Change Hardware Acel setting for Incompatible driver message.

Doesn't work for me, ATI X1950Pro with either Cat 7.1 or 7.2.

I have gone back to PDVD 7.1, at least I can watch some fo my films :mad: :mad:

Weird, it works flawlessly for my X1950pro with Cat 7.2..

Weird, it works flawlessly for my X1950pro with Cat 7.2..

PowerDVD 7.3 does?

Yes, of course (coupled with AnyDVD HD as always). My model is made by Saphire.

Change Hardware Acel setting for Incompatible driver message.
I am still getting incompatible driver message.

Yes, of course (coupled with AnyDVD HD as always). My model is made by Saphire.

Works for me also, under Vista Ultimate 32-bit. Sapphire X1950Pro.

I am still getting incompatible driver message.

I am getting occasional loss of communication with the display messages. It usually comes back after a few seconds. I have upgraded to 7.3 and Vista Ultimate 32. I am running a GeForce 8800GTS640MB with the 101.41 drivers.

It sound like this is a HDCP issue.

Damn HDCP :mad:

- Rich

Where are you guys getting the 7.3 patch? I can't see it anywhere on the Cyberlink website.

Where are you guys getting the 7.3 patch? I can't see it anywhere on the Cyberlink website.
you have to call or email cyberlink member support and they will email you the link providing you have purchased it from them.

Where are you guys getting the 7.3 patch? I can't see it anywhere on the Cyberlink website.

I have Blu-Ray and HD DVD capability so I contacted tech support for the upgrade. It is not officially available.

- Rich

I see that a lot of people are having problems with powerdvd ultra 7.3. I think the issue is your combination of parts and drivers not powerdvd. I get perfect playback on a pentium d 920 cpu,intel 945p motherboard,2 gb ram nvidia 6600 not 6600gt using powerdvd 7.3 and nvidia 100.65 drivers. Although I only get perfect playback on VC1 and mpeg2 encoded blu-ray or hd-dvd, h264 playback is not smooth because my 920 cpu is at it's limit but if you have a combination better than mine than it's probably your video card driver.

I see that a lot of people are having problems with powerdvd ultra 7.3. I think the issue is your combination of parts and drivers not powerdvd.

this statement proves that it IS the problem of powerdvd. it should be more compabtible with a wider-range of modern video cards and drivers. it shouldn't be giving blue-screens of death.

this statement proves that it IS the problem of powerdvd. it should be more compabtible with a wider-range of modern video cards and drivers. it shouldn't be giving blue-screens of death.

Without saying PDVD isn't full of bugs (it clearly is), but any bluescreen is never the fault of software applications. Windows never crashes if drivers and hardware are working properly.

To the guy two pasts back: I'm also using 100.65 with a 6600GT, and h264 discs now don't play at all (they did in 7.2 and 6.5). The problem is the 7.3 decoders, not the PDVD app itself - you can replicate it in graphedit with overlay, but VMR9 works. Of course, the PDVD app forces overlay..... :rolleyes:


By the way, using PDVD codecs, Bluray discs can now be played in any Directshow app using VMR9. Looks great in Zoomplayer, totally smooth, perfect colours/ramps. Even better, X-men 3 with its peaks of 40mbit AVC (!!) never goes above 56% CPU on my machine, with GPU acceleration off.

OK. I own 7 Ultra of course, but it doesn't sound like it's worth the trouble to ask Cyberlink for 7.3.

It's strange that they don't make the upgrade patch available through their member pages after login. It's supposed to make patches for the software I have registered available.

Without saying PDVD isn't full of bugs (it clearly is), but any bluescreen is never the fault of software applications. Windows never crashes if drivers and hardware are working properly.

To the guy two pasts back: I'm also using 100.65 with a 6600GT, and h264 discs now don't play at all (they did in 7.2 and 6.5). The problem is the 7.3 decoders, not the PDVD app itself - you can replicate it in graphedit with overlay, but VMR9 works. Of course, the PDVD app forces overlay..... :rolleyes:


By the way, using PDVD codecs, Bluray discs can now be played in any Directshow app using VMR9. Looks great in Zoomplayer, totally smooth, perfect colours/ramps. Even better, X-men 3 with its peaks of 40mbit AVC (!!) never goes above 56% CPU on my machine, with GPU acceleration off.

7.3 with Ultra is reporting that the color mode is being set to Vista Basic when I set it to use Best quality mode with my 8800GTS. That seems strange.

- Rich

Without saying PDVD isn't full of bugs (it clearly is), but any bluescreen is never the fault of software applications. Windows never crashes if drivers and hardware are working properly.

To the guy two pasts back: I'm also using 100.65 with a 6600GT, and h264 discs now don't play at all (they did in 7.2 and 6.5). The problem is the 7.3 decoders, not the PDVD app itself - you can replicate it in graphedit with overlay, but VMR9 works. Of course, the PDVD app forces overlay..... :rolleyes:


By the way, using PDVD codecs, Bluray discs can now be played in any Directshow app using VMR9. Looks great in Zoomplayer, totally smooth, perfect colours/ramps. Even better, X-men 3 with its peaks of 40mbit AVC (!!) never goes above 56% CPU on my machine, with GPU acceleration off.
I had to totally uninstall all drivers through device manager to get powerdvd 7.3 to work right. Also I only see guys posting what kind of video card they have. Everyone with or without powerdvd 7.3 working post your system configuration and maybe we will see a pattern why its working or not working correctly for you.

7.3 with Ultra is reporting that the color mode is being set to Vista Basic when I set it to use Best quality mode with my 8800GTS. That seems strange.

- Rich

It's turning off Aero.

By the way, using PDVD codecs, Bluray discs can now be played in any Directshow app using VMR9. Looks great in Zoomplayer, totally smooth, perfect colours/ramps. Even better, X-men 3 with its peaks of 40mbit AVC (!!) never goes above 56% CPU on my machine, with GPU acceleration off.

Wow! This is great! No more ugly overlay!

When you get a chance, please explain exactly how you set up Zoomplayer to play Bluray. I would very much appreciate it as I can only get audio to work.

It's turning off Aero.

Is that a good thing in that it means that PowerDVD is doing something more?

- Rich

Is that a good thing in that it means that PowerDVD is doing something more?


Not really unfortunately - all it means is that the PowerDVD 7.x app (not the codecs) forces the overlay renderer with HD-DVD/Bluray discs. As this is incompatible with Aero, Vista auto-switches to basic mode.

I had to totally uninstall all drivers through device manager to get powerdvd 7.3 to work right. Also I only see guys posting what kind of video card they have. Everyone with or without powerdvd 7.3 working post your system configuration and maybe we will see a pattern why its working or not working correctly for you.

