What am doing wrong ? HD DVD using PowerDVD doesn't work

[NICEBUD]

Ive been trying to play HDDVD on my pc .First off yes my monitor is DHCP (Benq FP241W) and graphics card is Geforce 8800GTX which is also DHCP.The HDDVD drive is xbox 360 ad on drive and the software is power dvd 6.5 HDDVD this is all running on xp pro sp2 with 2gb ram and the cpu is AMD64 3800 which runs @ 2.5GHZ NOT CLOCKED .

Ive tryed dvi to HDMI connecter all can see is windows.Ive tried dvi to dvi same all i get is windows.
In all of these cases it either starts of all jerkey then the whole lot just fannishes. Or it doesnt do anything.

Can somebody tell me what im doing wrong ?

[Baldrick]

You could try the demo of anydvd hd as it should remove HDPC protection. If it works you have some hdcp-problems and if not maybe try another software hd dvd player like latest powerdvd 8(?).

And please use a better subject. I changed your now but you can edit by click edit on your first post.

[Heywould3]

im pretty sure you need powerDVD7 or higher or other SW to play. FYI your 8800 is a good card but doesnt handle HD DVD as well as 8500/8600 cards. those two have hardware decode. the 8800 does not. as a result your CPU has to do all the work and a single core even at 2.5 will not perform well. you will get lag and glitching. this is not just an opinion HD is very cpu intensive you need a hell of a computer to get perfect playback. i have a dual core @2.75 with the 8600 overclocked and once in a great while ill get lag and glitches in 1080P playback. both cores run at 60% or so when playing 1080P but only 25% or so when playing 720P (in vista) for some reason its a lot less in XP. might have something to do with only having 1 gig ram and having ot use swap file more in vista then XP. but thats another topic

[Krispy Kritter]

I agree...from what I've read, you need PowerDVD 7.

[Ollie6431]

Ive been trying to play HDDVD on my pc .First off yes my monitor is DHCP (Benq FP241W) and graphics card is Geforce 8800GTX which is also DHCP.The HDDVD drive is xbox 360 ad on drive and the software is power dvd 6.5 HDDVD this is all running on xp pro sp2 with 2gb ram and the cpu is AMD64 3800 which runs @ 2.5GHZ NOT CLOCKED .

Ive tryed dvi to HDMI connecter all can see is windows.Ive tried dvi to dvi same all i get is windows.
In all of these cases it either starts of all jerkey then the whole lot just fannishes. Or it doesnt do anything.

Can somebody tell me what im doing wrong ?

Your PC's RAM and graphic card are good but the CPU may not be enough. The minimum suggested CPU for HD DVD playback is 3.2 GHz (or duo core 1.83 GHz). I have tried various softwares for AVCHD-DVD playback and found that Nero Showtime (in Nero 8) seems to be the best one for smooth playback. I did not have experience with HD DVD playback but would think that Nero 8 may play HD DVD well since it is also based on AVC/h.264 codec as AVCHD-DVD. You may want to use the trial version of Nero 8 to see if it works for your setup.

[elfranko]

Hi! Bit of an HD newbie, but after shelling out a fair sum last year for an HD telly and not really seen any HD on it so far, I took the plunge to get the XBox 360 drive and plug it into my pc as I have successfully hooked up my pc to the big screen and I hoped that this was the next step.

Unfortunately I hit the software brick wall. I have PowerDVD 6 - I tried WinDVD 8 Try Out and it was very unstable. No playback at all. I'm currently downloading Nero 8 Trial to see what happens, but from my specs and set up, am I missing anything out crucial?

cheers

frank

Ahhhhh....installed demo of Nero 8 and it recognised the 360 drive BUT then said I needed the Blu-ray/HD-DVD Plugin. So much for being a fully working demo. I want to see someones product WORKING 100% BEFORE I shell out cash for their product. Buying a 360 drive was gamble enough.

[jman98]

I agree...from what I've read, you need PowerDVD 7.

No. PowerDVD 6.5 support HD-DVD. The problem is that it has been reported that no version of PowerDVD correctly plays all HD-DVD discs. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it, but version 6.5 might work and 7 and 8 fail for one disc, then version 7 and 8 will play another disc and 6.5 won't, then 7 might play a disc that 6.5 and 8 won't play, and so on. A resourceful person might think of ways to obtain versions of PowerDVD other than just 6.5 in attempt to deal with this problem.

