sigmatel onboard codec. I've even got a "MMX not detected" on my P3 so not everything's entirely kosher with that part of the software package.

Are the CMI codec drivers the latest ones available? And when you're installing the MMC package, they prompt you to download and install some Microsoft codec package -- definitely do that as my TV tuner and DVD player wouldn't start without them (it would "load", turn the pointer to the hourglass, then suddenly stop and remove itself from memory).