7.3 seems to be working fine although parts of Babel seemed a little grainy - maybe just the source though. I've run VC1/AVC in HD-DVD and AVC in BD w/o any issues.

52" LCD 1920x1080p Sharp [HDCP]
8800GTX (not oc'd) [HDCP] DVI->HDMI
680i SLI mobo P25 bios (not oc'd)
C2D E6600 (not oc'd)
Using latest (official) drivers from nvidia.
XP MCE/Vista x64 Dual boot.

Wow! This is great! No more ugly overlay!

When you get a chance, please explain exactly how you set up Zoomplayer to play Bluray. I would very much appreciate it as I can only get audio to work.

Since a lot of movies are recorded with mpeg2 on BR, shouldn't just about any good player handle those without a problem? I was hoping for zoomplayer to play HD-DVD movies which are mostly VC1, but no luck, even after installing 4 additional companion programs that come with it and what a pain to remove it later, when I realized it doesn't work.

Wow! This is great! No more ugly overlay!

When you get a chance, please explain exactly how you set up Zoomplayer to play Bluray. I would very much appreciate it as I can only get audio to work.


Nothing fancy - it just uses the default Cyberlink Demuxxer/avc codec/audio decoder, and Zoomplayer forces VMR9. On default settings these are close to the highest priority, so just check they're actually loading and you'll be fine.

FFDshow of course has higher priority than everything, so switch it off for h264 (it chokes on >30mbit AVC and artifacts some). For audio it will work through liba52 and AC3 output, but it can't passthrough (spdif in AC3 codec setting) yet.

At a guess, pretty much any Blu-ray should work with this setup, because the splitter is capable of handling VC1 and MPEG2 also. Possibly some audio formats might cause a hassle, but I can't see why this filter chain shouldn't work when it does in PDVD itself. Unfortunately I can't test my MPEG2 discs as my Bluray burner is fried (X-men was the only one I decrypted to disc cos its insane AVC peaks are a great burn-in test for my HTPC, the MPEG2 ones are easy meat by comparison!).

Everything is RED in Powerdvd 7.3 on my system. Trying to fix the color does not do much. (I cant use hardware acceleration-my card cant take it) I have a Geforece 7300 gs.

Is anyone else having this problem? And is there a workaround? Thnx

Nothing fancy - it just uses the default Cyberlink Demuxxer/avc codec/audio decoder, and Zoomplayer forces VMR9. On default settings these are close to the highest priority, so just check they're actually loading and you'll be fine.

FFDshow of course has higher priority than everything, so switch it off for h264 (it chokes on >30mbit AVC and artifacts some). For audio it will work through liba52 and AC3 output, but it can't passthrough (spdif in AC3 codec setting) yet.

At a guess, pretty much any Blu-ray should work with this setup, because the splitter is capable of handling VC1 and MPEG2 also. Possibly some audio formats might cause a hassle, but I can't see why this filter chain shouldn't work when it does in PDVD itself. Unfortunately I can't test my MPEG2 discs as my Bluray burner is fried (X-men was the only one I decrypted to disc cos its insane AVC peaks are a great burn-in test for my HTPC, the MPEG2 ones are easy meat by comparison!).

Is this possible for HD-DVDs?

John, set your desktop resolution/reftesh at 1080p24 and leave reclock to Auto (no need to change it to 24, reclock will make the appropriate adjustments).Alternate solution: set your desktop at 1080p/48 and reclock to Auto. That should give you smooth playback.
PS If problems persist, Try setting reclock to work on Directdraw more instead of direct3d.

Takisot:

It's already on DirectDraw, not Direct3d. I'll double check to see if 24 is a valid setting. It might be an issue where 1080p24 is not a reported sync rate via EDID. Also, 48p is not an acceptable input rate.

Best,

So far the upgrade to 7.3 has been problematic.

I installed the official driver for the 8800 100.46? I think to see it was better than the 101 drivers but I get the same problems.

1) Without AnyDVD I get an error occasionally that communication with the display driver was lost :mad:

2) I get stutters every few seconds playing Serenity. I think that it may be caused by a refresh rate being off. I am only running about 40% on the 4600+.

Perhaps this is all just a result of moving from Overlay to VMR when I also upgraded to Vista Ultimate.

It is not all bad news. The colors are better with VMR and the sound is working much better too. There was NO bass with DD+ in 7.2.

- Rich

No bass??? What kind of soundcard do you use? With my Audiotrak audigy HiFi there is PLENTY!

No bass??? What kind of soudcard do you use? With my Audiotrak audigy HiFi there is PLENTY!


Well, I have been making a lot of changes lately. Originally, I was running XP and 7.1 for HD DVD and 7.2 for BD in a dual install with the onboard ALC850 sound. I run without a sub since my Mains are full range (Revel Salons) and I have small children so I really cannot shake the house.

Even without bass management, I was getting some bass from the HD-A1 player but PowerDVD 7.1 was pretty bad.

Now I an running Windows Vista Ultimate with two sound cards installed: X-FI Xtreme Music and X-Meridian 7.1. I am comparing them to see which one to keep.

So there are too many changes for me to identify the original culprit.

- Rich

I see.... It seems to me you need a clean install of XPpro!

Is this possible for HD-DVDs?

As far as I know, there aren't any directshow splitters that correctly pass off the audio yet - Bluray probably only works because it uses something akin to mpeg2 transport streams, which we already have good splitters for. Haali is releasing regular updates recently though, so likely it won't be that long.

Here's my story with regard to getting rid of stutters

PC:
Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz
1GB DDR2
Asus P5B mainboard
Geforce 7900GS graphics running at 48Hz to HS60 projector
PowerDVd 7.1

Playing movies in media file mode I must use reclock adjusting frame rate from 23.976 to 24fps to get stutter free play back otherwise I get a stutter every 10 seconds or so.

When playing in disk mode I have to use reclock with media playing at original speed. This gives the yellow clock in the icon tray but perfectly smooth playback. If I let reclock change the media speed to 24fps, I get the green clock in the icon tray and smooth playback but a stutter every 10 seconds or so.

I am getting occasional loss of communication with the display messages. It usually comes back after a few seconds. I have upgraded to 7.3 and Vista Ultimate 32. I am running a GeForce 8800GTS640MB with the 101.41 drivers.

It sound like this is a HDCP issue.

Damn HDCP :mad:

- Rich

I don't think it is an HDCP issue as I have been trying VGA only as I didn't want to go down the HDCP route for testing.

Seem most people who have got it working are doing so under Vista?

I have been able to install PDVD 7.3 32bit on Windows Vista 64bit Ultimate with an ATI RADEON X1950 Pro with Catalyst 7.2

Avivo acceleration works correctly. HD DVD playback with my Xbox360 drive works as well. I was able to watch The Last Samurai. However, since I have a Dell 30" LCD monitor w/HDCP, it only works at 1280x800x32 or lower resolutions! Every article I've read about this says *no* graphic card manufacturer supports dual-link DVI w/HDCP encryption. PDVD stops playback if I try to play at 2560x1600.