Do note that even if you get this working, both PowerDVD and WinDVD enforce HDMI for full frame playback and neither will play your HD-DVDs at 1080i or 1080p unless your video card is connected to your monitor via HDMI. This is not a requirement of the HD-DVD disc which in theory can enforce this connection but at this time none of the released HD-DVDs do so. This was a decision by both PowerDVD and WinDVD to suck up to Hollywood and enforce the use of HDMI for full resolution playback on PCs even though the software could have been designed to simply let the disc make the decision on whether or not to enforce this. In fact, this requirement to use HDMI for full resolution playback was cited as the motivating factor that led someone to crack the copy protection on HD-DVD - he was very angry that playback software enforced the use of HDMI, which his video card did not support, even though the HD-DVD disc itself did not require HDMI for full frame playback.

[elfranko]

Any suggestions for an immediate way of just seeing if my set up works? Am very confused by the large amount of software players and versions that can or cannot play HD-DVD.

ta

frank

[elfranko]

Do note that even if you get this working, both PowerDVD and WinDVD enforce HDMI for full frame playback and neither will play your HD-DVDs at 1080i or 1080p unless your video card is connected to your monitor via HDMI. This is not a requirement of the HD-DVD disc which in theory can enforce this connection but at this time none of the released HD-DVDs do so. This was a decision by both PowerDVD and WinDVD to suck up to Hollywood and enforce the use of HDMI for full resolution playback on PCs even though the software could have been designed to simply let the disc make the decision on whether or not to enforce this. In fact, this requirement to use HDMI for full resolution playback was cited as the motivating factor that led someone to crack the copy protection on HD-DVD - he was very angry that playback software enforced the use of HDMI, which his video card did not support, even though the HD-DVD disc itself did not require HDMI for full frame playback .

Ah ha..... progress of sorts! Do not ask how and I will tell no lies how I managed to upgrade to PowerDVD 6.5 but I did and now it auto recognises and plays the XBox360 drive! Only cost me £45/$90 after gift vouchers. Anyhow, it was playing perfectly on my screen after what looked like some sort of ye olde Region 1 FBI warning.

Then I told my video card to link up to my HD tv via the dual head video out to HDMI in cable. And I got this message AFTER the fbi warning on the tv:

This content is protected and this system is not able to playback this content.

This was a standard Windows alert box. Whats all that about?

ta

frank

[elfranko]

Weird - I connected to the TV and it showed it was in 1080i, and using thew nvidia panel set the tv as the only output, so my monitor switched off. And hey presto - the dvd plays! Switch off the tv - the protection message appears!!!

[jman98]

Weird - I connected to the TV and it showed it was in 1080i, and using thew nvidia panel set the tv as the only output, so my monitor switched off. And hey presto - the dvd plays! Switch off the tv - the protection message appears!!!

I think this is because of Hollywood paranoia and the sucking up of the manufacturers to Hollywood. There is extreme paranoia that if you play an HD-DVD on a PC that the disc will somehow by copyable, but the actual way the protection was cracked had nothing at all to do with the video output, which shows how stupid this whole requirement for HDMI for PC playback is. If you switch off the TV, the software knows you are playing it on a PC, hence the paranoid "You MUST use HDMI" mode.

[elfranko]

Lol - no, thats it; I used the Nvidia panel to switch to single monitor (the TV) and the "This content is protected..." message didn't appear. The dvd played fine via my bfg 7950GT using DVi to hdmi cable in 1080i mode.
Then when I accidentally switched off the tv I thought Nuts, its still in single monitor mode. When I switched the tv back on I saw the content protection message had appeared.

So, from my "experiments":

a) XBox 360 drive + drivers + PowerDVD 6.5 + Intel dual logical 2.8ghz + nvidia 7950 GT OC 512mb + bog standard monitor = playback
b) As above but Sony 50inch Bravia 3LCD KDF-E50A12U via dvi to hdmi cable = playback
c) Set display to Clone across both monitor and TV = No playback

Final thing I want to find out is if I can do 1080p. I have seen a 50 inch tv in a Sony Centre showing a demo play back that was out of this world in clarity. The Superman Returns that I got with the drive was very very very good but I want to see what happens at 1080p. Does anyone know if this tv can go this high and if yes, how?

thanks!

frank


Edit - ah http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/televisions/0,39030217,39195776,00.htm shows it only goes up to 1080i.

[NICEBUD]

Thanks to all who replyed to my post.Ive now cracked it.It was the software.Put Powerdvd 7.3 deluxe.Works fine in dvi mode @480p and HDMI I get 1080i.LOOKS FU*KING realy COOL.

So THANKS to all.