I noticed disturbing color banding with PWDVD Ultra.
In the opening scene from Training Day when then sun rises , the colors
have a somewhat smooth transition when played with the XBox YUV 1080i
to the Sony Pearl.When i connect the HDDVD Drive to my 3,4Ghz Dualcore
PC with MSI 7600GT Diamond Plus GCard and feed it with HDMI or DVI 1080p
to the Pearl , it looks quite bad.I can see clearly over 10 vertical steps in the
Color transition.So i tried VGA and YUV1080i output from the 7600 GT , but it
wasn't better.When i use my Notebook with a ATI x1700 graphiccard and
PWDVD Ultra ,it looks quite better ,but still not so good as with the Xbox,concerning
the Color transition.DVI and VGA looks about the same.
With my PC , i achieved the best result with PWDVD 6.5 and VGA 1080 24 psf
output.The Color transition looked about the same as with the Xbox.
With PWDVD 6.5 and HDMI , DVI 1080p output it looks better then with Ultra.
But noticeable inferior as with VGA or Xbox.
Has somebody similiar experiences and an explanation or a fix for this problem?

This doesn't sound like a PDVD problem. This sounds like you need to calibrate your video settings for your video card and/or your TV's PC input. It is most likely your settings in your video card. Having said that, it could be the video settings within PDVD, but for my setup, the banding on Ice Age: Meltdown was greatly reduced (not quite eliminated) by calibrating my video card settings. Saturation, Hue, Brightness, and Contrast all needed to be changed. I used the AVIA DVD and this seemed to work fairly well.

Mine too, they were basically unplayable. But, successfully getting hardware accelleration working in PowerDVD H.264 video filters fix the problem. They run just as smooth as if they were "low res" DVD :)

I have a feeling my HTPC is more than adequate performance wise (I can also play 1080p WMV-HD files too). I think the problem is going to be HDCP; since I need DVI/HDMI for my 1080p display.
The bit rate of those files is significantly less then what is on Blu-ray or HD DVD. Those files are made for downloadability, not image quality. With H.264 acceleration I can play 1080p Apple clips on a Sempron 3300+, there is no way that same system could play an H.264 encoded BR/HD DVD disc.

Sorry if this has been answered already. Is there a way to install the HD-DVD version if you don't have an HD-DVD drive? The program defaults to the BD version for some reason and I can't figure out a way to change to the HD-DVD version. Anyone got any ideas?

Sorry if this has been answered already. Is there a way to install the HD-DVD version if you don't have an HD-DVD drive? The program defaults to the BD version for some reason and I can't figure out a way to change to the HD-DVD version. Anyone got any ideas?

There is two folders labeled HD-DVD and BDDVD or something. Empty the contents of BDDVD and copy the contents of HD-DVD into BDDVD. This will give you a default install of HD-DVD.

Or even simpler just delete the BDDVD folder and rename HDDVD to BDDVD

Tried it, and it works. However, it won't play any .EVO files. The program just crashes. I think there's a problem installing it the way you guys suggest. In configurations there is no HD-DVD tab. Something's not working right when its installed in this way.

I installed mine the way prescribed above and it worked for me fine. As long as you have a red background on powerdvd (behind the lady holding the disc) when starting it then you have the HD DVD version.

I noticed disturbing color banding with PWDVD Ultra.Sounds like you may not have your desktop set to 32bit color.

Vern

Vern, what NVIDIA drivers do you recommend for an NVIDIA 79xx card? I have severe banding/contour issues with PowerDVD, along with the bad colors. Naturally my desktop is 32 bit color.

Things look fine if I use zoomplayer or TheaterTek using the PowerDVD h.264 directshow filters, for broadcast h.264 content. They look horrible when using PowerDVD.

Unfortunately, due to multiple issues with poor scaling, colors etc, I had to give up on the 79xx for HD. I am much happier with the 8800.

So I can't help you with this one.

Vern

My desktop color is also 32 bit.
The strange thing about is that with the older PWDVD 6.5 there is noticeable
less color banding when using HDMI , DVI and nearly no color banding wit VGA.
With Ultra it looks bad on every output including YUV.
I tried over 1 hour with all aviable settings.The only changes in the color
bandings could be seen with the diffrent Color Profiles like Original , Bright ,
Theater and it's adjustements like gamma,contrast,brightness...
But it only looked different but not better.

Update:
I swapped out my single core 3.06ghz Pentium for a Pentium D 820, I'm also using a 7900 GTX with hardware acceleration and now it is as smooth as glass. Anyone thinking about using this will need a dual core at least, IMO.

Please tell me if I have this right:

1) PowerDVD Ultra is a completely different program than PowerDVD 7 Deluxe.

2) It does not work if you don't have specific certified hardware.

3) It sucks for playing regular DVDs.

4) There is no trial version.

Please tell me if I have this right:

1) PowerDVD Ultra is a completely different program than PowerDVD 7 Deluxe.

2) It does not work if you don't have specific certified hardware.

3) It sucks for playing regular DVDs.

4) There is no trial version.

1, 2, and 4 are correct, but I have not noticed point 3. On the other hand, since I got my XBOX 360 HD DVD drive, I have to admit I haven't been watching many standard DVDs....:)

Hi,

Went to play 'Wolf Creek' last night which is unrated and got the error message "This movie will not play due to the parental setting of the player"

I couldn't see any where in PowerDVD Ultra to change the settings, I had a look at the device driver for the Xbox drive and nothing there, any ideas???

Cheers

3) PowerDVD Ultra has the same Standard DVD-Playback capabilities as PowerDVD 7 Deluxe

Update:
I swapped out my single core 3.06ghz Pentium for a Pentium D 820, I'm also using a 7900 GTX with hardware acceleration and now it is as smooth as glass. Anyone thinking about using this will need a dual core at least, IMO.

Did a few experiments with downclocking: for VC1 discs, the minimum they play smoothly with is a single Pentium 3.2ghz core with a 6600GT. It's at 75% or so, but peaks almost max the CPU.

On normal speeds (dualcore 3.5ghz P4), discs average 30% and never go above 40%. With gpu acceleration off, it's 50%, peak 60%.

Please tell me if I have this right:

1) PowerDVD Ultra is a completely different program than PowerDVD 7 Deluxe.


It would be more accurate to say:

PDVD Ultra = PDVD 7 Deluxe for almost everything, but for HDDVD/BD it uses the codecs from PDVD6.5.

It's a bit of a mess really, lots of bugs on the HD side. They really rushed it out :-(

Tried to watch Miami Vice in HD-DVD last night. Had video right up to the first scene, then only black screen with subtitles. Reinstall all my software short of full Windows reinstall, problem was still there. Clean windows registry, still nothing. After about an hour, noted that PowerDVD had most all the "File Associations" unchecked in configuration, re-checked all the different files to be associated with PowerDVD, and playback WORKS PERFECT AGAIN.

Some program on my computer had hyjacked most all the "File Associations".

Hope this helps someone

Tried to watch Miami Vice in HD-DVD last night. Had video right up to the first scene, then only black screen with subtitles. Reinstall all my software short of full Windows reinstall, problem was still there. Clean windows registry, still nothing. After about an hour, noted that PowerDVD had most all the "File Associations" unchecked in configuration, re-checked all the different files to be associated with PowerDVD, and playback WORKS PERFECT AGAIN.

Some program on my computer had hyjacked most all the "File Associations".

Hope this helps someone

I'll throw in another solution I found to a problem that some may or may not have...

Had stuttering and locking up when actually playing KK, not in menus or anything else, when actually playing the movie. I only have 2.1 speakers hooked up right now so I set it for the Dobly virtual surround sound to see how that sounded. Well that was the problem, set it back to default settings and it plays perfect now.

Had stuttering and locking up when actually playing KK, not in menus or anything else, when actually playing the movie. I only have 2.1 speakers hooked up right now so I set it for the Dobly virtual surround sound to see how that sounded. Well that was the problem, set it back to default settings and it plays perfect now.

Nike -

What are the "default settings"? Are you talking about PDVD or your system's audio?

I'm thinking my probs may be audio related, and I'm trying to come up with a known-good hardware and settings sytem to verify. TIA - Pat

...but for HDDVD/BD it uses the codecs from PDVD6.5.




Does PDVD 6.5 also play HD-DVD?

My desktop color is also 32 bit.
The strange thing about is that with the older PWDVD 6.5 there is noticeable
less color banding when using HDMI , DVI and nearly no color banding wit VGA.
With Ultra it looks bad on every output including YUV.
I tried over 1 hour with all aviable settings.The only changes in the color
bandings could be seen with the diffrent Color Profiles like Original , Bright ,
Theater and it's adjustements like gamma,contrast,brightness...
But it only looked different but not better.
I too show dreadful colour banding Superman Returns (only have one disc right unfortunately). Using a 7900GS with Nvidia official 93.71 driver release.

As to whether it is a PowerDVD issue or an Nvidia driver / hardware issue it is difficult to say. All I know is that H.264 using coreAVC through Theatertek DVD player gives no such colour anomalies, but I have no other VC-1 based content with which to test at this moment in time.

Does anyone know whether there are any free reference VC-1 HD video I could use in PowerDVD to eliminate the software as an issue?

Has anyone had any luck in eliminating this issue yet, or at least identifying what the issue is being caused by?

Edit: Also, are there any other freeware apps out there that support HD-DVDs just yet?

For some reason I have to reset the color temp in the Nvidia control panel every time I restart my HTPC or I have color issues too. Once I reset it to “no color correction” all is fine until I restart the system again.

Nike -

What are the "default settings"? Are you talking about PDVD or your system's audio?

I'm thinking my probs may be audio related, and I'm trying to come up with a known-good hardware and settings sytem to verify. TIA - Pat


In PDVD on the audio tab in configuration (if I remember correctly), the default option was stereo. After switching back to stereo everything was fine.

Edit: Also, are there any other freeware apps out there that support HD-DVDs just yet?


There might be in the future, but AACS would need to be cracked in order for open source/freeware to play HD DVD/BDs. The AACS license costs Cyberlink money in order for them to allow playability on their software. Will there be a VC-1/AACS add-on released (for sale of course) to allow any player on your PC to play HD DVD/BDs? I would say probably so, especially if Microsoft wants to integrate playback into Vista media center.

Edit: If I'm off, pls someone correct me :)

Vern says:

Unfortunately, due to multiple issues with poor scaling, colors etc, I had to give up on the 79xx for HD. I am much happier with the 8800.

So I can't help you with this one.


Hmmm, you may be right about the 79xx issues. Since I upgraded from my old Athlon XP w/6800GT to a Core2Duo with 7900GT, I notice jaggies more with HD content. I never thought it would be a scaling issue with the card/drivers, but now you have me wondering!

Another poster just mentioned "No color correction" setting in the NVIDIA control panel. Damn, I thought I had a workaround for that. Now I'll have to Ghost my machine again before playing with it. Ugh. NVIDIA has dropped the ball so many times in the last year, I don't know if these issues will EVER be fixed. :(

I hope someone with a PCI-E 6600GT can report their findings w/ PowerDVD...if the issue disappears maybe I can "downgrade".

Hi,

Went to play 'Wolf Creek' last night which is unrated and got the error message "This movie will not play due to the parental setting of the player"

I couldn't see any where in PowerDVD Ultra to change the settings, I had a look at the device driver for the Xbox drive and nothing there, any ideas???

Cheers

I got this problem with Derailed movie also. Could not find out the setting. I had to watch the movie with Xbox360 console.

So what do you guys think the stutter/frame dropping I'm experiencing is related to? It's not the CPU, or graphics card. Is it a bug in PowerDVD? When email tech support, they tell me to reinstall the software. Which does nothing. They haven't released any updates either. Again, I'm running Vista, Duo 2 E6300, Nvidia 7950. I can playback WMV HD content without any issues.

PowerDVD Ultra is working great for me now, and the picture quality is fantastic after calibration. It's all good except for two little things, I get faint stutter in Warner discs, and only Warner discs. All my other discs play stutter free. It's not unwatchable but it's annoying. I guess and hope it will be fixed in a patch. My Warner discs are "Corpse Bride" and "Grand Prix".

The other thing that's annoying me is the occasional hickup where the movie will stop for a few seconds and play a stuttering sound before continuing as normal. It happens three or four times in a complete movie with regular intervals. I'm sure it will be ironed out in a patch by CyberLink since HD-DVD playback is really in its infancy at the moment.


I received my new PowerColor X1950 Pro today to replace the X800 that wasn't working with Ultra, and it was supposed to be HDCP compliant according to the shop where I got it but it doesn't work over DVI-D to my BenQ PE8700. There is no mention of HDCP on the box so I'm going to complain to the shop. I'll keep the card though as I use VGA anyway, but I wanted to be future-proof with my upgrades so its annoying.


Now that PDVD Ultra works I was able to try King Kong and holy smokes was the picture great! I'm blown away by it. I watched Corpse Bride with a couple of friends tonight and it was also very impressive.

I have searched through this whole thread and see that there are folks here (like Vern) who hook up the SPDIF out (from either the MB or the sound card) to an external audio processor/receiver to decode the dolby digital stream coming out. However, when I do this, all I am getting was cracking sound. Is the data stream coming out of SPDIF DD+ stream or has it been converted to DD/DTS? There were a couple posts commenting on the "SPDIF-mixing" option being grayed out and the two options there are SPDIF-Dobly Digital or SPDIF-DTS. I suspect that they are for downmixing Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD to the two lower bit rate audio formats.

In any case, I suppose some users have successfully connected their PC via SPDIF out to their receivers to get 5.1 surround sound out. What have I done wrong on my setup? Next step for me to try is to put a sound card in and see if the SPDIF out from the sound card does the same thing.

Here is my rig:

Gigabyte GA-P965-DS3 Motherboard - SPDIF out of Realtek HD Audio from motherboard
Intel E6300 @ 1.86G
Corsair XMS DDR2-800 2GB
eVGA 7950GT video card
Panasonic SA-XR45 receiver

I used "use SPDIF" in audio page of PowerDVD and set HD audio setting to be 5.1.

Yes, I had SPDIF working fine. However, I recently switched to 8 channel analog, which also works fine.

For those that still have stuttering, I have an extreme tweak. I will say in advance that it worked for me, but if you try it, you're on your own. Unless you know what you are doing, you could have problems!

What I did was to use the Windows device manager and select view - resources by type - interrupt request (IRQ) and then disable all the devices that share the IRQ that the video card uses EXCEPT THE NVIDIA and VIDEO RELATED STUFF. In my case it was mostly USB resources and an SMBus resource.

That cured the last of the stutters for me.