We need to speak up to the video card manufacturers (ATI & NVIDIA) and say this is an unacceptable situation with such high-end video hardware. :(

I have been able to install PDVD 7.3 32bit on Windows Vista 64bit Ultimate with an ATI RADEON X1950 Pro with Catalyst 7.2

Avivo acceleration works correctly. HD DVD playback with my Xbox360 drive works as well. I was able to watch The Last Samurai. However, since I have a Dell 30" LCD monitor w/HDCP, it only works at 1280x800x32 or lower resolutions! Every article I've read about this says *no* graphic card manufacturer supports dual-link DVI w/HDCP encryption. PDVD stops playback if I try to play at 2560x1600.

We need to speak up to the video card manufacturers (ATI & NVIDIA) and say this is an unacceptable situation with such high-end video hardware. :(
AnyDVD removes the HDCP restrictions

That would work if I felt like paying for the app and ripping 20+ gigs to my HD for every movie. No thanks.

That would work if I felt like paying for the app and ripping 20+ gigs to my HD for every movie. No thanks.


dont need to rip to remove hdcp, and u can try before buy for 21 days

Thanks, I'll give that a try. :)

Nothing fancy - it just uses the default Cyberlink Demuxxer/avc codec/audio decoder, and Zoomplayer forces VMR9. On default settings these are close to the highest priority, so just check they're actually loading and you'll be fine.

FFDshow of course has higher priority than everything, so switch it off for h264 (it chokes on >30mbit AVC and artifacts some). For audio it will work through liba52 and AC3 output, but it can't passthrough (spdif in AC3 codec setting) yet.

At a guess, pretty much any Blu-ray should work with this setup, because the splitter is capable of handling VC1 and MPEG2 also. Possibly some audio formats might cause a hassle, but I can't see why this filter chain shouldn't work when it does in PDVD itself. Unfortunately I can't test my MPEG2 discs as my Bluray burner is fried (X-men was the only one I decrypted to disc cos its insane AVC peaks are a great burn-in test for my HTPC, the MPEG2 ones are easy meat by comparison!).


Thanks for the info., but I still can't get it to work. I've never before messed around with any settings other than in the DVD section, so I'm kind of lost with all the filters. There's also two Cyberlink--one has a "6+."A mini-dummies guide would be very helpful.

I don't think it is an HDCP issue as I have been trying VGA only as I didn't want to go down the HDCP route for testing.

Seem most people who have got it working are doing so under Vista?

The same hardware never displayed a "Lost communication with Display Driver" message. Something about Vista/Drivers/Power DVD 7.3 did this.

- Rich

joikd, if I am interpreting arfster's message correctly, the filter he uses for the splitter only works with Bluray discs. If you are using HD-DVD this probably won't work at all- or at least I couldn't get it to work with HD-DVD .EVO files! :)

Sorry I can't provide a guide for HD-DVD playback with DirectShow filters - it's still pretty new at this point and you would need to use non-Cyberlink filters for handling EVO files.

joikd, if I am interpreting arfster's message correctly, the filter he uses for the splitter only works with Bluray discs. If you are using HD-DVD this probably won't work at all- or at least I couldn't get it to work with HD-DVD .EVO files! :)

Sorry I can't provide a guide for HD-DVD playback with DirectShow filters - it's still pretty new at this point and you would need to use non-Cyberlink filters for handling EVO files.

Thanks for the reply, maxleung. It is Bluray that I am having trouble on. So, I guess what I need is a guide to make Bluray work in Zoomplayer using Cyberlink PowerDVD 7.3 filters. For some reason, the whole setting up of filters to play different kinds of files is very confusing to me. I just never can seem to make it work for anything, while it seems like no-biggie for everyone else.

Okay - that makes sense!

Someone in a forum mentioned they can play the Bluray m2ts file using BSPlayer without anything too special. That implies that you can use any transport stream filter (Nero Source Filter? Haali Media Splitter?), as m2ts files are basically the same as .ts files. The hard part is the audio decoding and the new video codecs.

There is a possibility that the MPC player may work for you too. I don't have Bluray though so I can't test this.

Anyways, good luck!

Seems any async file source will do the trick - Nero source works, but Haali's won't because it has an integrated splitter that can't connect the audio component properly. Nero splitter connects but doesn't correctly pass audio, so you get no sound.

The only splitter I've seen work is Cyberlink's own:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/6532/untitledtf8.th.jpg (http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitledtf8.jpg)

I sent Cyberlink a question. Perhaps there's hope?

" Will PowerDVD ever be fixed to get rid
of the subtitle bug (subtitles forced
on), and the awful banding with Geforce
cards? I've been following the AVS
forums and this banding issue is awful
because PowerDVD 7.x forces overlay as
the only video option. Apparently older
versions supported VMR which meant no
banding.

Any chance of this being fixed?

Thanks!"


RESPONSE:


"Thank you for contacting Cyberlink Online Customer Support.

In regard to your issue, we regret the inconvienence you have encountered so far.

The Product Development Department is working and will soon release a patch to resolve the issue. We will update you as soon as the patch is launched.

We regret the inconvienence you have encountered so far."

----------

So, assuming this is true, patch soon!

FYI. Using 6.5, I get banding replaying recorded HD OTA. No banding on movies.

FYI. Using 6.5, I get banding replaying recorded HD OTA. No banding on movies.

Have you tried the registry hacks earlier in this thread? Banding with overlay is inevitable, but 6.5 uses VMR7/9 so has to make a deliberate choice to expand levels. Given that, the reg settings might actually do something :-)

Well, when I try to use graphedit it just errors out when I remove the arrows to the pins. Any ideas???

My god, what can't anything just work?!?! I swear that there is always something.

Well, when I try to use graphedit it just errors out when I remove the arrows to the pins. Any ideas???


Hrrm, why remove?

I don't think it is an HDCP issue as I have been trying VGA only as I didn't want to go down the HDCP route for testing.

Seem most people who have got it working are doing so under Vista?

Use Anydvd HD and get rid of HDCP

I finally got it working. Looks so much better that I'm going to wait until there's a similar solution before watching HD DVDs.

Thanks for the idea!!!

Will PowerDVD play an .EVO file? Id like to test before investing in a new blueray rom

I just went through the three step process of getting HD-DVD functionality to my 1yr-old Toshiba Qosmio laptop and I'm ecstatic to report total success. I'm still amazed at how simple it was...after reading through scores of pages I feared much worse.

