MPG file playback on SD Hollywood Plus?

[Lord Sandwich]

Does anyone know if the Hollywood Plus card can play back DVD-compliant MPEG-2 files from the hard drive? Also, is the codec accessible from other DirectShow-based players like ZoomPlayer?

Seems my P3-733 still isn't enough for perfect 720x480i playback so I'm in the market for a (cheap) hardware solution.

[prr]

Your CPU is powerful enough for DVD playback. If You have problems, they is not caused by insufficent CPU.

[khp]

Does anyone know if the Hollywood Plus card can play back DVD-compliant MPEG-2 files from the hard drive?

Yes, just open them in DVD-station.

[Lord Sandwich]

prr: Well, yeah, it plays fine mostly, but video stutters on occasion during high-motion scenes, even with MJPEG. It looks absolutely terrible on interlaced displays.

I only have a GeForce2 MX card, and I want reliable, Matrox-/ATI-/Pinnacle-quality output without breaking the bank. I figure a hardware codec is the only real way to do that (DV's out of the question for my budget).

And I'd like to keep my GeForce. :D

khp: Thanks for the help; I take it you own a H+? Does this thing really handle interlaced video formats properly, or does it still apply some sort of deinterlacing technique before output? 'Cause that'd just kill everything for me.

---

My specs:

P3-733, 128MB SDRAM, audio-on-board
7200 RPM HDD
Inno3D GeForce2 MX 200 w/ TV-out, LifeView BT878 capture card
Windows 2000 SP2

[khp]

khp: Thanks for the help; I take it you own a H+?
Well no, I have a Creative DXR3 but use the hollywood+ drivers.
The DXR3 is really a hollywood+ card in disguise.

Does this thing really handle interlaced video formats properly
I have seen no problems with it, but I mostly use it for pal DVD's, and divx movies.

[Lord Sandwich]

Thanks, I think I'll go fill out that order form now. :)

Umm, DivX? On an MPEG-2 card? How?

[macdaddy]

khp-what drivers are you using..?

I tried using the H+ drivers and DVD Station, but I would get stutters during DVD playback-did you ever experience this?

These errors do not occur when using Creative's PC-DVD software, so I have been sticking with it (I have the dxr3 also)...

The TV-out on these cards can't be beat (for NTSC @ least), and I would like to utilize it for SVCD playback as well; Creative's software doesn't support it. Any ideas..?

Whatever happened to DivX+ ? Was anybody able to get that thing working..? (this would be the perfect compliment to my "poor man's htpc")

Thanks, in advance, for any responses.

[khp]

Umm, DivX? On an MPEG-2 card? How?
Well that is quite a trick, a program called divxplus will do the divx decoding and send full frames to the hollywood card.
But there are some stability issues, more on that later.

khp-what drivers are you using..?
I'am @ work atm, so I can't tell u the exact version numbers, but I think it's the newest drivers for both win2k and win98.

The TV-out on these cards can't be beat (for NTSC @ least), and I would like to utilize it for SVCD playback as well; Creative's software doesn't support it. Any ideas..?
Sorry I don't do SVCD.

Whatever happened to DivX+ ? Was anybody able to get that thing working..?
Well yes but it's tricky, with win98se on a duron 750 with the soltek SL-75KAV, I have no problems whatsoever.

With win2k on a celeron 900 with a microstar 815EP Pro-R (MS-6337 V3.0B) motherboard I get the following results:
1) Start single instance of divxplus: black screen, with sound.
2) Start another instance of divxplus: video and sound from both appear. But picture is messed up.
3) Shutdown on of the two instances of divxplus: I get Video and sound, but video is messed up (picture have rolled about 100-200 pixels to the right)
4) Repeating step 2 and 3 I get the same results over and over again.
5) Shutdown all instances of divxplus, and repeat step 1-3: this will eventually give me a good picture. (usually takes 2-5 tries).

[Lord Sandwich]

Heh, I thought you were actually using the decoder chip for DivX--wouldn't that be peachy. :D My TV-out'll do just fine for that.

[khp]

My TV-out'll do just fine for that.

Well yes, but my Asus 7100 geforce mx tv-out looks like crap compared to the hollywood+.

[Mikele]

I have that same card and TV-Out is awesome (equal or even better than H+), it has a Conexant chip (H+ also uses those chips). Resolution should be set to 720/640x480 for NTSC or 768x576 for PAL, and you should use TVTool to overscan the picture and correct some values. It's a little harder to set up than the Hollywood, but it gives great results.

[macdaddy]

Don't mean to hassle you, khp, but if your drivers are different from the last ones I tried, I would like to give them a try. What version are they?

Thanks, in advance.

[khp]

Don't mean to hassle you, khp ...
Sorry about the less than swift reply, I have been working 75+ hrs in the last 6 days, ad to that a couple of post xmas lunches with my family.
My Win 2k drivers are:
Release 2.2 beta (Build 139_5) June 15th, 2001

Win98:
Release 2.2 beta (Build 139_5) for Win 9x -- June 15th, 2001

DVD Station Version 4.06

This means that I have not been useing the latest drivers sorry.

To Mikele
Ok I admit I have not done a lot of tweaking on this board, in the tests that I have done I got near constant 'frame breakups' (half the screen displaying one frame, otherhalf displaying another) durring divx playback. The hollywood+ never misses a beat though.

[macdaddy]

Got the dxr3 working with svcd and dvd playback, I think... I am testing now, and if everything works correctly I will edit the post and include driver versions, etc..

Is there any particular PERFORMANCE advantage to using eugene's player...?

[Mikele]

Nope, there's no performance improvement at all. With Eugene's it's really easy to play a ripped DVD, just open video_ts.ifo. But it lacks of a good SVCD support and I never managed to use its own region free solution, I always had to use Zone Selector.

[macdaddy]

I still find that Creative's PC-DVD software provides DVD playback that is superior to DVDstation, when used with a dxr3. The stuttering is least noticeable with this software. However, Playing the DVD back from the hard drive using Eugene's Player is the best of all...

Speaking of performance, I found some registry and system.ini tweaks in these two (http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/Archives/Archive-000004/HTML/20010102-12-002886.html) threads (http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/Archives/Archive-000004/HTML/20010812-12-004493.html). I would suggest reading them through before attempting the changes. Having said that, the changed settings pretty much remove all system hiccups I was having during playback...

This link (http://www.pureperformance.com/) is buried somewhere in those threads, and I found it to be a pretty good resource...

I wonder if playback is smoother with the dxr3 under *nix...

I also wonder why, if there is NO difference between a H+ and dxr3, the h+ software is substandard when it comes to DVD playback. Understand there is no discernable difference in the picture quality, but when playing the DVD from a DVD-ROM drive, using a dxr3 and h+ drivers, there is alot of stuttering. Playing the DVD from the hard drive eliminates this problem (more info here (http://rilanparty.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13556))...

Also, while playing with the latest version of Eugene's player, I found the following things:

It takes two tries to activate ac3out. This does not occur when playing from the harddrive.
Time display does not seem to work when starting off with a bookmark. Again this does not happen when playing the DVD from the hard drive...
video controls don't work with the oversun skin, they do work with the default skin...

Are there any registry tweaks specific to the dxr3? What about tweaks for the H+ (that might work for the dxr3)?