Different mobos use different IRQ sharing schemes, so this may, or may not, work for you.

Vern

Does PDVD 6.5 also play HD-DVD?

Yup - or possibly version 6.6, can't remember. One is for BD, one for HD-DVD, they're otherwise the same.

Confusing thing is 6.5/6.6 were released quite a while after 7.0 :D

Yes, I had SPDIF working fine. However, I recently switched to 8 channel analog, which also works fine.

Vern

Hi Vern,

Thanks for confirming on this. Did you select "use SPDIF" in the audio tab of PowerDVD when using SPDIF out? I assume your current setup using 8 channel analog is changing the same audio tab to 8 channel out, correct?

I am having trouble calibrating the colors in PDVD Ultra.

I don't know what the term is, but shadowy or dark scenes are too black... stuff that should be dark grey, but visible, is black.

Should I set PDVD to "normal" (all zeros) and calibrate my tv? (720p Samsung DLP) Is there a setting that others with a Samsung DLP could give me to start from?

Going in and out of that menu with the THX optimizer on the screen is annyoing as hell..


any tips would be great.


PS - I've ripped Training Day (which I own) to the HD and I'm wondering is there a way yet to play the whole folder as if it is the HD DVD, or do I just make a playlist with the two main .EVO files to watch the movie?

Interesting, I find the blacks/shadows washed out in PDVD with HD-DVD material. But then again for regular HD and DVD playback (in SageTV and TheaterTek), I use Overlay rendering instead of VMR9, because it seems to give me a better picture with fewer problems. So I'm thinking maybe PowerDVD HD uses VMR9 mode.

But I noticed that not only are is the black point off, but the color balance is off as well. For instance I was watching a bit of Superman Returns and the sky had a distinct green cast to it. The problem here is not my display, HD looks great in SageTV and I've used Calman to calibrate not only grayscale but also the primaries and secondaries.

I thought maybe I could play the GetGray calibration DVD in PowerDVD and use the video adjustments within the app to calibrate the color, but it appears that PowerDVD uses completely different rendering for HD-DVD than it does regular DVD because the black point and color balance was completely different when playing the GetGray disc.

So until the HD-DVD version of DVE comes out I'm not really sure how I can calibrate PowerDVD except by eyeball. For my setup (keep in mind, I use Overlay for playback of other formats), I found that in PowerDVD's Video adjustments I had to drop the brightness a few notches, and shift the Color1 a bit towards Red and the Color 2 a bit towards Blue. I also gave a slight bump to the Contrast slider.

Going in and out of that menu with the THX optimizer on the screen is annyoing as hell..Do any of the HD-DVD's have the THX optimizer on them?

Interesting, I find the blacks/shadows washed out in PDVD with HD-DVD material. But then again for regular HD and DVD playback (in SageTV and TheaterTek), I use Overlay rendering instead of VMR9, because it seems to give me a better picture with fewer problems. So I'm thinking maybe PowerDVD HD uses VMR9 mode.

But I noticed that not only are is the black point off, but the color balance is off as well. For instance I was watching a bit of Superman Returns and the sky had a distinct green cast to it. The problem here is not my display, HD looks great in SageTV and I've used Calman to calibrate not only grayscale but also the primaries and secondaries.

I thought maybe I could play the GetGray calibration DVD in PowerDVD and use the video adjustments within the app to calibrate the color, but it appears that PowerDVD uses completely different rendering for HD-DVD than it does regular DVD because the black point and color balance was completely different when playing the GetGray disc.

So until the HD-DVD version of DVE comes out I'm not really sure how I can calibrate PowerDVD except by eyeball. For my setup (keep in mind, I use Overlay for playback of other formats), I found that in PowerDVD's Video adjustments I had to drop the brightness a few notches, and shift the Color1 a bit towards Red and the Color 2 a bit towards Blue. I also gave a slight bump to the Contrast slider.

Do any of the HD-DVD's have the THX optimizer on them?

What exact settings do you use, maybe I could start from there..

I used the THX Optimizer in Finding Nemo or something

But I didn't realize it was seperate for HD DVD.

I just wanna get it close, it doesn't have to be perfect - I just want to see most of what I'm supposed to and very close to original color...

PowerDVD Ultra is working great for me now, and the picture quality is fantastic after calibration. It's all good except for two little things, I get faint stutter in Warner discs, and only Warner discs. All my other discs play stutter free. It's not unwatchable but it's annoying. I guess and hope it will be fixed in a patch. My Warner discs are "Corpse Bride" and "Grand Prix".

The other thing that's annoying me is the occasional hickup where the movie will stop for a few seconds and play a stuttering sound before continuing as normal. It happens three or four times in a complete movie with regular intervals. I'm sure it will be ironed out in a patch by CyberLink since HD-DVD playback is really in its infancy at the moment.


I received my new PowerColor X1950 Pro today to replace the X800 that wasn't working with Ultra, and it was supposed to be HDCP compliant according to the shop where I got it but it doesn't work over DVI-D to my BenQ PE8700. There is no mention of HDCP on the box so I'm going to complain to the shop. I'll keep the card though as I use VGA anyway, but I wanted to be future-proof with my upgrades so its annoying.


Now that PDVD Ultra works I was able to try King Kong and holy smokes was the picture great! I'm blown away by it. I watched Corpse Bride with a couple of friends tonight and it was also very impressive.

Hi Mate,

I had the same experience with the Powercolor version of the X1950pro, they promised it IS HDCP ready, but it is NOT. As soon as I plugged in my HIS version HDCP worked straight away. If I were you I'd take it back while you can.

How can these companies get a way with it???

Cheers

I got this problem with Derailed movie also. Could not find out the setting. I had to watch the movie with Xbox360 console.


Hi,

Did you try and get in touch with Cyberlink at all??

Cheers

PowerDVD Ultra is working great for me now, and the picture quality is fantastic after calibration. It's all good except for two little things, I get faint stutter in Warner discs, and only Warner discs. All my other discs play stutter free. It's not unwatchable but it's annoying. I guess and hope it will be fixed in a patch. My Warner discs are "Corpse Bride" and "Grand Prix".
.

Yes, I have that Warner-Problem too with EVERY title of this company (Poseidon, Superman returns, Under Siege etc.). Reclock helps a little but does not completely remove the stutter.

I thought maybe I could play the GetGray calibration DVD in PowerDVD and use the video adjustments within the app to calibrate the color, but it appears that PowerDVD uses completely different rendering for HD-DVD than it does regular DVD because the black point and color balance was completely different when playing the GetGray disc........


Hrrrm, good points, prompted me to investigate a bit. It looks like VMR9 is being used from the registry, so the only difference between HDDVD playback and otherwise is the decoder.

Anyone know of some reference /calibration video in vc1 or (more likely) h264? Doesn't need to be HDDVD, you can fire it through graphedit.

I thought maybe I could play the GetGray calibration DVD in PowerDVD and use the video adjustments within the app to calibrate the color, but it appears that PowerDVD uses completely different rendering for HD-DVD than it does regular DVD because the black point and color balance was completely different when playing the GetGray disc.

So until the HD-DVD version of DVE comes out I'm not really sure how I can calibrate PowerDVD except by eyeball. For my setup (keep in mind, I use Overlay for playback of other formats), I found that in PowerDVD's Video adjustments I had to drop the brightness a few notches, and shift the Color1 a bit towards Red and the Color 2 a bit towards Blue. I also gave a slight bump to the Contrast slider.

Do any of the HD-DVD's have the THX optimizer on them?

For setting brightness/contrast, you can get close by simply choosing appropriate scenes from movies.

For brightness, just go to the credits at the end of a HD-DVD movie and adjust the brightness until your just under the point of the background becoming brighter (assuming the credits background is black, most are).

Contrast is a little harder. You need to find a scene that is very bright, or at least with very bright objects (like lights). Then adjust contrast so that the bright areas of the image are not blooming (blowing out). This works for a digital projector at least.

I've been doing this with my Mits HD1000 projector with good success. If you know what you're looking for, you can get close.

I am having trouble calibrating the colors in PDVD Ultra.

I don't know what the term is, but shadowy or dark scenes are too black... stuff that should be dark grey, but visible, is black.



I too have the same issue.
I get rid of this just switching on my Mitsubishi 5000 input from normal to enhanced when playing HD-DVD.
So I assume that Powerdvd uses extended levels (0:255) istead video level (16:235)
I believe to remember that HD-DVD use 0:255 levels instead of 16:235 just like SD DVD but i can be wrong.

Yes, I have that Warner-Problem too with EVERY title of this company (Poseidon, Superman returns, Under Siege etc.). Reclock helps a little but does not completely remove the stutter.
Rathbone, could you tell me if you experience the colour banding that I referred to earlier in Superman Returns when played through PDVD Ultra.

If not, what GPU / driver combo are you using?

Rathbone, could you tell me if you experience the colour banding that I referred to earlier in Superman Returns when played through PDVD Ultra.

If not, what GPU / driver combo are you using?

Do you have a timecode for me please?

So I assume that Powerdvd uses extended levels (0:255) istead video level (16:235)
I think it's actually using something in-between, becuase on my system the blacks were initially washed out and too light.

I believe to remember that HD-DVD use 0:255 levels instead of 16:235 just like SD DVD but i can be wrong.Personally I wish everything used PC levels but since standard DVD, NTSC, and ATSC all use video levels I would be really surprised if HD-DVD used video levels, that woudl be asking for trouble since you can't calibrate for both.

I have searched through this whole thread and see that there are folks here (like Vern) who hook up the SPDIF out (from either the MB or the sound card) to an external audio processor/receiver to decode the dolby digital stream coming out. However, when I do this, all I am getting was cracking sound. Is the data stream coming out of SPDIF DD+ stream or has it been converted to DD/DTS? There were a couple posts commenting on the "SPDIF-mixing" option being grayed out and the two options there are SPDIF-Dobly Digital or SPDIF-DTS. I suspect that they are for downmixing Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD to the two lower bit rate audio formats.

In any case, I suppose some users have successfully connected their PC via SPDIF out to their receivers to get 5.1 surround sound out. What have I done wrong on my setup? Next step for me to try is to put a sound card in and see if the SPDIF out from the sound card does the same thing.

Here is my rig:

Gigabyte GA-P965-DS3 Motherboard - SPDIF out of Realtek HD Audio from motherboard
Intel E6300 @ 1.86G
Corsair XMS DDR2-800 2GB
eVGA 7950GT video card
Panasonic SA-XR45 receiver

I used "use SPDIF" in audio page of PowerDVD and set HD audio setting to be 5.1.

I have the same MB, and it is working fine for me. I did not set anything to 5.1, just SPDIF out in Powerdvd.

Check in "Realtek HD audio" control panel that under "digital" configuration button, you have "Output digital audio source" selected.

Jerrytdss,

I have the same board and it does work, but I get some stuttering/panning problems when using spdif with some of the DD+ tracks. I switched to 5.1 analog out to fix this problem. It occurs on all current HD-DVD players (WinDVD, PDVD6.5, PDVD7.1).

I downloaded the trial and verified the correct .ax file exists for h264 playback, but can't play any h264 files on my P4 3.0 using HW accel on my 6600GT. PowerDVD just locks up.

When I try to add the external filter in MPC, the Cyberlink PowerDVD h264/APC codec does not exist, but yet as mentioned the file exists.

Is h264 playback just not available in the trial version, or what is the scoop here?

Does anyone know what filtergraph components are needed to playback an EVO file in Graphedit?

An update re the stuters on Warner titles. It seems like a SPDIF-related problem. It also seems to bespecifically related to DD+ 5.1 640 kbps tracks on Warner discs as that is the track which causes microscopic stutters on my system.

-SPDIF output selected in PDVD causes microscopic stutters with my two Warner titles.
-If I turn off the SPDIF output and choose any of the analog outputs in PDVD it plays back smoothly with both Grand Prix and Corpse Bride.
-The DD 1.0 French and Spanish tracks in Grand Prix play back smoothly with SPDIF enabled.
-The 1536 kbps track on my King Kong HD-DVD for example gives smooth playback with SPDIF enabled in PDVD.

I wonder why this happens. Maybe I'll try rolling back to the previous sound card driver. I have a Realtek HD audio soundcard and have tried all the different SPDIF output frequencies and modes in the Realtek menu. Now I'm outputting at 96 KHz to my Denon Rx.

How do you guys get ReClock to work with HD-DVD playback and PowerDVD? It only works with media files (and possibly DVDs, I haven't tried) for me but is not active during HD-DVD playback.

I will try my other discs now to see what kind of tracks they use.

All my other discs are Universal with DD+ 5.1 1536 kbps tracks. Chronicles of Riddick has a DTS-HD 1509 kbps track as well and also plays back smoothly.

I have the same MB, and it is working fine for me. I did not set anything to 5.1, just SPDIF out in Powerdvd.

Check in "Realtek HD audio" control panel that under "digital" configuration button, you have "Output digital audio source" selected.

Hi Jerrytdss,

It's good to know that it should work. Do you use optical out or the coxial out? I use the coxial out and haven't tried the optical out since I don't have a long optical cable. I will move the PC closer to my receiver to try it out.

I already check the Realtek HD audio setting to "Output digital audio source". It's got to be something else.

Does anyone know what filtergraph components are needed to playback an EVO file in Graphedit?

Hi,
Video: FileSource(Async)->Sonic HD Demuxer->Sonic Cinemaster VideoDecoder->render
Audio: FileSource(Async)->Intervideo Demultiplexer->Intervideo Audio Decoder->render

Notes:
- assume EVO contains VC1 or .h264, MPEG-2 is lot easier (just render, should work with EleCard, Cyberlink, ffdshow,...)
- A&V together, doesn't work under above assumption
- DD+ / DTS+ will be downsampled to stereo 44.1kHz
- DTS can be grabbed with Gabest MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
- DD (AC3) works with AC3Filter or ffdshow Audio Decoder
- Intervideo filters from WinDVD 8 Platinum
- Sonic HD filters from Sonic Scenarist 4.1 Standard Content

There is an EVO Demuxer at doom9 which delivers ES for A&V.

sandra

Hi,
Video: FileSource(Async)->Sonic HD Demuxer->Sonic Cinemaster VideoDecoder->render
Audio: FileSource(Async)->Intervideo Demultiplexer->Intervideo Audio Decoder->render

Notes:
- assume EVO contains VC1 or .h264, MPEG-2 is lot easier (just render, should work with EleCard, Cyberlink, ffdshow,...)
- A&V together, doesn't work under above assumption
- DD+ / DTS+ will be downsampled to stereo 44.1kHz
- DTS can be grabbed with Gabest MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
- DD (AC3) works with AC3Filter or ffdshow Audio Decoder
- Intervideo filters from WinDVD 8 Platinum
- Sonic HD filters from Sonic Scenarist 4.1 Standard Content

There is an EVO Demuxer at doom9 which delivers ES for A&V.

sandra

The intervideo codec passes DD+ audio as 48000 Hz, 6 channel(s), 16 bits PCM if you choose it in the property page for the codec.