First, I got my Xbox HD-DVD drive up and running, a simple matter of downloading and installing the Toshiba drivers, readily available on the net. Second, I upgraded my AnyDVD suite to HD--again, a simple download. And third, I rolled the dice and purchased PowerDVD Ultra...even though, by the CyberLink Advisor utility's analysis my laptop's Nvidia 7300 graphics card wasn't supposed to be up to the task for HD-DVD playback. I did the Ultra install w/ the drive plugged in--it comes up listed as Ultra 7.2.

So, well, it all worked. HD-DVD drive online and working, AnyDVD did a successful rip of one of my HD-DVDs to my hard drive. And, finally, PowerDVD played both the disc and the ripped file (.EVO, to the question posed above) just fine...on my laptop (haven't played out to my HD set, yet, but it'll be through the component cable interface, so that, plus the AnyDVD solution eliminating HDCP, shouldn't be a problem).

I'm just happy that sometimes, sometimes things just work :D.

I tried to load an EVO file via the file browser, but powerdvd didnt do anything. I tried also to put the file in the BDROM local storage folder. I'm not sure what to do.

Edit: I just changed the file name ext to .mpg and drag n dropped... this produced blank screen video and no audio, but I could see the time-bar at the bottom moving forward as if the video is playing.

I also have AnyDVD-HD installed.

, sat back and

ERROR CODE 0013

Incompatible graphics driver, funny I'm using the latest Cat 7.2's


Cheers

Me too have the same problem with XP and Nvidia drivers, the only way to get rid of that is to enable Hardware Acceleration..but i dont like to do it...
Tried also with Vista (I have a dual-boot/ dual hard disk system) and 7.3 works fine except for stuttering problems ( I cannot set 1920*1080@24p or 48p because the Vista Nvidia drivers doesn't allow custom resolutions)

I have it all working good now with PDVD 7.3 and Nvidia 100.87, overlays are off and I'm using AnyDVD HD... which removed all stutter and its now 100% smooth on my lowly A64 3000+ @ 2.5ghz.

Only weird thing is when I select TrueHD, in the information it says it is outputting MLP 5.1. I remember, maybe in PDVD 6.5, it actually said 'Dolby TrueHD'. Is this meant to happen? DD+ is properly recognised as DD+.

Only small other issue I have is Miami Vice has weird blocky artifacting every 30 seconds or so.

I have it all working good now with PDVD 7.3 and Nvidia 100.87, overlays are off and I'm using AnyDVD HD... which removed all stutter and its now 100% smooth on my lowly A64 3000+ @ 2.5ghz.

Only weird thing is when I select TrueHD, in the information it says it is outputting MLP 5.1. I remember, maybe in PDVD 6.5, it actually said 'Dolby TrueHD'. Is this meant to happen? DD+ is properly recognised as DD+.

Only small other issue I have is Miami Vice has weird blocky artifacting every 30 seconds or so.

Can you tell me how you got overlay OFF in 7.3? Very interested...

Use Anydvd HD and get rid of HDCP

As I said, I'm running VGA at the moment so there is no HDCP.

received from cyberlink support:

Thank you for contacting CyberLink Online Support.

We understand your concern related with PowerDVD 7.

Please note that using PowerDVD 7 you can disable hardware acceleration. Also note that PowerDVD 7.3 support VMR9.

I have it all working good now with PDVD 7.3 and Nvidia 100.87, overlays are off and I'm using AnyDVD HD... which removed all stutter and its now 100% smooth on my lowly A64 3000+ @ 2.5ghz.


I have to say, SlySoft and their AnyDVD suite are one of the best things I've come across this past year. This AnyDVD HD upgrade is proving to be the best $30 I've spent in a looooong time...

Anyone have an idea what exactly the AnyDVD HD installs as far as drivers/components and what it is actually doing to allow more robust system capabilities in regards to HD-DVD/Blu-ray? I know it installs some UDF library or other (I was actually worried it would end up conflicting w/ the Toshiba HD-DVD driver which has its own UDF component/library)...

received from cyberlink support:

Thank you for contacting CyberLink Online Support.

We understand your concern related with PowerDVD 7.

Please note that using PowerDVD 7 you can disable hardware acceleration. Also note that PowerDVD 7.3 support VMR9.

Are they kidding? The problem is how to ENABLE the hardware acceleration!
Also, where is the VMR9 support?? :eek:

Also, where is the VMR9 support?? :eek:


The media player side of PDVD supports it. Oddly, you can play h264 in PDVD and it will stay in VMR9 mode, but play the same format off a disc and it forces overlay.

Probably they're using a different mode for the latter, perhaps non-directshow because of security requirements. If that's the case, the renderer may be a heavily restricted overlay clone - given the choice of cloning overlay and vmr9, the former would be much easier.

I hate to be a pest. I'm hoping somebody would be nice enough to tell me how I can test playback of actual blu-ray or HD-DVD files. All I want to do is know if my PC's performance is good enough to playback HD-DVD or blu-ray; without having to go and buy a blu-ray rom and install it to find out.

EDIT: I just realized I was misspelling blu-ray. Maybe thats why my messages are being ignored lol

Thanks in advance!

This is a lesson in frustration to me.

I installed the 100.87 XP drivers, and the banding is greatly reduced (though still a "little" present) in PowerDVD 7.3. Also, hardware acceleration does work correctly with the 100.87 drivers. However, I can't enable custom resolutions correctly for my display that overscans somewhat. The 100.87 drivers don't offer very user-friendly custom timings. The 93.71 I've reverted back to have a specific overscan option.

And an FYI, PowerDVD 7.3 does NOT use VMR9 for HD-DVDs. Though the banding IS greatly reduced ONLY when you use the 100.87 Nvidia drivers, it's not gone completely.

Oh sigh.

I just do not understand why Cyberlink will just not bring back the VMR9 option that worked PERFECTLY, including hardware acceleration - from PowerDVD 6.5.

I hate to be a pest. I'm hoping somebody would be nice enough to tell me how I can test playback of actual blu-ray or HD-DVD files. All I want to do is know if my PC's performance is good enough to playback HD-DVD or blu-ray; without having to go and buy a blu-ray rom and install it to find out.

EDIT: I just realized I was misspelling blu-ray. Maybe thats why my messages are being ignored lol

Thanks in advance!

there are sites u can download 1080i/p videos to kinda get a feel, or use the cyberlink too to test system

Thanks for replying back. Im guessing you didnt have the chance to see any of my message above. I dont know how to play these files back. Could somebody PLEASE read my posts?

there are sites u can download 1080i/p videos to kinda get a feel, or use the cyberlink too to test system

I hate to be a pest. I'm hoping somebody would be nice enough to tell me how I can test playback of actual blu-ray or HD-DVD files. All I want to do is know if my PC's performance is good enough to playback HD-DVD or blu-ray; without having to go and buy a blu-ray rom and install it to find out.

