Hollywood + card and DXR-3 card

[porto]

Hello,

Now that my standalone dvdplayer has died on me (finlux dvd 510, may he rest in peace(s), I'm searching for another solution. I don't want a standalone player anymore because I use multiple brands of DVD-R and I found out there ain't one player out there which plays all those brands flawlessy.... The dvd 510 did but ain't for sell anymore over here.

I have a couple of ?tions:

1. I own an old DXR-3 card which was included by my Creative Encore 8x dvd kit I bought some 3 or 4 years ago. Is there a way to get this player to work with ANY dvd drive in the computer and under windows XP?? Are there any drivers available?

2. Does the Hollywood Plus card and the new Realmagic X card work with a pioneer dvr-105/a05 dvd writer/player?? And how is the quality compared to a normal brand standalone player??

Thank you in advance!

Porto

[FulciLives]

I have a Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus card (wihch should be the same thing as your DXR-3 card) and I have it working under WinXP Pro but the drivers are VERY unstable under WinXP Pro and the only way I can get it to work is to use the 3rd party software player called Eugene's Player (which is a region free player that disables macrovision).

The last time I bothered to check (it has probably been at least 6 months) the XP drivers for the Hollywood Plus card had many issues with WinXP

The newer Xcard by Sigma Designs is VERY similiar except it can handle not just MPEG-1/MPEG-2 but also MPEG-4 such as DivX but it doesn't seem to like DivX very much unless you encode it with specific settings (such as not using GMC amoung other options). However the Xcard ... from what I hear ... works fine with WinXP

As for playing back a DVD from your DVD drive ... I have problems doing this on my system without some occassional stutter. These days I never use my computer DVD to play things back ... I have a multi-system region free stand alone DVD player ... but I did use to use my computer alot at one point and to get around the stutter problem I would RIP the DVD to my HDD first (using FILE mode SELECT ALL FILES in DVD Decrypter) then simply play back the DVD from the HDD copy. Same quality as playing it back from the DVD with all menus and options etc. but this way I got around the stutter problem.

Chances are you won't have a stutter problem (I still don't know why my system has this as my DVD drive works fine for RIPPING and my new BURNER seems to have no problems either with RIPPING or BURNING) but if you ever do have this problem at least you know you can RIP the DVD to the HDD first and THEN play it back that way. This works because the transfer rate off of the HDD is faster than the transfer rate from a DVD disc even if you have a fast 16x (I think that is the fastest these days) DVD drive.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
The quality of the image output from the Hollywood Plus is excellent and just like that from a stand alone DVD player. It is much better than using the VIDEO out port from a computer video card.
One thing though ... I live in the USA and we use NTSC but before I got my multi-system stand alone I used the Hollywood Plus to watch PAL encoded DVD videos and output NTSC to my TV. The conversion quality was not the greatest. The image has a slight shakyness to it and frames are dropped and it's an ugly mess. I'm sure it outputs PAL fine as PAL but you don't want to use it to convert PAL to NTSC and I imagine NTSC to PAL is just as bad. There is no problem watching either format on the computer monitor using the pass-thru since a computer monitor can handle either format without conversion so I'm talking about the TV output here. So if you need to convert PAL to NTSC or vice versa because you have a TV that can only handle one format then you are better served getting a stand alone DVD player that can PROPERLY convert ... in that case I recommend the Cyberhome CH-DVD 500 which can be bought in the USA for $79.95

[D_Knife]

FulciLives
Interesting points
I wonder if there is something amiss with your Holywood+
I'm using mine on XP Pro SP1 right now to watch JAW Zone 1 converting into PAL - no problems at all
No shakes,jitters or image problems it's being output onto a 68cm TV

The card decodes DD / MP2 audio in software so unless your passing DTS to a dedicated decoder you might run into stuttering with a high CPU load.
I believe that the new Xcard decodes audio in hardware...

[porto]

Hi!

I got my DXR-3 card working like a charm under XP! And I didn't had to install any drivers!?! I also use Eugene's Player. I don't experience stuttering or mpeg artifacts, the movies are playing like a charm and with the card linked up via Coax digital to my ac3/dts receiver the party is complete for me!

Now my problem:

The image on the computer is good but when I output it to my TV screen the image is nearly perfect, that because the tiny little lines all over the screen. It likes some sort of matrix how the lines are build up. It is some kind of distortion but I can't seem to eliminate it. You only see it when the screen or portions of the screen has even colours like white, grey, red etc. In-movie it is quite difficult to see them so it's not much of an irritating problem, just a little annoying.

Somebody recognizes this problem and has any suggestions?

Porto

[FulciLives]

Porto ...

Sorry but I never had the problem you talk about. As long as I was outputting a NTSC DVD to my NTSC TV the image was perfect.

Please note I was using the S-Video to composite video cable since my TV at the time only had a composite video input.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[porto]

Hi!

I use S-video to S-video so the signal must be good.
those lines flicker a bit, looks like some kind of moiré effect... could it have something to do with interlaced video?

Beside this little problem the quality is indeed similar, and maybe superior, to a standalone player!

but it's not that kind of an issue... I'm just happy everything worked so quickly and smoothly, and that for a mpeg 2 card of 3 to 4 years old!

addendum:

look at below pictures (1600*1200 res.). Picture #1 is from a standalone player and has smooth image. Picture #2 is from the DXR-3 card and has those funny lines in them, all over the image.

http://home.planet.nl/~hoff0222/DSC03309.JPG

http://home.planet.nl/~hoff0222/DSC03310.JPG