Also, you can use the same graph (converted of course) for playback in zoom player (though some have had better luck with zoom than others).

An update re the stuters on Warner titles. It seems like a SPDIF-related problem. It also seems to bespecifically related to DD+ 5.1 640 kbps tracks on Warner discs as that is the track which causes microscopic stutters on my system.

-SPDIF output selected in PDVD causes microscopic stutters with my two Warner titles.
-If I turn off the SPDIF output and choose any of the analog outputs in PDVD it plays back smoothly with both Grand Prix and Corpse Bride.
-The DD 1.0 French and Spanish tracks in Grand Prix play back smoothly with SPDIF enabled.
-The 1536 kbps track on my King Kong HD-DVD for example gives smooth playback with SPDIF enabled in PDVD.

I wonder why this happens. Maybe I'll try rolling back to the previous sound card driver. I have a Realtek HD audio soundcard and have tried all the different SPDIF output frequencies and modes in the Realtek menu. Now I'm outputting at 96 KHz to my Denon Rx.

How do you guys get ReClock to work with HD-DVD playback and PowerDVD? It only works with media files (and possibly DVDs, I haven't tried) for me but is not active during HD-DVD playback.

I will try my other discs now to see what kind of tracks they use.

I have the same problems and have a Hercules Fortissimo IV (optical SPDIF). So I doubt it is a sound driver issue. It's rather a problem with PowerDVD. Have just finished watching Under Siege and there is also a 640 kbps track. Futhermore, audio seems to be slightly out of sync on my HTPC even with reclock.

Does the reclock icon pop up in the task bar when you play a HD-DVD movie? It only works in other media for me with PDVD, not HD-DVDs.

I'm tempted to make the cables for analog sound to the receiver. It's a lot of work though. :)

BTW.
Reinstalling an older soundcard driver did not help.

Hi Sandra, I was actually hoping to get help doing this with only cyberlink filter(s). I have the 264video filter registered only. I dont even have PowerDVD installed anymore. I would prefer to let the system build the graph correctly; so I can use any directshow based player to play them by just douple-clicking the evo file. Thanks for any help you can provide!

-Michael

Hi,
Video: FileSource(Async)->Sonic HD Demuxer->Sonic Cinemaster VideoDecoder->render
Audio: FileSource(Async)->Intervideo Demultiplexer->Intervideo Audio Decoder->render

Notes:
- assume EVO contains VC1 or .h264, MPEG-2 is lot easier (just render, should work with EleCard, Cyberlink, ffdshow,...)
- A&V together, doesn't work under above assumption
- DD+ / DTS+ will be downsampled to stereo 44.1kHz
- DTS can be grabbed with Gabest MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
- DD (AC3) works with AC3Filter or ffdshow Audio Decoder
- Intervideo filters from WinDVD 8 Platinum
- Sonic HD filters from Sonic Scenarist 4.1 Standard Content

There is an EVO Demuxer at doom9 which delivers ES for A&V.

sandra

I am having a problem playing king kong hddvd with powerdvd. I can't turn off picture in picture nor can I turn off U control. I go into menu disable it. Then when the movie comes up it has U control back up again. Can anyone help?

This is probably similar to the subtitles issue. The trick is to get into the menu without stopping the movie. Right click while the movie is playing, then go to title menu, then turn Ucontrol off. This should all be happening while the movie is still playing.

Also, try pressing A on the keyboard. This should toggle Ucontrol off and on. Yes, both solutions require having keyboard/mouse plugged in -- I had mine unplugged for months.

I just wanted to echo an earlier post RE people experiencing colour banding issues using PowerDVD 7.x Ultra to play HD-DVDs. It appears that PDVD 7 is broken in some way for use with certain Nvidia cards . driver combinations.

The fix? Get hold of Power DVD 6.5 - colour banding is much improved, and picture quality is far better. So a confirmation at least that version 7 ultra is a bag of poo at this stage. ;)

Hi Jerrytdss,

It's good to know that it should work. Do you use optical out or the coxial out? I use the coxial out and haven't tried the optical out since I don't have a long optical cable. I will move the PC closer to my receiver to try it out.

I already check the Realtek HD audio setting to "Output digital audio source". It's got to be something else.

Problem located: it was the rear right channel of my receiver that went bad! Nothing to do with PowerDVD, just happened that the channel went bad when I switched over to PowerDVD.

Now, on to fixing the receiver.

I don't mean to be a pest, but does anyone know what specific cyberlink video filter(s) *.ax are responsible for HD-DVD/BD file playback? I would prefer not to install any unnecessary filters. As mentioned below, the only one I have registered is cl264dec.ax; which satisfies hardware accellerated H.264 video playback.... doesn't help much for EVO files.

PS: I already registered the cyberlink vc-1 decoder. I just need a working splitter. Cyberlink doesnt seem to supply one. I don't want to have to install another piece of software just to get one.

Thanks!
Michael

Hi Sandra, I was actually hoping to get help doing this with only cyberlink filter(s). I have the 264video filter registered only. I dont even have PowerDVD installed anymore. I would prefer to let the system build the graph correctly; so I can use any directshow based player to play them by just douple-clicking the evo file. Thanks for any help you can provide!

-Michael

I just wanted to echo an earlier post RE people experiencing colour banding issues using PowerDVD 7.x Ultra to play HD-DVDs. It appears that PDVD 7 is broken in some way for use with certain Nvidia cards . driver combinations.

The fix? Get hold of Power DVD 6.5 - colour banding is much improved, and picture quality is far better. So a confirmation at least that version 7 ultra is a bag of poo at this stage. ;)

plus no upgrade price for current owners :( :eek: :mad:

This is probably similar to the subtitles issue. The trick is to get into the menu without stopping the movie. Right click while the movie is playing, then go to title menu, then turn Ucontrol off. This should all be happening while the movie is still playing.

Also, try pressing A on the keyboard. This should toggle Ucontrol off and on. Yes, both solutions require having keyboard/mouse plugged in -- I had mine unplugged for months.


do you know how to turn off subtitles when playign back extra and deleted scenes stuff. on some discs,if you pick title or root menu it resets you out of the extras part of the disc and the keyboard just cycles between languages, chosing subtitles off ahead of time does nothing. MI III, for one, I can't get subtitles off when playing the second extras disk. there are a few others I have the same problem with.

I think it's actually using something in-between, becuase on my system the blacks were initially washed out and too light.

Personally I wish everything used PC levels but since standard DVD, NTSC, and ATSC all use video levels I would be really surprised if HD-DVD used video levels, that woudl be asking for trouble since you can't calibrate for both.

on my system with nvidia calibration left as is using powerdvd for regular dvd's turns black gray. keeping HW rendering off and adjusting nvidia TV color settings page I can adjust it down to black and white up to white.

for HD DVD playback I set it to use HW accel and, then as is, black is black, white is white.

for HDTV stuff using FusionHDTV software or media player classic i also need to set it up like I do for SD DVD above, otherwise black turns to gray.

8800 GTS through DVI to Samsung 244t 1920x1200p 24" LCD.

anyway does like powerdvd is putting out 0-255 PC levels for HD DVD and the other stuff, SD VD, HDTV, is all getting put out as video levels, which seem to need to be adjusted for in either nvidia control page or the playback programs adustment page.

Please tell me if I have this right:

1) PowerDVD Ultra is a completely different program than PowerDVD 7 Deluxe.

2) It does not work if you don't have specific certified hardware.

3) It sucks for playing regular DVDs.

4) There is no trial version.


1. that's just a lie they tell to try to get away with no upgrade pricing. all ultra (7.1 deluxe it claims when installs) is is the exact same program as 7 plus HD DVD and blu-ray support. it does SD DVD exactly the same as 7 deluxe does.

2. dont know why this wouldbe the case. even without HDCP you should still be able to send VGA or component, so why would it care what cards and HW you have? maybe it does, but it shouldn't.

3. some say it sucks compared ffd, ds and all. i think sucks is too extreme, don'tthink it is too bad, but to each their own.

4. nor upgrade offer to prior customers who have been prior customers for over 30 days! they want full $99 even if you bought 7 deluxe just 31 days ago or have been a loyal customer for years!

I am having the same problem with my 8800gtx. Nvidia driver option does not work over DVI. It allows me to adjust for overscan, however when I "apply" the setting, it reverts to the previous setting. This function works perfectly using the component cables.

Edit, I am using the January 10th release driver.

i can't get it allow scaling settings either. and it defaults to single worst choice (have gfx card stretch to monitor size!). not an issue for HD DVD and lots of stuff. but it is terrible for games and demos!

sounds similar to the OS settings not sticking either.

mkanet, you might want to check out this post/thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=941405#post941405).

anybody got HULK to play under PowerDVD Ultra? it still plays it in file mode only and shows up nothing ... :-(

Don't know if this has been posted already, but since this thread has been very quiet lately, here goes...

Cyberlink have posted the user manual for PowerDVD Ultra on their website. Haven't had a chance to read through it yet, but it seems to be quite comprehensive at 130 pages with nice color screenshots and diagrams. It is only 1.5 MB in size but seemed to take forever to download ( I have broadband and it took something like 5 minutes!)

Don't know if this has been posted already, but since this thread has been very quiet lately, here goes...

Cyberlink have posted the user manual for PowerDVD Ultra on their website. Haven't had a chance to read through it yet, but it seems to be quite comprehensive at 130 pages with nice color screenshots and diagrams. It is only 1.5 MB in size but seemed to take forever to download ( I have broadband and it took something like 5 minutes!)

What I want them is to post a freakin' patch that addresses all the annoying bugs the current release has... lol, it seems they released and ultra-beta version and charged for that. Being devil's advocad its a very new technology....well at least Intervideo is taking its time to officialy release their hd dvd / BD software, we will see how that one goes....

The DTS-HD HD-DVD that I got at CES plays horribly on PowerDVD 7.1 (Ultra) if you're using SPDIF output. This is 10x worse than the stutter on some HD-DVDs that have 640kbit/sec DD+. It basically pauses and then jumps ahead some frames to catch up. This repeats over and over again.

Has anyone else tried this disc or another with DTS-HD audio with 7.1?

The DTS-HD HD-DVD that I got at CES plays horribly on PowerDVD 7.1 (Ultra) if you're using SPDIF output. This is 10x worse than the stutter on some HD-DVDs that have 640kbit/sec DD+. It basically pauses and then jumps ahead some frames to catch up. This repeats over and over again.

Has anyone else tried this disc or another with DTS-HD audio with 7.1?
Had same probms using SPDIF. I just choose 5.1/7.1 anolog in PDVD and let my X-mystiques' and X-plosions' do all the encoding. Also works with the HD onboard sound from my ASUS P5B Deluxe with DTS Connect. Gets rid of stutter when using the Eagles DTS-HD sound track, which never played without stutter when using SPDIF.

Latest from Cyberlink
Dear User,

Thank you for contacting CyberLink Online Support.

We understand your concern related with PowerDVD.

We have forwarded your concern and get reply to your query. According to the Product and Development team, they suggest you to wait for ATI's new driver ATI - 8.332. ATI and Cyberlink team both working on it and they will soon release it.

Latest from Cyberlink
Dear User,

Thank you for contacting CyberLink Online Support.

We understand your concern related with PowerDVD.

We have forwarded your concern and get reply to your query. According to the Product and Development team, they suggest you to wait for ATI's new driver ATI - 8.332. ATI and Cyberlink team both working on it and they will soon release it.
What specifically was this reply in relation to Wynpalmer?

Don't know if this has been posted already, but since this thread has been very quiet lately, here goes...

Cyberlink have posted the user manual for PowerDVD Ultra on their website. Haven't had a chance to read through it yet, but it seems to be quite comprehensive at 130 pages with nice color screenshots and diagrams. It is only 1.5 MB in size but seemed to take forever to download ( I have broadband and it took something like 5 minutes!)


Thanks, one bit I did find interesting was:

Surface Type: The default commonly used that supports display
captions is “overlay”, “Hardware Video Accelerator” or “Hardware
Video Accelerator (DxVA)”. Occasionally, it may display “offscreen”.
It is recommended that you either lower your screen
resolution, reduce color depth, or reinstall Microsoft DirectX to
make overlay mode available for optimal performance.

Mine always says “Hardware Video Accelerator (DxVA)” does that mean I should be able to some how get better performance if I can enable "overlay"????

Cheers

So I finally tried this, and for some reason, I cannot get ANY HD-DVD to work at all. The screen becomes corrupt (ie the whole screen is just blocks, or h264 ones is just a green screen). I get 5.1 out of it, but I can't for the life of me get the video working. I'm using Vista, with an 8800GTX. What's even weirder is, PowerDVD 6.5 works perfectly fine, but I only get 2 channel audio, even if I select 6 channel audio (spdif works ok). Weird...

I'm using Vista, with an 8800GTX.

Not a good combination with current drivers - especially with first gen HD-DVD software.

What specifically was this reply in relation to Wynpalmer?


This is in follow up to earlier postings by me on this thread.
The issue is the avivo/cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra invocation of hardware acceleration for HD DVD. For example here is an earlier post on the subject, and there are several others.

Quote:
Originally Posted by corrnd
scoombs -- the quality settings are buried in some menus. I'm not in front of it right now, but I think the settings are in: configuration menu -> video tab -> advanced button.

Anyway, I'd say that's a definite confirmation of avivo acceleration. There only seems to be two answers to why I'm not seeing acceleration yet: either it's a difference between your X1950Pro and my X1600Pro or it's the difference between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. I'm guessing the latter. Oh well, at least my CPU can handle VC-1 HD-DVDs on its own for now.

Separate question: what is the difference between the quality settings in PDVD? I was playing around with the settings and saw no obvious change in the quality of the video on my screen (maybe slight contrast changes). The CPU usage definitely changes, though. With my C2D E6300 (no overclock), I'm getting 80-90% usage on best and 55-65% on auto.


According to Cyberlink the ATI drivers do not support mpeg-4 or VC1 (hence why the box is unchecked) so you're right out of luck with HD-DVD disks.
Both Batman begins and KK are VC1.
As I switch between quality levels I see some very subtle changes in color saturation, contrast etc, but nothing very obvious at all, and my wife claims that I'm deluding myself even with these differences.