EDIT: I just realized I was misspelling blu-ray. Maybe thats why my messages are being ignored lol

Thanks in advance!

Why don't you list your system's specs, and then we'll tell you whether that will work?

Because, its borderline. I have a 3.2GHz PIV. Some people say I can play them back with hardware accelleration enabled on my geforce card (minimum requirement) and some people say not even close; which is why I would like to see for myself.

Why don't you list your system's specs, and then we'll tell you whether that will work?

Thanks for replying back. Im guessing you didnt have the chance to see any of my message above. I dont know how to play these files back. Could somebody PLEASE read my posts?


(for non hd dvd/blue rips but 1080p)

media player / quicktime

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/


http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/HDVideo.aspx

I really do appreciate your suggestions; but being able to playback 1080p quicktime and 1080p HD wmv files from Microsoft are not the same thing as playing back blueray/HD-DVD spec videos; both supposedly require significantly more system resources. According to others in this forum, they say Bluray/HD-DVD spec have different compression "profiles" which demand much more CPU power.

I already know I can playback Quicktime HD 1080p (with cyberlink hardware accelleration) and Windows Media 1080p (with WMP hardware accelleration patch) successfully.

Does anyone have information on how to playback videos with blueray/HD-DVD specs?

media player / quicktime

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/


http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/HDVideo.aspx

I really do appreciate your suggestions; but being able to playback 1080p quicktime and 1080p HD wmv files from Microsoft are not the same thing as playing back blueray/HD-DVD spec videos; both supposedly require significantly more system resources. According to others in this forum, they say Bluray/HD-DVD spec have different compression "profiles" which demand much more CPU power.

I already know I can playback Quicktime HD 1080p (with cyberlink hardware accelleration) and Windows Media 1080p (with WMP hardware accelleration patch) successfully.

Does anyone have information on how to playback videos with blueray/HD-DVD specs?

sorry i miss understood your needs, check this out

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=949754

Thanks slothy. Although that thread doesnt have a straight answer to my question; other than to use PowerDVD to play EVO files back, I still posted on that thread hoping somebody can help.

sorry i miss understood your needs, check this out

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=949754

Because, its borderline. I have a 3.2GHz PIV. Some people say I can play them back with hardware accelleration enabled on my geforce card (minimum requirement) and some people say not even close; which is why I would like to see for myself.

Is that a dualcore? I had one of those - they can manage VC1 and MPEG2 discs perfectly with PDVD, but AVC HDDVDs will skip, and AVC Blu-rays will be horrible. You need to overclock to 3.5ghz to get HD-DVD AVC OK or have a good graphics card (say a 7600gt+), but fortunately most HDDVDs are VC1.

If it's single core, you're a bit stuck. With a good graphics card VC1 and MPEG2 might be OK, but AVC is out of reach.

Thats a single core CPU. I can play 1080p mov's (VC1) perfectly; but only with my 6600gt's hardware accelleration turned on. If it's off, I just end up looking at a slideshow.

Whats the difference between a Blu-ray/HD-DVD and a Blu-ray/HD-DVD AVC disc? I've seen bluray retail disc; but never saw anything about "AVC".


Is that a dualcore? I had one of those - they can manage VC1 and MPEG2 discs perfectly with PDVD, but AVC HDDVDs will skip, and AVC Blu-rays will be horrible. You need to overclock to 3.5ghz to get HD-DVD AVC OK or have a good graphics card (say a 7600gt+), but fortunately most HDDVDs are VC1.

If it's single core, you're a bit stuck. With a good graphics card VC1 and MPEG2 might be OK, but AVC is out of reach.

Thats a single core CPU. I can play 1080p mov's (VC1) perfectly; but only with my 6600gt's hardware accelleration turned on. If it's off, I just end up looking at a slideshow.

Whats the difference between a Blu-ray/HD-DVD and a Blu-ray/HD-DVD AVC disc? I've seen bluray retail disc; but never saw anything about "AVC".

AVC (Advanced Video Codec) is one of the options for encoding video on Blu-ray and hD-DVD. It is more CPU intensive than MPEG-2 and VC-1. AVC is also known as MPEG-4 or H.264.

Hope this helps.

Okay, but how do I know if a blu ray or hd-dvd disc I buy or rent has AVC or not?

\AVC (Advanced Video Codec) is one of the options for encoding video on Blu-ray and hD-DVD. It is more CPU intensive than MPEG-2 and VC-1. AVC is also known as MPEG-4 or H.264.

Hope this helps.

Okay, but how do I know if a blu ray or hd-dvd disc I buy or rent has AVC or not?

\

Your best bet is to use review sites, since they will usually tell you. A good one is HighDefDigest.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/

One last question... If I wanted to buy a brand new dual core Intel based PC, how fast does it need to be to comfortably play ALL future formats of HD-DVD & AVC Blu Ray disc (ie AVC, future superbit versions) without overclocking it (using Nvidia 8800)

Your best bet is to use review sites, since they will usually tell you. A good one is HighDefDigest.

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/

If PowerDVD is using overlay by default, I wonder if it's possible to force VMR9 through the registry. I also wonder if overlay is the reason that enabling hardware acceleration results in a black screen for me, and if VMR9 would allow hardware acceleration to work properly.

I've been screwing around today with 7.1/6.5 and I found using 93.71's new control panel unticking the box in video color settings it changes the VMRCCStautus to "2" when in this mode 7.1 will not play at all and will quit if hw acc is unticked, when video color is ticked (Nv Overlay) it plays with or without hw acc. I even went as far as to swap some files from 6.5 to 7.1 there were a few things missing, and using reg editor and importing the keys seems to have not worked. Then I tried using the switch in the custom .ini file and adding enable VMR9 upon reinstalling 7.1 trying to force it in VMR like 6.5 was upon install.

So far I've been able to screen cap in PSP and view the movie but still can't get the thing in VMR. The files I imported were the DXRender even though they were in reg form I didn't see the folder like in 6.5. I posted some snaps if anybody has any ideas please pitch in theres got to be a way to get 7.1 in VMR because all the keys seem to be there minus a few, but Cybercrap seems to have broken it completly they did a very good job but I know we can fix what they broke. If I can get this player in VMR it will be the perfect player.

So far I've been able to play all the problem matic DVD's AnyDVD 1.2.3 has ripped every DVD I purchased and I only have a few HD DVD's Troy, The Departed, Assault on P13, KK, Last Samurai V Vendetta, and all playback fine in the add on the only movie I had trouble ripping and playing back in the add on was the Departed but going into the .xml file solved the playback issue. Sometimes AnyDVD forgets to remove AACS and I have no problem helping it out once in a while as long as it ripps the disk it's playable.

http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/dp.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/pdv.jpg

Edit: pictures show red push but not so in real time the colors are perfect.