Well, that isn't exactly the best answer, no offense ;); as 6.5 works perfectly fine for video, just 2 channel audio though :(. With 7.0 Ultra, I have 5.1 audio, but corrupt video...Can't I just merge the two? And make 6.75 or something? :P

As I switch between quality levels I see some very subtle changes in color saturation, contrast etc, but nothing very obvious at allIf you have a high end video card like an NVidia 8800, you will see a dramatic change in the smoothness of diagonal lines and the amount of detail in the image when switching between the 3 quality settings. I know I do, at least when I am running with DXVA unchecked. (I don't use DXVA, because the image detail is significantly better with software decoding, both for HD DVD and BD).

Vern

If you have a high end video card like an NVidia 8800, you will see a dramatic change in the smoothness of diagonal lines and the amount of detail in the image when switching between the 3 quality settings. I know I do, at least when I am running with DXVA unchecked. (I don't use DXVA, because the image detail is significantly better with software decoding, both for HD DVD and BD).

Vern

My system includes a x1950pro. DXVA cannot be checked for Avivo.
Some people have reported substantial changes in PQ with the difference in quality levels, others, like myself, report relatively small differences.
Watching at my normal distance, 6 feet with a 50" plasma screen, I see no diagonal line smoothing issues with good and best and a very little with normal. Very little difference in detail between good and best (for example, pore structure on faces) and some deterioration for normal. I do see significantly more smoothness and less banding on colors, and better contrast- as the quality level improves, differences that others have reported, and these differences are the most obvious and the most disturbing to me, as these were the very deficiencies that used to irritate me with DVD.
I suspect that it depends on many factors, both equipment and personal taste.

So apparently PowerDVD Ultra IS broken with Vista/8800. My friend just tried too, and it doesn't work AT ALL, same corruption as me. What's funny is, 6.5 works PERFECT ;) Go fig...

Hi everyone,

I have the 6600GT and Power DVD Ultra 7.1 HD DVD ver. Os Vista Ultimate.

one port of the card connected DVI to the monitor and other port of DVI connected with VGA adapter to the LCD.

I can only get the VGA it to work in PC mode 1024x768.

How can i make the VGA work on video mode in 720p 1080i or 1080p(my LCD support it).

do i need maybe to change for component cable?

or is there anyway to do that with the VGA?

IS THIS a vista problem of the control panel , unlike XP one?

Thanks

Had the problem where PDVD 7.1 displays a black screen when movies starts again.

This time all my file associations were still checked, cleared the problem by entering scene menu and starting a scene, then returning to start of movie. "Tokyodrift"

im using powerdvd 7.1 and was wondering if its better to leave hardware acceleration on or off for best picture quality?
I'm using e6600@3.5 and 8800gts and w/ hardware accel on im at about 27% CPU at PEAK usage...with accel off im at around 34%-35% CPU at PEAK...so cpu/vid card is not an issue...just wondering which has better quality.
I tried both and hardware accel off seemed to give more detail and be a lil sharper, but i thought it was just my head/eyes wanting me to think that....unless i can take screenshots of it i wont be able to tell i guess.

Edit: Here is what my picture looks like right now (http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/7274/fearless0013bz.jpg)...any way to take screenshots?

Thanks

No, it'S not your eyes. It is much sharper if you turn it off. Especially if you turn off de-interlacing as well under advanced options.

No, it'S not your eyes. It is much sharper if you turn it off. Especially if you turn off de-interlacing as well under advanced options.
Agreed - not only that, but you actually *must* leave the deinterlacing off, since the HD DVD is a progressively encoded source.

I'm not sure whether the rules on this would change if you are playing something encoded at 1080i, but most material is at 1080p on the disc.

I can't for the life of me get PowerDVD 7.2 Ultra working. A lot of you talk about version 7.1. Where can I get this? I can't find any mention of it on Cyberlink's website either nor a search through Google. What's more confounding is that PowerDVD 6.5 works perfectly fine for me. I can play evos directly or lead the directory. When I use 7.2 I get a black screen and garbled audio if I load the directory, if I try to load evos directly the program simply crashes. Anyone got any ideas?

Nvidia 6800 GT
Vizion 47" LCD
AMD64 3500
etc etc

Could it be HDCP? But then again if the files are decrypted, HDCP shouldn't be a concern.

I've gotten 7.2 Deluxe HD version here playing HD movies, but the audio decoding seems kind of wonky. It plays surround over my front 3 speakers and sub, but ignores my back speakers, and the volume is VERY low... what can I do to fix this?

I can't for the life of me get PowerDVD 7.2 Ultra working. A lot of you talk about version 7.1. Where can I get this? I can't find any mention of it on Cyberlink's website either nor a search through Google. What's more confounding is that PowerDVD 6.5 works perfectly fine for me. I can play evos directly or lead the directory. When I use 7.2 I get a black screen and garbled audio if I load the directory, if I try to load evos directly the program simply crashes. Anyone got any ideas?

Nvidia 6800 GT
Vizion 47" LCD
AMD64 3500
etc etc

Could it be HDCP? But then again if the files are decrypted, HDCP shouldn't be a concern.

Sounds like youre trying to use the BD version, same issue I had. Try copying the files to your hard drive, deleting the BD folder in the install directory and renaming the HD folder the BD one, and it might work for you - worked for me.

I already did what you suggested. I'm sure its the HD-DVD version that I'm using as the HD-DVD logos are all there.

What about DVI-A (analog)? If I'm using DVI analog (which is basically VGA, but through the DVI port), does my video card and display need to be HDCP-compliant?

What about DVI-A (analog)? If I'm using DVI analog (which is basically VGA, but through the DVI port), does my video card and display need to be HDCP-compliant?

No. It will work just like VGA.

No. It will work just like VGA.

Great, thanks. For a village idiot you're purrty smart lol.

I've gotten 7.2 Deluxe HD version here playing HD movies, but the audio decoding seems kind of wonky. It plays surround over my front 3 speakers and sub, but ignores my back speakers, and the volume is VERY low... what can I do to fix this?

Still waiting, hoping for a suggestion.

Does anyone with a Radeon X1600 Pro (AGP) have hardware accerlation enabled watching HD-DVDs?
Or could someone tell me if it even works (and how) with ATI cards?

I am using the latest drivers but the box is unticked when I start playback :(

My CPU is a C2D E6400 but some movies (e.g. tokyo drift, mi3) really stutter and cpu usage is at 95-100%.. I think with hardware accerlation I should have no problem but without the movies are kind of unwatchable :(

Does anyone with a Radeon X1600 Pro (AGP) have hardware accerlation enabled watching HD-DVDs?
Or could someone tell me if it even works (and how) with ATI cards?

I am using the latest drivers but the box is unticked when I start playback :(

My CPU is a C2D E6400 but some movies (e.g. tokyo drift, mi3) really stutter and cpu usage is at 95-100%.. I think with hardware accerlation I should have no problem but without the movies are kind of unwatchable :(


If you read this thread you will see numerous entries on this subject.
The brief answer is no.

This article confirms some of the things we have already found regarding acceleration.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2161&cid=11&pg=1

Does anyone with a Radeon X1600 Pro (AGP) have hardware accerlation enabled watching HD-DVDs?
Or could someone tell me if it even works (and how) with ATI cards?

I am using the latest drivers but the box is unticked when I start playback :(

My CPU is a C2D E6400 but some movies (e.g. tokyo drift, mi3) really stutter and cpu usage is at 95-100%.. I think with hardware accerlation I should have no problem but without the movies are kind of unwatchable :(

I also have a E6400 and I have never see CPU usage run any higher than half what you are getting. I haven't tried those two specific movies though. Maybe something else is wrong. I have a Radeon and I don't use hardware acceleration.

I also have a E6400 and I have never see CPU usage run any higher than half what you are getting. I haven't tried those two specific movies though. Maybe something else is wrong. I have a Radeon and I don't use hardware acceleration.
Mhm do you have an idea what could be wrong? With another disc I tested (CSI NY german) CPU usage is around 80-90% but watchable :confused:

My specs:
C2D E6400 @ 2.13GHz
1.5GB RAM (Kingston + Infineon)
ASRock 775Dual-VSTA
Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro 512MB AGP
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS
WinXP Pro SP2


Edit:
I found something in the article posted above:
Radeon X1600 series can go up to 720p and you will need the high-end Radeon X1800 and above class to truly help with 1080p.
Maybe because the movies are in 1080p the hardware accerlation doesn`t work?

Can you force PDVD Ultra to put out only 720p? The resolution of my TV is 1360*768 but that is above 720p...

I hate to be pushy, but does anyone know what the problem with my audio is? I've made a couple replies in here about it...

Mhm do you have an idea what could be wrong? With another disc I tested (CSI NY german) CPU usage is around 80-90% but watchable :confused:

My specs:
C2D E6400 @ 2.13GHz
1.5GB RAM (Kingston + Infineon)
ASRock 775Dual-VSTA
Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro 512MB AGP
Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS
WinXP Pro SP2


Edit:
I found something in the article posted above:

Maybe because the movies are in 1080p the hardware accerlation doesn`t work?

Can you force PDVD Ultra to put out only 720p? The resolution of my TV is 1360*768 but that is above 720p...

I don't think the graphics adapter performance matters at all. I used a radeon X800 XT AGP card with PowerDVD 6.5 while I waited for my new card to arrive with no performance issues. I seriously doubt the output resolution is causing the problem. What is your CPU usage when you're idling (not playing HD-DVD's)? How many processes are running in the background?

I have almost the sams system as you:
C2D E6400
ASRock 775Dual-VSTA
1 GB PC3200 DDR RAM (512 Kingston + 512 Corsair)
ATI X1950 PRO 256 MB PCIE
PDVD Ultra 7.1
I use the onboard soundcard, Realtek HD.

I hate to be pushy, but does anyone know what the problem with my audio is? I've made a couple replies in here about it...

Have you tried uninstalling and installing 7.1 properly? Are you using SPDIF out or analog?

Have you tried uninstalling and installing 7.1 properly? Are you using SPDIF out or analog?

I have uninstalled it and reinstalled it, and I'm using Analog.

I have the onboard sound of the NForce4 board as my soundcard. Would that even matter? I get 5.1 from AC3 movies

What is your CPU usage when you're idling (not playing HD-DVD's)? How many processes are running in the background?
While idling CPU usage is at 0% (or for a second 1-3%) and I have 51 processes running. Should be no problem, should it?

The only major difference I see between our systems is that I do not use the onboard sound - but I don`t think that is the reason for a CPU usage at 100%...

Couple simple, direct questions here. Please help. Yes or no will suffice, no explanations necessary.

1) If you do not have HDDVD or BD players attached to your system, will PowerDVD still support playback of those formats?

2) If you have HDDVD files on a fixed disc, is the program capable of opening and playing the film back from there if you don't have a BD/HDDVD optical player attached to the system?

3) If the answer is no to these questions, is there any easier way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance.

While idling CPU usage is at 0% (or for a second 1-3%) and I have 51 processes running. Should be no problem, should it?

The only major difference I see between our systems is that I do not use the onboard sound - but I don`t think that is the reason for a CPU usage at 100%...

I have about 26-30 processes running in the background.

The Hardware should be able to run movies. Have you turned off the on-board soundcard in the BIOS?

Couple simple, direct questions here. Please help. Yes or no will suffice, no explanations necessary.

1) If you do not have HDDVD or BD players attached to your system, will PowerDVD still support playback of those formats?

2) If you have HDDVD files on a fixed disc, is the program capable of opening and playing the film back from there if you don't have a BD/HDDVD optical player attached to the system?

3) If the answer is no to these questions, is there any easier way to accomplish this?

Thanks in advance.

1) Yes.

2) Yes.

Note 1:

HD DVD/Blu Ray files need to be decrypted in order to play from HDD. There are multiple threads here and on doom9 forum about this.

Note 2:

if you are installing PowerDVD Ultra 7.x w/o HD DVD drive attached it will install BD version and will not play HD DVD files/titles.

Note 3:

PowerDVD 6.5 HD will install HD DVD version only with or without any HD/BD drive attached.

Thanks

I have about 26-30 processes running in the background.

The Hardware should be able to run movies. Have you turned off the on-board soundcard in the BIOS?
Yes I did. Btw CPU usage is the same no matter if I use SPDIF or analog output.

Does anyone with a Radeon X1600 Pro (AGP) have hardware accerlation enabled watching HD-DVDs?
Or could someone tell me if it even works (and how) with ATI cards?

I am using the latest drivers but the box is unticked when I start playback :(

My CPU is a C2D E6400 but some movies (e.g. tokyo drift, mi3) really stutter and cpu usage is at 95-100%.. I think with hardware accerlation I should have no problem but without the movies are kind of unwatchable :(
I'll be getting this card soon (Sapphire 1600 Pro HDMI AGP). Hopefully I'll have it installed and tested next week.

I don't know why it shouldn't work, tho, and it is listed on Cyberlink's system requirements page.

This article confirms some of the things we have already found regarding acceleration.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2161&cid=11&pg=1
Interesting - since according to that article, the 7600GS won't work, because it has a 400 mhz clock, whereas the article says Nvidia needs at least 500...

EDIT: I'm skeptical of this since my Sony laptop uses an Nvidia Go7400 and plays HD DVDs just fine with 55% utilization...

EDIT AGAIN: I've checked, and as best I can tell, my laptop Go 7400 is clocked at 400 450 mhz, and is a lesser chip than the 7600GS, so I can't see why the 7600GS wouldn't work... (scratches head) :)

EDIT YET AGAIN: Gigabyte's page for this card says it handles HD DVD and Bluray - http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/VGA/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2433

Na, im trying to play hd dvd now wont let me because of driver for my 7600gs, which is kinda weird.

Na, im trying to play hd dvd now wont let me because of driver for my 7600gs, which is kinda weird.
That's an easy one... check two things:

1) Driver should be 92.91 or later

2) NVidia doesn't include some chips in their drivers, if your 7600GS isn't listed when trying to install the driver, or it gives you an error saying that it doesn't see a compatible chip, then go to www.laptopvideo2go.com for customized drivers that include all chips.

My thread has some tips - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=775177

Interesting - since according to that article, the 7600GS won't work, because it has a 400 mhz clock, whereas the article says Nvidia needs at least 500...

EDIT: I'm skeptical of this since my Sony laptop uses an Nvidia Go7400 and plays HD DVDs just fine with 55% utilization...

EDIT AGAIN: I've checked, and as best I can tell, my laptop Go 7400 is clocked at 400 450 mhz, and is a lesser chip than the 7600GS, so I can't see why the 7600GS wouldn't work... (scratches head) :)
Keep in mind performance is also going to depend on the title you're trying to play, ie which codec it uses and how high the bitrate is. With somewhat marginal hardware it may be that you can play some movies just fine but others will have dropped frames.

Keep in mind performance is also going to depend on the title you're trying to play, ie which codec it uses and how high the bitrate is. With somewhat marginal hardware it may be that you can play some movies just fine but others will have dropped frames.
Yes, that can be so - however, the good news is that I just found the page on Gigabyte's site for this card and they say it runs HD DVD and Bluray just fine. Good news, as in principle, I figured it should be OK.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/VGA/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2433

Still haven't been able to find out why I can't get surround from these HD movies and why the volume is so low using PowerDVD.. tried new codecs, playing around with AC3, and nothing.

Still haven't been able to find out why I can't get surround from these HD movies and why the volume is so low using PowerDVD.. tried new codecs, playing around with AC3, and nothing.

Are you using SPDIF out or analog speakers? The latter works flawlessly for me for 5.1 sound.

Hi everyone,

I have the 6600GT and Power DVD Ultra 7.1 HD DVD ver. Os Vista Ultimate.
I use the newest drivers of nvidia for vista version 100.30.

one port of the card connected DVI to the monitor and other port of DVI connected with VGA adapter to the LCD TV.

I can only get the VGA it to work in PC mode 1024x768.

How can i make the VGA work on video mode in 720p 1080i or 1080p(my LCD support it).

do i need maybe to change for component cable?

or is there anyway to do that with the VGA?

IS THIS a vista problem of the control panel , unlike XP one?

Thanks

Are you using SPDIF out or analog speakers? The latter works flawlessly for me for 5.1 sound.

Analog.. When you go to the audio configuration for it, does it only give you No Effect and that CLMEI-2 or whatever? Would that make a difference? Is there an audio codec i need to install?

Are you using a specific sound card?

Analog.. When you go to the audio configuration for it, does it only give you No Effect and that CLMEI-2 or whatever? Would that make a difference? Is there an audio codec i need to install?

Are you using a specific sound card?

i'm using analog and it works fine for me...
yes, it only gives 2 options for audio, and i have mine set at No Effect.
Other than that, just select 6 speakers in the pulldown...thats all i had to do, no special codecs/drivers other than the drivers for my sound card.

i'm using analog and it works fine for me...
yes, it only gives 2 options for audio, and i have mine set at No Effect.
Other than that, just select 6 speakers in the pulldown...thats all i had to do, no special codecs/drivers other than the drivers for my sound card.

What sound card are you using. Do you think maybe because I have onboard NForce4 sound it won't decode dd+?

im using the bluegears b-enspirer 7.1 sound card.
i can't comment on whether its ur onboard sound thats causing this, it could be....are u able to get surround sound working when playing regular dvds thru powerdvd 7.1 w/o any volume issues?
i can't think of anything, just updated drivers for your onboard sound....

im using the bluegears b-enspirer 7.1 sound card.
i can't comment on whether its ur onboard sound thats causing this, it could be....are u able to get surround sound working when playing regular dvds thru powerdvd 7.1 w/o any volume issues?
i can't think of anything, just updated drivers for your onboard sound....

I can't get regular DVDs playing 5.1 it would seem, just the front 3 speakers and sub again, no rear speakers, but the volume is normal. I guess thats a step in the right direction.. now any suggestions as to how to fix this?

well...i would try to narrow it down to what's causing the problem. can u get 5.1 when playin a regular dvd with something other than powerdvd 7.1? if u can then its powerdvd causing the problem....if not then its something w/ ur sound card....check ur sound card settings to make sure its set for analog 5.1 output....also check your wires to your rear speakes.....make sure its in the right ports or nothing is loose

I have the Xbox drive hooked up to my HTPC and working perfectly with PowerDVD Ultra 7.1 (HD-DVD version). The compatibity tool from Cyberlink green lights me on everything except for a yellow light on my CPU which is an Athlon64 X2 3800+. Slightly less than the recommended minimum of 4200+ but it seems to work fine anyways and average CPU usage is around 55% while playing King Kong HD-DVD. Video card is the MSI 7600GT Diamond Plus which has a native HDMI port and supports HDCP over both the DVI and HDMI ports.

One pleasant surprise is that my Microsoft MCE remote is working to control PowerDVD for at least the basic stuff like pause, play, skip, etc. My only issue at this point is probably very simple but for the life of me I can't figure it out. When I pause the King Kong movie after about 15 seconds or so it seems to load a screen saver file from the HD-DVD disk itself and it keeps looping it over and over. I have been completely stumped as to how to get it back to the original movie once this screensaver file starts running without stopping the whole player and restarting it again. Anybody have some insight on this? Thanks!

James
Did you figure out anything on the screensaver? The same thing happens to me when I pause and I can't figure out how to get rid of it.

I just bought the xbox 360 hd dvd drive and got the driver for my computer and installed powerdvd ulta. The king kong disc that was included would not show video.. the opening universal screen would come up and I could get to the menu and select whatever I wanted, but then after the fbi warning there was no video. I could still display the closed captioning and the sound worked, but no video no matter what I did (I read about a chapters fix where you go to a later chapter and it adds the video) I bought another hd dvd to test the drive and my settings in case I had something wrong (red dragon) and it runs perfectly fine. I have also tested SD dvds and they work fine.

Right now I am running an 8800 which has dual dvi and have the converter to vga and have it hooked up to a 17" crt so it is going through analog (my new hdcp monitor isn't here yet, so I couldn't go digital)

Is it possible that it is simply a bad disc or what could the problem be? I've tried searching through these forums for several hours and checked out google and other forums but have not found a good answer (I may just suck at searching)

Please shed any light onto this matter that you can.

well...i would try to narrow it down to what's causing the problem. can u get 5.1 when playin a regular dvd with something other than powerdvd 7.1? if u can then its powerdvd causing the problem....if not then its something w/ ur sound card....check ur sound card settings to make sure its set for analog 5.1 output....also check your wires to your rear speakes.....make sure its in the right ports or nothing is loose

Well doing the nVidia speaker test, I can hear the read speakers, so its not that issue, and that would indicate the soundcard CAN output to the rear speakers. However, a weird thing thats happening, when I do the speaker setup wizard it sets it to 2 speakers, i set it back to 5.1 but it still doesn't work. I thought maybe the windows control panel based speaker selection was messed but i found out it wasn't and it is also set for 5.1 surround. I tried reinstalling drivers and whatnot to no avail. I downloaded a 3rd party program that tests all channels and it didn't give me rear speakers. Seems like a software configuration issue. Any ideas?

Who is the actual manufacturer of your sound subsystem on your motherboard? An nForce board I had actually used a realtek chip, and the realtek drivers worked much better than the nvidia drivers... If you have realtek, go to their taiwanese site, download the latest AC97 driver, and install that and see if all 5 speakers are working.

Who is the actual manufacturer of your sound subsystem on your motherboard? An nForce board I had actually used a realtek chip, and the realtek drivers worked much better than the nvidia drivers... If you have realtek, go to their taiwanese site, download the latest AC97 driver, and install that and see if all 5 speakers are working.

Great Idea! Giving that a shot now. Will report back with results.

So is it 100% confirmed PowerDVD 7.1 HD-DVD decodes and outputs Dolby TrueHD and DD+ over 5.1 analog regardless of what sound card you have?

Asking because someone said the logos disappear on the HD-DVD version.

It does, I can now confirm it. Just got mine working!

Where are you guys getting your copy of PowerDVD 7.1? I only see PowerDVD 7.2 now on Cyberlink.com and I have 6.5, which everyone says doesn't play hd-dvds all that well. 7.2 just won't work for me on my computer for some odd reason that I can't figure out.

Where are you guys getting your copy of PowerDVD 7.1? I only see PowerDVD 7.2 now on Cyberlink.com and I have 6.5, which everyone says doesn't play hd-dvds all that well. 7.2 just won't work for me on my computer for some odd reason that I can't figure out.

Search is your friend.

PDVD 7.x will install HD DVD version ONLY if you have your HD DVD drive hooked up BEFORE the install, otherwise it instlls BD version.

Just got back from BB and everything went pretty well for my old rig checked the BD Adviser and all systems go.
http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/pd.jpg

My tired rig just can't hang I get playback but stutter city good thing I ordered that X2 and NX7600 GT. I'm running it on an AMD 2.5 Winchester with a XFX 7800 GT using DVI to VGA on my Sceptre 37" Forceware 93.81 I ran into the HDCP crap but finally got it resolved with these screwy drivers and player. KK looks grainy but still looks good and just a reminder this card has no HDCP chip so it will work no doubt. :)

Ok I've just installed PowerDVD 7.2... and no matter what I do... only the left half of the picture is displayed.

So if I put it at fullscreen, the whole screen is half of the image.

My setup is:

A64 @ 2.5ghz
7900GT 512mb non-HDCP
Dell 2407 via VGA

Any ideas? There may be a solution already posted but im unsure what to look for.

In PowerDVD 6.5 it works fine.

I just bought the xbox 360 hd dvd drive and got the driver for my computer and installed powerdvd ulta. The king kong disc that was included would not show video.. the opening universal screen would come up and I could get to the menu and select whatever I wanted, but then after the fbi warning there was no video. I could still display the closed captioning and the sound worked, but no video no matter what I did (I read about a chapters fix where you go to a later chapter and it adds the video) I bought another hd dvd to test the drive and my settings in case I had something wrong (red dragon) and it runs perfectly fine. I have also tested SD dvds and they work fine.

Right now I am running an 8800 which has dual dvi and have the converter to vga and have it hooked up to a 17" crt so it is going through analog (my new hdcp monitor isn't here yet, so I couldn't go digital)

Is it possible that it is simply a bad disc or what could the problem be? I've tried searching through these forums for several hours and checked out google and other forums but have not found a good answer (I may just suck at searching)

Please shed any light onto this matter that you can.

Well, that is three of us 8800 owners with this blank screen problem. Does the chapter trick work for you? What Nvidia drivers are you using? Are File associations in Powerdvd all still checked?

chapter trick does not work. i have the latest driver, 97.92, could you tell me how to check the file extensions?

Does anyone use Ultra with an 8800 and Vista? I haven't seen anyone here have the same problem as my friend and I.

does anyone know how to make powerdvd 6 hd or 7.2 start up and play in the secondary monitor? I can start it up in the primary monitor and drag it into the 2nd monitor and even hit Z to go full screen, but when I play something, it just crashes. Other media players I have, like MPC, do let me do this.

also, is there a list of keyboard shortcut somewhere? I looked at the help file but it's not there, nor could I find something or their web site. Specifically, I'm looking for a shortut key to toggle subtitle display (not switch to the nex subtitle, which is what U does).

KK looks grainy

Something is badly wrong if KK looks grainy. This is one of the finest HD DVD transfers in existance. It should look better than anything you have ever seen on your HDTV....

All these questions, and very little answers...

Something is badly wrong if KK looks grainy. This is one of the finest HD DVD transfers in existance. It should look better than anything you have ever seen on your HDTV....

I should have said I was sitting 3 ft away no doubt it looks fantastic better than any upconverting DVD out there that's for sure. That's when I first got the DVD going I was leaning into the monitor at 2ft away once I stood back the detail is just superb it's almost a perfect picture.

One thing that's got me confused, my AMD is barely getting tapped at 36% purevideo does not show up in the taskbar but it's obviously running in hardware acceleration. Is my 7800 GT/AMD 64 2.5 that under gunned? I have it clocked to 470/2.11 the NX 7600 GT is clocked at 560 MHz is 90 MHz going to make that much of a difference. :confused:

Edit: Newegg just got some X2's I just placed an order I really feel it's the CPU even though it's barely being used. It never did encode well compareed to my Northwood 2.4 oh well we'll just have to wait and see...

chapter trick does not work. i have the latest driver, 97.92, could you tell me how to check the file extensions?


Right click in PowerDVD window, select configuration, select advanced tab, Select file associations and make sure they are all checked.

I should have said I was sitting 3 ft away no doubt it looks fantastic better than any upconverting DVD out there that's for sure. That's when I first got the DVD going I was leaning into the monitor at 2ft away once I stood back the detail is just superb it's almost a perfect picture.

One thing that's got me confused, my AMD is barely getting tapped at 36% purevideo does not show up in the taskbar but it's obviously running in hardware acceleration. Is my 7800 GT/AMD 64 2.5 that under gunned? I have it clocked to 470/2.11 the NX 7600 GT is clocked at 560 MHz is 90 MHz going to make that much of a difference. :confused:

Edit: Newegg just got some X2's I just placed an order I really feel it's the CPU even though it's barely being used. It never did encode well compareed to my Northwood 2.4 oh well we'll just have to wait and see...

The "grainy" effect in KK could be the video settings...checked the video tab in configurations and try either original or theater mode for color. Either way PowerDVD screws the colors up somewhat...I get banding in some areas of large single colors. Also check to make sure hardware acceleration is turned on.

Tried Inverse Telecine checked in Nvidia control panel, 97.92 drivers and 8800GTS, PowerDVD Ultra crashes/locks computer.

With Inverse Telecine unchecked, PowerDVD Ultra is working.

Tried Inverse Telecine checked in Nvidia control panel, 97.92 drivers and 8800GTS, PowerDVD Ultra crashes/locks computer.

With Inverse Telecine unchecked, PowerDVD Ultra is working.

You do Inverse Telecine by setting to 24 Hz refresh rate or to a multiple of 24.

Then PDVD will not crash.

Tried Inverse Telecine checked in Nvidia control panel, 97.92 drivers and 8800GTS, PowerDVD Ultra crashes/locks computer.

With Inverse Telecine unchecked, PowerDVD Ultra is working.
You shouldn't need IVTC for HD-DVD anyway, the discs are 1080p (at least all the ones I've seen are).

Search is your friend.

PDVD 7.x will install HD DVD version ONLY if you have your HD DVD drive hooked up BEFORE the install, otherwise it instlls BD version.
to add to his reply, there are other ways on installing just the HD-DVD version even if you do not have hd-dvd drive installed, do a search.
It basically invovles copying the files to your hdd and delete the bluray folder and renaming the hddvd folder.

to add to his reply, there are other ways on installing just the HD-DVD version even if you do not have hd-dvd drive installed, do a search.
It basically invovles copying the files to your hdd and delete the bluray folder and renaming the hddvd folder.

oh man, i just spent literally 5 hours trying to HD version to install (my drive is at home)... found it at doom9, but i cant get to it! Page not found?!?!?

ahhh... google cache :)

"Try reinstalling PDVD 7.2 Ultra. Before you do, rename the PDVDBD folder to PDVDBD.old then rename PDVDHD folder to PDVDBD. This will force the HD-DVD installation instead of the default BluRay."