Can you tell me how you got overlay OFF in 7.3? Very interested...

I go into nvidia CP and turn off 'Apply settings for all video technologies' in Video and Television page. So it does not use those settings at all now. Maybe this isnt the overlay you are talking about though?

I just want to be clear on this... currently, there's no way possible to playback Blu-ray/HD-DVD AVC riped files in PowerDVD? If so, where the heck do I download these test files, its like pulling teeth to get this answered!

Is that a dualcore? I had one of those - they can manage VC1 and MPEG2 discs perfectly with PDVD, but AVC HDDVDs will skip, and AVC Blu-rays will be horrible. You need to overclock to 3.5ghz to get HD-DVD AVC OK or have a good graphics card (say a 7600gt+), but fortunately most HDDVDs are VC1.

If it's single core, you're a bit stuck. With a good graphics card VC1 and MPEG2 might be OK, but AVC is out of reach.

One last question... If I wanted to buy a brand new dual core Intel based PC, how fast does it need to be to comfortably play ALL future formats of HD-DVD & AVC Blu Ray disc (ie AVC, future superbit versions) without overclocking it (using Nvidia 8800)

Get the best you can get now, the future... we're all guessing. There are minimals suggested in past posts, I have Amd64/2 4600 and I'm not sure how long it will remain viable. This is changing quickly and attention is on the dedicated players as you see the other players, Intervideo, Nero, etc haven't come out here. Only Cyberlink and that's questionable. Video cards have to be HDCP but if you use AnyHDDVD you may bypass HDCP. The pc area is experimental.

Anyone know why the The Eagles - Farewell 1 Tour - Live From Melbourne (HDDVD) skips the video but the sound stays perfect? Casino, T3, Ray, and a few others all work perfect. I do know that my specs are very borderline (P4 3.0, 9800pro, 1 gig of ram) but what is different about the Eagles disc compared to the others? Any ideas would be great.

ps. What is the best AGP video card for playing HDDVD?

I have it all working good now with PDVD 7.3 and Nvidia 100.87, overlays are off and I'm using AnyDVD HD... which removed all stutter and its now 100% smooth on my lowly A64 3000+ @ 2.5ghz.


XxDeadlyxX,

I have a 3000+ 6600GT 128MB system and so far I'm luck to get any HD-DVD or BluRay to playback without slide show effect.

If you could give more details of your setup & config + Movies tested that played back 100% smooth. This would be very helpful & much appreciated.

Thanks for Your Time

To be safe get at least a Core2 6600 if you don't want to overclock, with the 8800 you will be just fine.

I cannot get stutter free playback with Babel:

Windows Vista Ultimate
Power DVD 7.3
NVidia 8800 101.41 drivers (I tried the earlier drivers and they are worse.

Sometimes the screen goes blank and recovers, sometime not. When I close PowerDVD there is a vista error displayed saying that it communication with the video driver was lost.

Any ideas?

- Rich

Nimo - looks like it is impossible to get VMR9 working with PowerDVD 7.xxx. That is why I still use PowerDVD 6.5 - and I am experimenting with decrypting and ripping the audio and video out of the .EVO files (using EVODemux.exe). I can take these streams and play them in MPC or TheaterTek. I lose menus and subtitles, and lossless audio soundtracks, but at least the picture is perfect and I don't have to worry about stupid PowerDVD bugs.

I will not provide details on how to do the above - you'll need to go to doom9.org for the time-consuming geeky hardcore extreme ultra details. ;) :)

Nimo - looks like it is impossible to get VMR9 working with PowerDVD 7.xxx. That is why I still use PowerDVD 6.5 - and I am experimenting with decrypting and ripping the audio and video out of the .EVO files (using EVODemux.exe). I can take these streams and play them in MPC or TheaterTek. I lose menus and subtitles, and lossless audio soundtracks, but at least the picture is perfect and I don't have to worry about stupid PowerDVD bugs.

I will not provide details on how to do the above - you'll need to go to doom9.org for the time-consuming geeky hardcore extreme ultra details. ;) :)

With Utlra and 7.3, It looks like it is using VMR. The colors are much improved. Of course, I have other playback issues. Welcome to the hair edge :D

- Rich

Whoa RichB - are you sure it is using VMR? Maybe only for playing back individual EVO files (or the opposite?) :D This is so confusing.

I should make up a test procedure for testing if VMR mode is working or not - okay, here is a quick-n-dirty one that the whole family can try:

o Run PowerDVD, play an HD-DVD.
o Open MS Paint. Expand the window a bit to take up at least 1/4 of the screen, and also expand the canvas (the white area).
o In MS Paint, go to the Colors menu, and click on Edit Colors. You will get a dialog box with a pallette in it.
o Click on Define Custom Colors. See the Red, Green, Blue fields? Put in a value of 16 for red, 0 for green, and 16 for blue. Click on Add to Custom Colors.
o You will now have this near-black color in the Custom colors palette. Click on it to select it.
o Click Ok.
o Now the new color will show up in the bottom palette of MS Paint, probably replacing the first color in the 2nd row. Click on this color to select it.
o Now click on the Paint Bucket, then click on the canvas.

If you see the PowerDVD movie within the canvas then you are using overlay!

Hopefully I guessed the overlay color of RGB 16,0,16 properly. Some players let you change this overlay color (some use 0,0,0, others use 1,1,1, etc.).

Also, here's a very easy alternate method:

- While watching the movie full screen hit the "Print Screen" button once.
- Open either MS Word or MS paint, then hit control-V

If you see a movie snapshot, then you're using VMR. If you see a black picture, then it's Overlay.

Whoa RichB - are you sure it is using VMR? Maybe only for playing back individual EVO files (or the opposite?) :D This is so confusing.

I should make up a test procedure for testing if VMR mode is working or not - okay, here is a quick-n-dirty one that the whole family can try:

o Run PowerDVD, play an HD-DVD.
o Open MS Paint. Expand the window a bit to take up at least 1/4 of the screen, and also expand the canvas (the white area).
o In MS Paint, go to the Colors menu, and click on Edit Colors. You will get a dialog box with a pallette in it.
o Click on Define Custom Colors. See the Red, Green, Blue fields? Put in a value of 16 for red, 0 for green, and 16 for blue. Click on Add to Custom Colors.
o You will now have this near-black color in the Custom colors palette. Click on it to select it.
o Click Ok.
o Now the new color will show up in the bottom palette of MS Paint, probably replacing the first color in the 2nd row. Click on this color to select it.
o Now click on the Paint Bucket, then click on the canvas.

If you see the PowerDVD movie within the canvas then you are using overlay!