I think he just mentioned it, but just delete out the files in the BD folder and then copy them all from the HD folder to the BD folder and install like your normally would. It basically installs the HD version thinking it is the BD version. It works fine with HD-DVDs from that point.

An easier way would be to delete the BD folder and rename the HD folder the same folder name you deleted and install.

thank you thank you thank you... now i can watch king kong at work!!

Search is your friend.

PDVD 7.x will install HD DVD version ONLY if you have your HD DVD drive hooked up BEFORE the install, otherwise it instlls BD version.

I already have PDVD 7.2 HD-DVD version installed fine. I have no trouble with that. What I asked is where everyone is getting 7.1 from? I have 6.5 and it works, but not great. 7.2 does not work for me one bit. So, I want to try 7.1. Anyone want to tell me wehre they bought it?

You shouldn't need IVTC for HD-DVD anyway, the discs are 1080p (at least all the ones I've seen are).

Setting IVTC "on" was a suggested fix for the Frame Pulse with the 8800 cards. It did appear to work with all my video players.

PowerDVD Ultra never had the Frame Pulse problem.

Does anyone use Ultra with an 8800 and Vista? I haven't seen anyone here have the same problem as my friend and I.
It doesn't appear to be working yet even with the leaked 100.30 drivers in Vista with the 8800. All I get is a screen full of static when I try. I get the impression that NVIDIA doesn't have PureVideo functioning properly with the 8800s in Vista yet, or it migh be an HDCP issue.

NVIDIA will be making a new set of Vista drivers available for the 8800 next week. There are also whispers that a recently released beta driver may make an appearance in the next day or two. Hopefully the newer driver version will function properly with PowerDVD Ultra.

I already have PDVD 7.2 HD-DVD version installed fine. I have no trouble with that. What I asked is where everyone is getting 7.1 from? I have 6.5 and it works, but not great. 7.2 does not work for me one bit. So, I want to try 7.1. Anyone want to tell me wehre they bought it?


What you have to do is uninstall PowerDVD Ultra. Then connect up your HD DVD drive and reinstall PowerDVD Ultra. The version that will be installed will not then be the one that supports BD (7.2) but HD DVD (7.1).

It doesn't appear to be working yet even with the leaked 100.30 drivers in Vista with the 8800. All I get is a screen full of static when I try. I get the impression that NVIDIA doesn't have PureVideo functioning properly with the 8800s in Vista yet, or it migh be an HDCP issue.

NVIDIA will be making a new set of Vista drivers available for the 8800 next week. There are also whispers that a recently released beta driver may make an appearance in the next day or two. Hopefully the newer driver version will function properly with PowerDVD Ultra.
Thank you :) I just wanted someone to acknowledge my post :)

I already have PDVD 7.2 HD-DVD version installed fine. I have no trouble with that. What I asked is where everyone is getting 7.1 from? I have 6.5 and it works, but not great. 7.2 does not work for me one bit. So, I want to try 7.1. Anyone want to tell me wehre they bought it?
The only difference between 7.1 and 7.2 is the format it supports.
7.1 is for HD-DVD
7.2 is for Blu-Ray
if you have the hd-dvd version of 7.x, then it's 7.1 installed on your system, just right click the screen and click on "About" and it will tell you your version.

Back to the colourbanding I was blaming PowerDVD for...

Just finished some more testing with various driver releases, including a fresh install of Win XP. It would appear that Vern Dias was right about the 79xx series and their broken colour output when using video overlay. Colour banding is evident on ALL media including SD DVD content MPEG2, H.264 .. etc.

I'm a little annoyed to say the least, I bought this card on the premise of HiDef fidelity (not to mention HDCP compliance) and now find I am stuck with a lemon. :mad:

Has anyone else here got similar issues with their 7900 series cards, I'd be interested to hear from Leadtek PX7900GS TDH owners is any are present.

@Vern: How far did you go with your investigations into this issue? What was it that finally mad eyou opt for an 8800 card instead?

The "grainy" effect in KK could be the video settings...checked the video tab in configurations and try either original or theater mode for color. Either way PowerDVD screws the colors up somewhat...I get banding in some areas of large single colors. Also check to make sure hardware acceleration is turned on.

Thanks for the heads up but I reverted back to the WHQL's. I did have hw acc ticked along with dissabling interlaced mode and keeping original as far as color mode. I just placed an order at newegg for the X2 939 they just got some more in. I should be smooth sailing on Tues. :D On Monday a client is coming by to upgrade his whole rig so he bought me two NX 7600 GT's :) So far the upgrade only costed me the price of the player and cpu. I'm almost sure my 7800 is fast enough but since MSI has the HDCP HDMI card I'll just go with that so I can free up my VGA for the transcoder.

Does anyone know if it's possible to use PDVD filters in MPC to playback HD-DVD files?

Nope, does not work at all.

Can anyone confirm if 64 bit Vista really will play HD DVD/BD natively in WMP 11? AND if you can have both drives and flip between the two formats? If so this would be my answer to a combo player...

Back to the colourbanding I was blaming PowerDVD for...

Just finished some more testing with various driver releases, including a fresh install of Win XP. It would appear that Vern Dias was right about the 79xx series and their broken colour output when using video overlay. Colour banding is evident on ALL media including SD DVD content MPEG2, H.264 .. etc. Why didn't they make it use VMR9, or at least make it an option?

Anyone have problems playing HD-DVDs from your hard drives with PowerDVD 7.1? I've used 6.5 and it works fine. However, with 7.1 I get a black screen and scrambled audio. Any ideas what the cause might be?

Anyone have problems playing HD-DVDs from your hard drives with PowerDVD 7.1? I've used 6.5 and it works fine. However, with 7.1 I get a black screen and scrambled audio. Any ideas what the cause might be?
My backups plays fine from HDDs with 7.1, I havent used 6.5 since I got Ultra. It might be just a little error when you edited the VPLST000 file....just a thght.

Anyone have problems playing HD-DVDs from your hard drives with PowerDVD 7.1? I've used 6.5 and it works fine. However, with 7.1 I get a black screen and scrambled audio. Any ideas what the cause might be?

7.1 wants HDCP compliance, 6.5 does not care.

7.1 wants HDCP compliance, 6.5 does not care.
No it doesnt matter after they been ripped. HDCP is no longer an issue. I am running them on an ASUS Silent 7600GT that is def not HDCP and also on the dell 3007 via dual link 8800GTS's SLI'd when before the Discs would not play on neither before being rip.

My backups plays fine from HDDs with 7.1, I havent used 6.5 since I got Ultra. It might be just a little error when you edited the VPLST000 file....just a thght.
yeah, agreed, 7.1 works fine for me as well for backups, a lot better PQ as well than 6.5, check your files or pdvd settings

Can anyone confirm if 64 bit Vista really will play HD DVD/BD natively in WMP 11? AND if you can have both drives and flip between the two formats? If so this would be my answer to a combo player...
uhm, i've heard that ultimate is supposed to have HD-DVD native playback...not blu-ray. Microsoft is not going to support blu-ray...lol

No it doesnt matter after they been ripped. HDCP is no longer an issue. I am running them on an ASUS Silent 7600GT that is def not HDCP and also on the dell 3007 via dual link 8800GTS's SLI'd when before the Discs would not play on neither before being rip.

both 7600GT and 8800GT are supposed to be HDCP compliant.

Anyway, I could be wrong here.

On my outdated P4 3.4 Ghz Radeon 9600 SE system 7.1 refuses to play and 6.5 plays fine.

both 7600GT and 8800GT are supposed to be HDCP compliant.

Anyway, I could be wrong here.

On my outdated P4 3.4 Ghz Radeon 9600 SE system 7.1 refuses to play and 6.5 plays fine.
Not all 7600GT are HDCP. The 8800 series are but the thing I was trying to say was that the Dell 3007 monitor normally didnt play HD DVD disc since the 8800 with the Dell 3007 combo would not allow HDCP at 2560x1600. But after the rip with that combo, I can playing the movies back at 2560x1600 using the Dell's monitor scaling.

The HD DVD's alsways played fine over component since it ignores AACS/HDCP. But Now I can play via digital DVI-HDMI and direct HDMI (both required HDCP prior to rip).

Funny about your 9600, I tried to play back on a X800XT PE Intel P4 478 and the movie off the HDD is scrambled but the sound is fine. Didnt even try from the disc. Now if I just get some time I will try it on a 9700pro AMD 64 754 system just for fun.

yeah, agreed, 7.1 works fine for me as well for backups, a lot better PQ as well than 6.5, check your files or pdvd settings

Any settings in particular I should look at? I've messed with them quite a bit with no luck. I get a black screen and some garbled audio whenever I try to play HD-DVD files from hard drive. If I try to directly play media files from hard drive (evo files) PowerDVD 7.1 crashes. It is not the XPL file far as I can tell as I've very carefully edited them and have tried other people's that did work for them, plus I've tried them on 6.5 with no problems.

uhm, i've heard that ultimate is supposed to have HD-DVD native playback...not blu-ray. Microsoft is not going to support blu-ray...lol
Vista Ultimate does not have native playback for HD DVD. It does support an HD DVD player natively. iow, plug in an XBOX 360 HD DVD to a Vista Box and it automatically loads the drivers and make the hardware available. Vista/WMP 11 does not have native HD DVD codecs though.

@Vern: How far did you go with your investigations into this issue? What was it that finally mad eyou opt for an 8800 card instead? Actually, my first card was an 8800GTS.

I wanted to equip my second HTPC with an HDCP compliant video card and didn't want to spend the $ for another 8800.

Thats how I found out about the problems with the 79xx. These include the color issues you are seeing, poor image quality (jaggies), and the inability to do smooth pans when outputting 1080 to my display. In the end, I bought another 8800 card.

Vern

I've tried PowerDVD 6.5 HD DVD, and to be honest... it has less bugs (at least less anoying) than PowerDVD Ultra. Also It has les CPU usage than ultra and looks better (not oversaturated as ultra, I think the 6.5 version uses overlay and ultra uses VMR right?)

Ultra seems like a complete overhaul and doesnt follow anything from the 6.5 version. I think they just needed to fix the bugs in 6.5 and thats it, IMHO they fubared with ultra..... :(

Ultra uses Overlay (open the config and then infoprmation to check). 6.5 looked much softer than 7 Ultra on my Radeon system and has much more bugs for me. 6.5 wouldn't even work with King Kong or Corpse Bride.

Well, that is three of us 8800 owners with this blank screen problem. Does the chapter trick work for you? What Nvidia drivers are you using? Are File associations in Powerdvd all still checked?

Got the black screen at beginning of movie again, this was the second title (Miami Vice & Tokyo Drift). Except this time going to future chapters in the movie did not turn the video on.

Found a better work around, start the movie in stereo, then after video is playing switch to SDPIF. Appears to work 100%.

Equipment
GA-965P-DS3
E6600
EVGA 8800GTS
Nvidia driver 97.92

Ultra uses Overlay (open the config and then infoprmation to check). 6.5 looked much softer than 7 Ultra on my Radeon system and has much more bugs for me. 6.5 wouldn't even work with King Kong or Corpse Bride.
Is there any way to make it use VMR9? I haven't been able to figure out how.

I don't know. All I know is it shows overlay when I view the information.

With TheaterTek VMR9 always looks softer than overlay. I have a Radeon card so it might bedifferent with Nvidia cards.

Ultra uses Overlay (open the config and then infoprmation to check). 6.5 looked much softer than 7 Ultra on my Radeon system and has much more bugs for me. 6.5 wouldn't even work with King Kong or Corpse Bride.

nop, they both use vmr.
protected content is not allowed on overlay

I'm playing a HD-DVD now and it says: Surface type: Overlay

I am having a strange problem playing HD DVD's over an XBOX 360 Since I installed the UDF-25 file patch, I now can only see the top 25% of the movie. Its like its zoomed in on the top left quadrant. This has not been fixed by changing displays, switching from DVI to VGA, or by reinstalling PowerDVD 7.1. I don't know how to remove the UDF patch short of fresh XP MCE install, and I would like to have access to the files on the disk anyway so I'd prefer to not have to remove it. My system is :Asus p5b- dlx, 2 meg ram, EVGA 8800GTS, WD 150g raptor to a NEC HT1000 fp. If anyone has a suggestion for me I would sure appreciate any help.

I am having a strange problem playing HD DVD's over an XBOX 360 Since I installed the UDF-25 file patch, I now can only see the top 25% of the movie. Its like its zoomed in on the top left quadrant. This has not been fixed by changing displays, switching from DVI to VGA, or by reinstalling PowerDVD 7.1. I don't know how to remove the UDF patch short of fresh XP MCE install, and I would like to have access to the files on the disk anyway so I'd prefer to not have to remove it. My system is :Asus p5b- dlx, 2 meg ram, EVGA 8800GTS, WD 150g raptor to a NEC HT1000 fp. If anyone has a suggestion for me I would sure appreciate any help.
i had the same problem...i had to put AA/AF to Application Preference for it to display the whole image. I also have the 8800gts.

^
thanks for the fix, where do I make the adjustment please?

OK got it and that did the trick, thanks again.
Now if I can get the video instead of black screen on King Kong I'll be good.

nop, they both use vmr.
protected content is not allowed on overlay

one weird thing is is seems to use something different for HD DVD vs Blu-Ray. With Blu-Ray unless I use the 0x0000003 registry hack I get washed out blacks and messed-up gamma. With HD DVD, as is, it appears to render 0-255 to 0-255, or at the least, it makes black black and white white and has excellent gamma behavior.

Got the black screen at beginning of movie again, this was the second title (Miami Vice & Tokyo Drift). Except this time going to future chapters in the movie did not turn the video on.

Found a better work around, start the movie in stereo, then after video is playing switch to SDPIF. Appears to work 100%.

Equipment
GA-965P-DS3
E6600
EVGA 8800GTS
Nvidia driver 97.92

Unfortunately neither fix works for me :(
Anyone try cyberlink's customer service to see if they are possibly working on a fix for this?
Also, what is sdpif? I found where to switch to it, but it just turns my sound off when I do it

Unfortunately neither fix works for me :(
Anyone try cyberlink's customer service to see if they are possibly working on a fix for this?
Also, what is sdpif? I found where to switch to it, but it just turns my sound off when I do it

SDPIF is where the audio is passed digitally to another component for 5.1 processing.

Unfortunately neither fix works for me :(
Anyone try cyberlink's customer service to see if they are possibly working on a fix for this?
Also, what is sdpif? I found where to switch to it, but it just turns my sound off when I do it
Actually, it is SPDIF (not sdpif) and stands for Sony / Phillips Digital Interface. You use it to send a digital audio stream to a receiver which decodes it , processes it, converts it to analog and drives your speakers. Since audio is being sent via the digital out from your audio card, it will turn off the analog sound output.

Installed these leaked Vista drivers tonight for the NVIDIA 8800 series:

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=85170

(Please note that these drivers are for the 8800s and only for Vista.)

When my TV is set to full HD resolution (1920 x 1080) PowerDVD works with the 8800 in Vista. If I try another resolution to adjust for overscan, PDVD will not display a picture. Stinks to have a bit of overscan but the PQ is great. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before NVIDIA corrects the overscan problem.

nop, they both use vmr. protected content is not allowed on overlayIt may not be allowed. However, when running in a window PDVD Ultra's info display does in fact state that the display surface is Overlay. When running in full screen mode, then it states that the display surface is VMR.

Vern

Hmm. I think was running in full screen mode yesterday when it reported overlay. I will check again tonight.

I'm thinking that PDVD is lying. :)


I have made a set of cables to transfer analog 5.1 audio to my receiver to fix the stuttering I experienced with Warner titles with SPDIF.

I also discovered that the pauses that happens occasionally is because PDVD needs the harddrive tp run when it changes chapters, and I have my harddrive configured to stop after three minutes to reduce noise and heat. Every time a chapter lasts longer than three minutes before changing the movie pauses and make a stuttering sound while the harddrive spools up.

I get the stuttering, defo the SPDIF with my Realtek '97 onboard sound, if it is set to analogue I have a smooth picture, very annoying. :mad:

I was wondering if anyone had any experience of trying something like a Hercules Fortissimo 4 card, whether using the Optical out from that would help (as long as I can turn off the onboard sound via the BIOS)????

Cheers

something i noticed, it probably applies to 8800 owenrs (i have 8800gts)
i was uisng the 97.44 drivers and decided to update my drivers to the latest 97.92 i believe it was...and well playback had horrible color banding....lots of noise, and not sharp at all.
went back to 97.44 drivers.

Any way to stop PowerDVD from going into Aero Basic mode when watching an HD-DVD? It's so annoying.

I checked again tonight with several movies. It shows overlay in both windowed and full screen mode. Perhaps it uses VMR if a HDCP compliant DVI link is used. I'm using VGA.

Any way to stop PowerDVD from going into Aero Basic mode when watching an HD-DVD? It's so annoying.

Same with everything else: we just have to wait for a version made with Vista in mind.

I get the stuttering, defo the SPDIF with my Realtek '97 onboard sound, if it is set to analogue I have a smooth picture, very annoying. :mad:

I was wondering if anyone had any experience of trying something like a Hercules Fortissimo 4 card, whether using the Optical out from that would help (as long as I can turn off the onboard sound via the BIOS)????

Cheers

Same problem here! SP/DIF enabled on my Realtek 97 card and the HD-DVDs stutter like crazy. How frustrating. :( Anyone come up with a workaround?

System is a Shuttle SN27P2.

Same problem here! SP/DIF enabled on my Realtek 97 card and the HD-DVDs stutter like crazy. How frustrating. :( Anyone come up with a workaround?

System is a Shuttle SN27P2.

I just got through watching Troy get this in 2.4:1 anyway the movie looks pretty good. Outdoor scenes looks very crisp and vivid with no weird filtering involved. After I did some tweaking on my rig I get pretty good playback with my AMD 64 chip although I fixed the stuttering it still isn't perfect just the jitters now, my cpu is just tapped out. The bad part is my USB 2.0 controller is on the PCI bus and I can't overclock it without bsod's. I also dissed the onboard audio on my DFI SLI D mobo and stuck in my Audigy 2 and used spdif pass through to my Kenwood receiver using pdvd 7.1 it plays flawless, so if you guys have any cards laying around off load that cpu and you should get better sound. So far I'm pretty happy with the upgrade my 7800 GT can definitely handle the playback you don't really need a 500 MHz card but hey more power to you. I can't wait for my X2 from the egg it will be here Tuesday that's all I need for now. My NX's will be here later down the week.

I checked again tonight with several movies. It shows overlay in both windowed and full screen mode. Perhaps it uses VMR if a HDCP compliant DVI link is used. I'm using VGA.


Powedvd uses VMR9 when it plays HD-DVD although it reports overlay!
If you use reclock it is easy to see it reports VMR9 renderless.
Also, if you have doubts, make a little test: use powestrip to alter the gamma setting of the desktop.If the powedvd window grays out with the desktop, then it is VMR. If not it is ovelay.
By the way, the image with powerdvd 6,5 is STUNNING with HD-DVDs!I am awed by that, if you consider that the powerdvd is probably the WORST SD dvd-player!
In fact with HD-DVDs, it is way better than a Toshiba HD-DVD E1 desktop player on a Sony Pearl.
This of course on a core duo pro E6600 with an ATI X1950.

The gamma in PDVD does not change with the desktop gamma in PDVD 7.1. If I remember correctly it did when I tried 6.5 with my X800 XT card.

I did quite a bit of testing this weekend because I have not been convinced that HD DVD's played back on the HTPC are as good as I thought they should be. Don't get me wrong here, I like the playback, but I expected a bit more, To me the pictures can look softer than expected and in some cases grainy.
My setup is a Sony G90 with an AMD X2, 7950 Video card, 1920 x 1080P, RGBHV. Playback is smooth.
The testing I did was on a 22" professional monitor at 1080P. That way I took everything out of the loop from my system and had a real bench to test from. I tested a 7800GT OC card vs the 7050GT HDCP card, no difference in the picture. I then tested PowerDVD (PDVD) 6.7 vs 7.2 Ultra. I did see a slightly (and I mean slightly) cleaner picture from 7.2, but with that said I won't run 7.2 until they get the subtitles thing worked out. I also tested the latest NVidia drivers vs the Beta Drivers on their site and noticed no difference. So from the bench top I can only conclude that 7.2 is marginally better picture quality than 6.7.
No to test in my setup and I ran back to back tests directly from my HTPC to the Projector as well as HTPC to me video switch to the same input on my G90. No differences noted in picture quality. I also wanted to see if the switch was adding or subtracting anything ay 1080P to I ran some very high resolution (1 pixel) test patterns directly to the G90 as well as through the switch and noted no difference in video quality proving that the switch had the bandwidth to handle 1080P as well as the G90.
Don't misunderstand me I really like HD DVD, I just don't think it is a quantum leap over good DVD transfers played back via TT and FFDshow (which are very good). I have noticed there have been others who thought the picture was soft and have been under whelmed as well. I remember when I first got this going thinking how good the picture looked, but after spending some time with it, I'm not sure it looks as good as what I expected.
Any other thoughts on this??

Terry

Do you have an ATI card or NVIDIA? With my ATI it changes so it is VMR.

I did quite a bit of testing this weekend because I have not been convinced that HD DVD's played back on the HTPC are as good as I thought they should be. Don't get me wrong here, I like the playback, but I expected a bit more, To me the pictures can look softer than expected and in some cases grainy.
My setup is a Sony G90 with an AMD X2, 7950 Video card, 1920 x 1080P, RGBHV. Playback is smooth.
The testing I did was on a 22" professional monitor at 1080P. That way I took everything out of the loop from my system and had a real bench to test from. I tested a 7800GT OC card vs the 7050GT HDCP card, no difference in the picture. I then tested PowerDVD (PDVD) 6.7 vs 7.2 Ultra. I did see a slightly (and I mean slightly) cleaner picture from 7.2, but with that said I won't run 7.2 until they get the subtitles thing worked out. I also tested the latest NVidia drivers vs the Beta Drivers on their site and noticed no difference. So from the bench top I can only conclude that 7.2 is marginally better picture quality than 6.7.
No to test in my setup and I ran back to back tests directly from my HTPC to the Projector as well as HTPC to me video switch to the same input on my G90. No differences noted in picture quality. I also wanted to see if the switch was adding or subtracting anything ay 1080P to I ran some very high resolution (1 pixel) test patterns directly to the G90 as well as through the switch and noted no difference in video quality proving that the switch had the bandwidth to handle 1080P as well as the G90.
Don't misunderstand me I really like HD DVD, I just don't think it is a quantum leap over good DVD transfers played back via TT and FFDshow (which are very good). I have noticed there have been others who thought the picture was soft and have been under whelmed as well. I remember when I first got this going thinking how good the picture looked, but after spending some time with it, I'm not sure it looks as good as what I expected.
Any other thoughts on this??

Terry

Terry, have you tested on a Digital projector of the latest crop (p.g. sony pearl, Optoma 81)? I sincerely believe that a CRT projector cannot resolve the full detail of the new HD sources...

Terry, have you tested on a Digital projector of the latest crop (p.g. sony pearl, Optoma 81)? I sincerely believe that a CRT projector cannot resolve the full detail of the new HD sources...

No all testing has been strictly on a G90 and a professional 22" CRT monitor. Both are capable of resolving 1920 x 1080P lines. I tested that yesterday with the 1 pixel test patterns I was using. I could clearly see both the 1920 vertical lines as well as the 1080 horizontal lines. The nice thing about these higher end CRT's is they are just displays and don't add or take anything away from the picture that a digital display might in scaling to the native panel.
But here's the thing, I have .ts stuff that looks better than any of the HD DVD movies I have watched so far. And they were 1080i material that I ran at 1080P. Bikini destinations is a prime example (and I don't mean the girls......lol).
What I am really wondering here is if HD DVD is really that good in the first place. I realize that there will be variations from studio to studio and movie to movie.
The other test I did yesterday was to do a comparison of of my HTPC to the XBox 360 and there wasn't any difference.
I don't know, maybe I'm just getting used to HD DVD OR maybe it's that a good HTPC with TT and FFDShow does a really good job?

Terry

Do you have an ATI card or NVIDIA? With my ATI it changes so it is VMR.

ATI X1950 PRO 256 MB PCIE. Are you using DVI/HDMI? I'm using VGA.

I have not been convinced that HD DVD's played back on the HTPC are as good as I thought they should be.Terry, until you try an 8800 with the 97.92 drivers, you haven't seen what HD DVD and BD really are capable of on an HTPC.

Powedvd uses VMR9 when it plays HD-DVD although it reports overlay!
If you use reclock it is easy to see it reports VMR9 renderless.In a window or full screen? Cause I run in a window so that I can do AR control with YXY and I can hit CAD and bring up task manager while a BD or HD DVD is playing. If it were VMR9 renderless, this shouldn't happen.

Vern

Terry, until you try an 8800 with the 97.92 drivers, you haven't seen what HD DVD and BD really are capable of on an HTPC.
Vern

Vern,

You were just the person I was hoping would jump in here, knowing that you have done some testing on this. Guess I will have to get my hands on an 8800 and see for myself.

Terry

Terry, until you try an 8800 with the 97.92 drivers, you haven't seen what HD DVD and BD really are capable of on an HTPC.

Hi vern, i tried the 97.92 drivers and the image quality went for the worse, i got horrible color banding and image was not clear at all. Even my girlfriend who was there at the time told me why it wasn't looking sharp/clear....and to her one picture is as good as another, but she noticed this...

Vern, what settings do you have under the Nvidia control panel for TV/Display?
I have Gamma Correction unchecked as well as Temp Control to off.

I'm using 8800gts w/ powerdvd 7.1.
I have switched back to the 97.44 drivers.

thanks

Terry, until you try an 8800 with the 97.92 drivers, you haven't seen what HD DVD and BD really are capable of on an HTPC.

In a window or full screen? Cause I run in a window so that I can do AR control with YXY and I can hit CAD and bring up task manager while a BD or HD DVD is playing. If it were VMR9 renderless, this shouldn't happen.

Vern

I am not sure it is renderless (that's what reclock reports) but I am pretty sure it is VMR9. I wonder though, if the VC-1 decoder in Powerdvd is proprietary or delivered by Microsoft. In any case, it is very good and it produced a very sharp, accurate and without tearing image on a calibrated Sony Pearl.
In fact I was so impressed that I ordered today the same HTPC components as the ones of the lucky owner of this combination, to match it with my BenQ 8720!

Vern, what settings do you have under the Nvidia control panel for TV/Display?All my settings are default, except that I have IVTC checked. Running 1080 60I and 1080 24PsF over HDMI. Make sure your desktop is set to 32 bits and PowerDVD Video quality is set to Auto or Best. I hope you removed the previous drivers using add/remove from the CP before you installed 97.92. If you are running VGA, then you may have to play with custom res settings. Make sure both H and V sync are set to "-". VGA is notoriously touchy and it's very easy to lose the pixel perfect mapping that using HDMI at 1080 gives you. If the desktop letters are fuzzy, then you don't have a good match between display resolution and the card's resolution. I have run these drivers with both an8800 GTS and an 8800GTX with excellent results. Both cards are Leadtek with the NVidia reference cooler design (takes up 2 slots). It is the only cooler design I would ever use in an HTPC. Whisper quiet.....

Vern

All my settings are default, except that I have IVTC checked. Running 1080 60I and 1080 24PsF over HDMI. Make sure your desktop is set to 32 bits and PowerDVD Video quality is set to Auto or Best. I hope you removed the previous drivers using add/remove from the CP before you installed 97.92. If you are running VGA, then you may have to play with custom res settings. Make sure both H and V sync are set to "-". VGA is notoriously touchy and it's very easy to lose the pixel perfect mapping that using HDMI at 1080 gives you. If the desktop letters are fuzzy, then you don't have a good match between display resolution and the card's resolution. I have run these drivers with both an8800 GTS and an 8800GTX with excellent results. Both cards are Leadtek with the NVidia reference cooler design (takes up 2 slots). It is the only cooler design I would ever use in an HTPC. Whisper quiet.....

Vern

I'm running 8800gts on an 40" sony xbr2 using dvi->hdmi...i find i get much more natural colors when i turn off the temp correction the drivers offer.
I did uninstall all previous drivers before i installed 97.92, so that wasnt a problem. Desktop is also set at 32bit and PowerDVD set to output at Best quality. What do you mean both H and V sync are set to "-"? That only applies to VGA no? The desktop is very sharp and the tv maps the resolution 1:1 over hdmi perfectly. I don't know why I had that issue, but i had to switch back to 97.44 as the quality was not good at all. I'm using evga 8800gts.