Hopefully I guessed the overlay color of RGB 16,0,16 properly. Some players let you change this overlay color (some use 0,0,0, others use 1,1,1, etc.).

overlay for me using 7.3

It's overlay in 7.3. I don't think any nvidia user has VMR with PowerDVD 7.x.

I wonder if this will ever be fixed. I'll give it a little while longer, but then I'm done with HD-DVD, since the picture is just crappy right now. Sad thing is if there's a choice of Blu-ray or HD-DVD for a movie I want, I buy Blu-ray just because of this banding issue. I'd be waaay more likely to buy HD-DVD because I have lossless audio via analogs from my soundcard, but picture is more important to me, so PS3 Blu-ray it is for the time being.

As far as I know, there aren't any directshow splitters that correctly pass off the audio yet - Bluray probably only works because it uses something akin to mpeg2 transport streams, which we already have good splitters for. Haali is releasing regular updates recently though, so likely it won't be that long.

the latest haali splitter (http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/) will properly split evo (hddvd) and m2ts (BR) files (at least all the ones I have).

To playback ripped evo files with a directshow player, you need haali, windows media player 11 for VC1 (*), coreavc for AVC, and sonic cinemaster audio decoder 4.2.

For m2ts, you need haali, any mpeg2 decoder, and coreavc for AVC.

(*) I found WMP11 will hardware accelerate VC1 if you use overlay instead of vmr9

Also, here's a very easy alternate method:

- While watching the movie full screen hit the "Print Screen" button once.
- Open either MS Word or MS paint, then hit control-V

If you see a movie snapshot, then you're using VMR. If you see a black picture, then it's Overlay.

I will give that a shot.

Thanks,

Rich

Also, here's a very easy alternate method:

- While watching the movie full screen hit the "Print Screen" button once.
- Open either MS Word or MS paint, then hit control-V

If you see a movie snapshot, then you're using VMR. If you see a black picture, then it's Overlay.

I pasted the Print Screen into Paint and I then had two windows playing the movie in both windows live. Pretty funny, but I think that proves conclusively that it is VMR under Vista with 7.3!

- Rich

Wait - if the movie is playing INSIDE MS Paint then it is overlay!

If you quit PowerDVD with MS Paint still running, you will get a black picture - because the video is no longer there. It is conclusive proof that it is using Overlay - VMR will NEVER do that because you actually have a real screenshot. :)

Exactly! You beat me to reply back.

Wait - if the movie is playing INSIDE MS Paint then it is overlay!

If you quit PowerDVD with MS Paint still running, you will get a black picture - because the video is no longer there. It is conclusive proof that it is using Overlay - VMR will NEVER do that because you actually have a real screenshot. :)

Wait - if the movie is playing INSIDE MS Paint then it is overlay!

If you quit PowerDVD with MS Paint still running, you will get a black picture - because the video is no longer there. It is conclusive proof that it is using Overlay - VMR will NEVER do that because you actually have a real screenshot. :)

But it is playing in two windows. Is that possble in overlay?
I turned off Aero and may have futzed with the settings. Hold please..

- Rich

I turned on Aero and PowerDVD was running in Auto quality.

I still get two windows playing the move when I paste into Paint.
I though Overlay was exclusive for a single user so how could there be two of them.

An earlier poster indicated that "Best" mode was probably using overlay since it used to give a message that windows was now operating in a reduced mode since I guess that Aero and Overlay cannot run at the same time. Hey, I am just repeating things that I am told ;)

- Rich

I know exactly what you're saying. But, the thing you're describing is a weird quirk unique to overlay video. If you press stop in PowerDVD after youve pressed Printscreen... then do a control-v in Paint, you should get a black screen.

I turned on Aero and PowerDVD was running in Auto quality.

I still get two windows playing the move when I paste into Paint.
I though Overlay was exclusive for a single user so how could there be two of them.

An earlier poster indicated that "Best" mode was probably using overlay since it used to give a message that windows was now operating in a reduced mode since I guess that Aero and Overlay cannot run at the same time. Hey, I am just repeating things that I am told ;)

- Rich

Overlay is a weird hack done by videocards to more efficiently process video - It takes out one of the colors (usually RGB 0,0,0 or 16,0,16) and applies "special" video processing to it - so you can paint menus all around it using DIFFERENT colors without using CPU power to re-draw them while a video is playing. Something like that...I'm guessing. ;)

You can't take a true screenshot of an Overlay image because the information only resides in the videocard's framebuffer.

So anyways - you're getting overlay. :) And thanks for doing the test instead of guessing like some folks are doing here. Kudos!

I haven't tested with HD Media yet; but I do have screen prints using Power DVD Ultra v7.3 playing back some MPEG-2 Transport Stream material.

If time permits; I'll get a couple this evening.

Best,

Overlay is a weird hack done by videocards to more efficiently process video - It takes out one of the colors (usually RGB 0,0,0 or 16,0,16) and applies "special" video processing to it - so you can paint menus all around it using DIFFERENT colors without using CPU power to re-draw them while a video is playing. Something like that...I'm guessing. ;)

You can't take a true screenshot of an Overlay image because the information only resides in the videocard's framebuffer.

So anyways - you're getting overlay. :) And thanks for doing the test instead of guessing like some folks are doing here. Kudos!

Not a problem. Who knows, maybe one day I will understand this stuff :D

I did the last test: PrintScreen, Stop Video, Paste, and you are correct the screen was black ;)

I was not getting smooth playback and Babel (AVC) was unplayable , so like others, I started PowerDVD and unchecked the Hardware Acceleration and now I have smooth playback. It is odd that I do not see any real change in the CPU load.
Serenity runs about 50% and Babel runs between 60% and 80%. If there is a change, it is not dramatic.

I am running Vista Ultimate/4600+/8800GTS.
Even though this is running Overlay, I think the color rendition is pretty good. It looks very similar to my HD-A1/Lumagen HDQ. I give the Lumagen the edge for its superior scaling to the the native rate the 657UY (1366x768). However, there is definately more noise and less shadow detail with the HD-A1. Perhaps, the gamma is a better match for the display. At this point, I think I prefer the HTPC.
Oh yes, I can start a movie in 15 secoded insteat of 1 minute or more ;)

- Rich

I am running Vista Ultimate/4600+/8800GTS.


Vista 8800 drivers aren't really doing hardware acceleration properly yet I think.

Hi all - , thought I'd do figures on CPU requirements, by clocking my e4300 at different speeds. I did it with a HD-DVD VC1 movie (Serenity=S below) and a Bluray AVC movie (X-men3), two movies with very high bitrates for their type (peaks of 20mbit and 36mbit).

The "gpu" assist referred to in the table is a new 7300GS, using 100.65 in Vista. Surprisingly this actually accelerated h264 moderately well, whereas my previous 6600GT made absolutely no difference with h264 whatsoever.