I don't know what to tell you. Don't think I mentioned it, but I am not using DXVA HW assist in PowerDVD. WIth a Core Duo 6700, my CPU runs at about 25% with HW assist disabled.

Vern

If you guys have a lot of time on your hands, tons of hard drive space, and a lot of patience, you can get better PQ if you demux the video into a separate file and then play them with a DirectShow player like zoomplayer or even GraphEdit.

The difference was night and day - they look spectacular. No banding, accurate colors, crystal clear image. Just great.

Too bad you can only see the video - the audio won't play in any directshow player so far. :(

But if you like tinkering you can look on Doom9.org for discussions on this. At least you'll then have a benchmark for how HD-DVDs SHOULD look and not the crap that PowerDVD gives you (for most of us anyways).

Max, the image I witnessed with Powerdvd 6.5, was not crap, it was spectacular (and you know I can be very picky with image ;) ). No banding at all, spot-on colors, very crisp!
Maybe it is a graphics card issue??

Yeah that is possible - but it is weird that would be the case, because if the video is decrypted and then demuxed, and I use the Cyberlink VC-1 Decoder that cames with PowerDVD 7.1, the video is pristine! It is damned good - and supposedly DXVA is working too (the filter properties say it is on).

So it could be a combination - buggy player with buggy (92.91) drivers. :)

PowerDVD 6.5 huh? Damn, I wonder if they would let me "downgrade"...

Anyone running Vista with PowerDVD 7.1 and XBOX 360 drive? I think that is my problem with not smooth playback. Hopefully, new drivers will be released to solve the problem now that it's officially out.

Well because of the timeout, everything I written gone. I am going to have to make this short as I am having a headache. I viewed this forum and read about 7 pages and can not find a solution.

Well first off, my computer specs are:

AMD Athlon X2 4400+
2GB DDR400 RAM
NVIDIA 7950GT 512MB HDCP
ViewSonic N3251w 32" -I think support HDCP

When playing HD-DVD EVO files, FEATURE_1.EVO and FEATURE_1.EVO, the video display off screen and the video also stutter. You can view screenshots and video of what I mean't at the links below.

tqdesign.orgadvisor.jpg
tqdesign.orgscreen1.jpg
tqdesign.orgP5180002.mov

Can someone please help me with this?

Thank you

Edit nm

Anyone running Vista with PowerDVD 7.1 and XBOX 360 drive? I think that is my problem with not smooth playback. Hopefully, new drivers will be released to solve the problem now that it's officially out.

i'll be trying that in a few days. also keeping my XP around for a while though, at the least.

If you guys have a lot of time on your hands, tons of hard drive space, and a lot of patience, you can get better PQ if you demux the video into a separate file and then play them with a DirectShow player like zoomplayer or even GraphEdit.

The difference was night and day - they look spectacular. No banding, accurate colors, crystal clear image. Just great.

Too bad you can only see the video - the audio won't play in any directshow player so far. :(

But if you like tinkering you can look on Doom9.org for discussions on this. At least you'll then have a benchmark for how HD-DVDs SHOULD look and not the crap that PowerDVD gives you (for most of us anyways).

can't say i've been seeing banding with powerdvd (7.1).
looks fine to me.
maybe the above it better, but I can't imagine night and day improvement over what I'm seeing.

I've found that the Brightness/Contrast controls in PDVD's advanced video settings can have a big impact on the banding and other image quality issues. Play around with both of them, as they interact with each other quite heavily.

I've found that the Brightness/Contrast controls in PDVD's advanced video settings can have a big impact on the banding and other image quality issues. Play around with both of them, as they interact with each other quite heavily.


The other thing I found was that I had to turn all the red, green and blue BIAS settings down to about -25 from about -5, on my Optoma HD72 to stop the mirrors bouncing in the blacks, but it has made the picture far punchier.

Incidentally has anyone had problems playing Hulk, I got it yesterday and won't play. Seems to try and open as 'FILE' not 'DISC' which is odd, also appears to be a sort of AACS text file in the root, any ideas???

Cheers

Well, I've got vista ultimate installed and I'm using a 8800GTS w/ 100.54 drivers ( from Nvidias website ) at 1920x1080 ( p )

..... and now I can't play HD-DVDs. PowerDVD first brings up the warning about Aero changing to basic and then the app stops responding.

I've tried switching hardware acceleration on and off, and I've alternated between SPDIF out and 6 channel output. Nothing seems to have any effect.

Damn, damn, damn! Heh.

( I'll note I had it working under XP, and moved onto Vista because others w/ 8800 cards appared to be having success ).

CDJay

DVD Ultra, or 6.5? DVD Ultra plays all the movies for me, however, it freezes after 10 minutes or so :(

Ultra 7.1

CDJay

The newest Vista drivers are out for Radeon (Jan 29th) and fix the Dxva problems, so now DXVA AVIVO hardware acceleration should be supported for MPEG2 and H.264 formats.

I installed PowerDVD 6.5 and was able to verify that, more or less, the PQ is much better than 7.1!

I've also verified that PowerDVD 7.1 does NOT use VMR9. No matter what registry settings I've tried, VMR9 would not be used. However, PowerDVD 6.5 will use VMR9, and I've verified that by using the ALT-PrintScreen trick...you will get a black screen if the player was in Overlay, but not if it is VMR9.

So, those with PowerDVD 7.1/7.2, fire up a hi-def disc, and then press the Alt-PrtScr key. Then quite PowerDVD, load up MS Paint, and paste the screenshot. If it is black then you only had overlay enabled.

There are a few EnableVMR9 keys in the registry for PowerDVD, but they seem to be ignored in 7.1.

The newest Vista drivers are out for Radeon (Jan 29th) and fix the Dxva problems, so now DXVA AVIVO hardware acceleration should be supported for MPEG2 and H.264 formats.
What version is it? I went hunting a couple days ago, but I may have been to early :)

BTW - see my sig or http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=797524

You may want to check this issue out.

Catalyst 7.1.

I can also validate that an ATI X1950XTX works well with PowerDVD Ultra using HDMI w/ HDCP and Catalyst 7.1. Excellent image quality and reasonable CPU utilization. Running in SW decode mode.

Vern

I installed PowerDVD 6.5 and was able to verify that, more or less, the PQ is much better than 7.1!

I've also verified that PowerDVD 7.1 does NOT use VMR9. No matter what registry settings I've tried, VMR9 would not be used. However, PowerDVD 6.5 will use VMR9, and I've verified that by using the ALT-PrintScreen trick...you will get a black screen if the player was in Overlay, but not if it is VMR9.

So, those with PowerDVD 7.1/7.2, fire up a hi-def disc, and then press the Alt-PrtScr key. Then quite PowerDVD, load up MS Paint, and paste the screenshot. If it is black then you only had overlay enabled.

There are a few EnableVMR9 keys in the registry for PowerDVD, but they seem to be ignored in 7.1.

Thanks for confirming that, Max!
So, it is not card related, but rather a powerdvd edition issue!
I havent seen 7.1 yet, but, as I said, with 6.5 I am very happy!
(How wierd is for Cybelink to worsen the image with the latest edition!! :eek: )

I installed PowerDVD 6.5 and was able to verify that, more or less, the PQ is much better than 7.1!

I've also verified that PowerDVD 7.1 does NOT use VMR9. No matter what registry settings I've tried, VMR9 would not be used. However, PowerDVD 6.5 will use VMR9, and I've verified that by using the ALT-PrintScreen trick...you will get a black screen if the player was in Overlay, but not if it is VMR9.

So, those with PowerDVD 7.1/7.2, fire up a hi-def disc, and then press the Alt-PrtScr key. Then quite PowerDVD, load up MS Paint, and paste the screenshot. If it is black then you only had overlay enabled.

There are a few EnableVMR9 keys in the registry for PowerDVD, but they seem to be ignored in 7.1.

how is it possible that powerdvd 7.1 doesn't use vmr ?
COPP drivers make vmr mandatory for protected content !!!!

What video cards are you using, maxleung?

I installed PowerDVD 6.5 and was able to verify that, more or less, the PQ is much better than 7.1!

I've also verified that PowerDVD 7.1 does NOT use VMR9. No matter what registry settings I've tried, VMR9 would not be used. However, PowerDVD 6.5 will use VMR9, and I've verified that by using the ALT-PrintScreen trick...you will get a black screen if the player was in Overlay, but not if it is VMR9.

So, those with PowerDVD 7.1/7.2, fire up a hi-def disc, and then press the Alt-PrtScr key. Then quite PowerDVD, load up MS Paint, and paste the screenshot. If it is black then you only had overlay enabled.

There are a few EnableVMR9 keys in the registry for PowerDVD, but they seem to be ignored in 7.1.

I'd like a definite proof of the statement above.

I've heard that PrintScreen functionality had been disabled in 7.1 all together, but I might be totally off here.

We need to know the details of the system internal processing with each player before we can conclude something like this is true.

Unfortunately my main HTPC at the moment is not functional, awaiting new VGA heatsink and new HDTV as a display.

I'd like a definite proof of the statement above.

I've heard that PrintScreen functionality had been disabled in 7.1 all together, but I might be totally off here.

We need to know the details of the system internal processing with each player before we can conclude something like this is true.

Unfortunately my main HTPC at the moment is not functional, awaiting new VGA heatsink and new HDTV as a display.


You took the words right out of my mouth, Printscreen IS disabled in 7.1, I have been getting cross with Cyberlink over this as they keep asking for screenshot whenever I put a ticket in, they don't seem to know their own product.....

I wonder why there is a discussion about whether 7.1 uses overlay or VMR. Isn't this the easiest thing to check? During playback in a window, I just fire up the Nvidia control panel and change some color controls for "Video" (overlay), then "Desktop" (VMR9), and whichever affects the colors in the the PowerDVD window, that's what it uses. It has always turned out to be overlay, no matter what options I change in PowerDVD.
Is there anything I am missing here?

Edit: I am using Nvidia 7950GT to DLP TV through HDCP compliant DVI, Nvidia drivers 93.71.

ditcho, that is an even better test - however, with my 92.91 drivers I have to be careful not to touch the color controls for Video or VMR in the NVIDIA control panel otherwise I will have to reinstall the drivers - I will not be able to restore neutral grayscale and colors once I change them!

It is possible this is still a driver related issue - PowerDVD may be quietly "falling back" to overlay for the 92.91 drivers. I have not tried newer drivers - I will have to make an image of my hard drive before I do that. With the state of NVIDIA's driver releases, it would be very perilous (PERILOUS! :) ) for me to play with different driver versions. So for me, it isn't an easy check!

But I can also verify that, if I Alt-PrtScrn and then paste into MS Paint, I get a black image - BUT if I have PowerDVD running in the background, the image will NOT be black but I will see the image in MS Paint because the black color is the overlay image! So, yes, this is confirmed. PowerDVD 7.1 is using Overlay at least on my setup.

I've even tried experimenting with mixing-and-matching PowerDVD 6.5 and 7.1 DLLs and .AX files - I believe the lack of VMR9 is occuring either in the PowerDVD.exe file or the dxrender.dlls. Most likely the former.

Also, I've been testing with my HD-DVD ripped backups - that would explain why Alt-PrtScrn works - unencrypted content! So, if you guys can, rip some EVO files from your HD-DVDs (you have to decrypt them though) onto your hard drive, and see if Alt-PrintScreen works for you.

Another way of testing is to run it in Vista, and if Aero gets auto-disabled you know it's overlay. At least for me, 7.1 seems to be overlay.

Another quick test:

Open MS Paint.

Create a color with the following RGB values: 16,0,16. Use the bucket tool to fill the canvas with this color.

Run PowerDVD 7.1/7.2. Insert HD-DVD disc into the drive and play. Move the MS Paint window over the PowerDVD movie window. If you see the movie image inside MS Paint then it is using Overlay.

I could be wrong about the color. I am pretty sure it is 16,0,16. But it could be 0,16,16 or 16,16,0 or even 0,0,0.

I am another user frustrated with the color output using PowerDVD 7.1 and NVidia 7600GS.

I am not sure if VMR9 or overlay is being used. I am assuming overlay is being used although I may be wrong.

I do not have any color issues with MCE2005 playing DVDs or other video content inlucuding HD recorded TV (the colors are perfect). What is Cyberlink doing? Can we force VMR9 with HD-DVD and PowerDVD 7.1?

I've tried forcing VMR9 by playing with the registry settings. I even tried swapping DLLs and the filters between 6.5 and 7.2 around. No luck.

i've tried the methods listed here to test for overlay vs vmr9, and all of them confirmed overlay. I'm on 8800gts with 97.44 drivers using powerdvd 7.1.

maxleung,
have you noticed differences in picture quality in 6.5 vs 7.1 for hd-dvd media? for some reason i noticed better pq after i installed 7.1 instead of 6.5...i'll try 6.5 again.

Is it possible to install both on same drive w/o overwriting some of the shared files? i'll do some comparison shots if i can install both, i'll try when i get home.

I noticed that 6.5 has a lot less banding than 7.1. Also there is no red push on flesh tones, unlike 7.1. However, that could be because I did not touch overlay settings in the NVIDIA control panel, for the reasons I stated earlier.

I don't like overlay because of the banding/gradations it produces - no amount of tweaking within PowerDVD could correct for this. Color correction is very difficult with overlay I find. I find the PQ in 7.1 to be very bad - approaching 16 bit color instead of the usual 24 bit.

It is possible to have both installed - the registry settings are very similar between the two. What I did was uninstall 7.1, then installed 6.5. Then I copied the Cyberlink directory in "C:\Program Files" to another directory. Then I uninstalled 6.5 and installed 7.1. This seems to work for me.

I have to add that I have a calibrated NEC 20WMGX2 monitor - very nearly perfect D6500K with perfect 2.2 gamma and no banding (true 8 bit panel). It is very revealing - too revealing!

Those of you who only get overlay, does your videocard have HDCP?

Mine does not - I have to use VGA or decrypt the HD-DVDs. Unfortunately my VGA monitor doesn't fit on the same desk as my new LCD monitor, so it is hard for me to test if VMR9 only works for VGA output.

Oops, I forgot to mention that my videocard is an eVGA NVIDIA 7900GT PCIe card. Running in a Core 2 Duo E6400 rig o'ced to 3.0 GHz, with 2 gigs of RAM.

ok, so ive been reading up on spdif and toslink sound and wanted to know if i output to toslink (digital optical) by my sound card and select spdif for the sound in powerdvd will i hear the sound? i dont remember there being an option for the other form of digital output in the powerdvd settings. which form is superior? toslink or spdif? i am looking into getting a receiver and trying to figure all of this out.