The figures are average/peak over a minute of the hardest sections I could find on each disc, so the average isn't really that representative - it's the max that really matters though. The X2 refers to the speed equivalent for a Athlon X2 (20% slower)



CPU X2 S S+gpu X X+gpu

3.2ghz n/a 34/43 18/22 50/60 40/48
2.9ghz n/a 39/48 18/22 58/68 43/54
2.6ghz 3.1 45/55 23/30 63/78 48/57
2.3ghz 2.8 50/60 28/34 72/88 54/66
2.0ghz 2.4 48/58 28/37 78/90 63/74 **




**FSB and memory were getting a bit low at this point, so it went up to 286x7 and x2.66 memory at this point for a more reasonable comparison. Note the 2.0ghz with its higher multiplier had 760mhz ram vs 500mhz for the 2.3ghz test, and achieved slightly better figures.


AVC HD-DVD seems to be broken with this setup for some reason (it worked with PDVD 7.2). However, given the bitrate peak is almost half that of X-men's, I'd guesstimate it's around 15% less CPU usage than the X-Men figures in software mode.


Overall, quite encouraging figures given the 7300GS is very low end - cheap too, got it for £22 on ebay ($43 american).

Vista 8800 drivers aren't really doing hardware acceleration properly yet I think.

Actually, stuttering makes unusable in AVC titles and just bad in VC1.

I just tried out Casino Royale. It is running between 85 and 95% without acceleration but the playback looks smooth so far.

- Rich

By the way, PDVD running Bluray decrypted files seems to be in VMR9 now (or possibly VMR7). It's definitely not overlay though, since I can take screen snappies of it:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/5884/untitled1ry4.th.jpg (http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled1ry4.jpg)

...and do Aero fly-bys:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/3530/untitled2lv3.th.jpg (http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled2lv3.jpg)


(using 2.12ghz with 7300gs hardware acceleration)


Not sure whether the change to PDVD 7.3 made the difference, or the 6600GT > 7300GS switch. Perhaps it was always this way and I just never noticed (most of my discs are HD-DVDs).

Either way .... no colour expansion I think.

Interesting results arfster! Hmmm, I hope your results prove true for Windows XP - especially the VMR on decrypted discs.

does 7.3 support anamorphic output. i got 7.2 sort of running now (no comfort so) but i still can't get a vertical strech...

*grumbles*

Come on Cyberlink! Give us PowerDVD 7.4 with VMR!

*grumbles*

Come on Cyberlink! Give us PowerDVD 7.4 with VMR!

Screw that.
Come on TheaterTek! Give us a real solution to HDDVD/Blue-Ray!

For those working with 7.3 and Vista, I have found that I have to turn of Hardware Acceleration (PureVideo) and run in Vista Basic to get smooth playback.

To be fair, I suspect this is mainly due to problems with the 8800GTS/101.41 drivers.

- Rich

*grumbles*

Come on Cyberlink! Give us PowerDVD 7.4 with VMR!
I want full Media Center integration for Vista x64 so that I can use EVR and get away from VMR all together.

Hi

Im trying to get PowerDVD Ultra 7.3 to work with my HD-DVD X360 addon along with AnyDVD HD as my graphics card isnt HDCP.

I am running Vista Ultimate 32-bit on a AMD X2 4200+, 1GB RAM and a ATI X800XT with the latest catalyst drivers. At the moment PowerDVD is playing the disc I am getting sound but no picture.

I read a few posts about overlay and VMR9 (I dont really know anything about these things) and also stumbled upon a post about Zoomplayer setting values such as brightness and contrast to 0 which can cause things to not display a picture.

Personally I think it is because of my graphic card but I have seen other people get HD-DVD playback on this graphics card, I dont really want to upgrade and am looking for any solution to get this to work.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Mark

Is Ati supported in PowerDVD for hardware acceleration HD-DVD/Blu-ray? I can't seem to figure out how to implement it if it is. Hardware acceleration checkmark in PowerDVD is grayed out.

I have a 1900XT. My AMD X2 4400+ is maxed out and plays horribly choppy.

Is Ati supported in PowerDVD for hardware acceleration HD-DVD/Blu-ray? I can't seem to figure out how to implement it if it is. Hardware acceleration checkmark in PowerDVD is grayed out.

I have a 1900XT. My AMD X2 4400+ is maxed out and plays horribly choppy.

I don't think it works, I couldn't get a reduction in CPU switching it on and off.

Overclock your 4400+, although it should do it fine. I have an Opteron 165 (basically identical to your 4400+) running 2.8ghz instead of 1.8ghz and it laughs at HD-DVD.

FYI, got another response from Cyberlink today about the banding:

" Dear William,

Thank you for contacting Cyberlink Online Customer Support.

In regard to your issue, we regret the inconvienence you have encountered so far.

We confirmed it with our Product Development Department and they are still in process to fix this visual banding issue with PowerDVD Ultra software specially with the GeForce cards and once they have fully tested and resolved the issue they will release the patch or a new build of PowerDVD Ultra for it.

We will update you as soon as the Visual Banding issue is resolved by the Product Development Department. "

By the way, PDVD running Bluray decrypted files seems to be in VMR9 now (or possibly VMR7). It's definitely not overlay though, since I can take screen snappies of it:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/5884/untitled1ry4.th.jpg (http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled1ry4.jpg)

...and do Aero fly-bys:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/3530/untitled2lv3.th.jpg (http://img244.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled2lv3.jpg)


(using 2.12ghz with 7300gs hardware acceleration)


Not sure whether the change to PDVD 7.3 made the difference, or the 6600GT > 7300GS switch. Perhaps it was always this way and I just never noticed (most of my discs are HD-DVDs).

Either way .... no colour expansion I think.
How did you achieve this? I tried on 2 different Vista machines last night and couldnt get PDVD to stop putting it into Basic mode. One machine was running a 7800GT and I tried nvidia 97.xx, 100.xx and 101.41 drivers. The other machine is a 8800GTS and tried 100.xx drivers (its my HTPC and I didnt have time to re-install 101.41). The HTPC never had a previous PDVD installed. The first machine had both 7.1 and 7.2 installed with that hack to get both versions installed, and I uninstalled before doing 7.3.

How did you achieve this?

Wish I knew :-( Since my BD drive is toast, it might have been that way for a while. If not, it's either going 6600GT > 7300GS, or the change to 7.3. I've been on 100.65 since they came out, so that shouldn't be a factor. Might be cos my only remaining BD (decrypted) is AVC perhaps?

In case I forgot to mention: HD-DVDs of all types still force overlay.

I will re-try with an AVC BD tonight. I didnt bother checking its type last night.

Despite the marketing, hardware acceleration does not work for almost anyone with PowerDVD and HD DVD. It probably works for MPEG-2, but not H.264 and VC-1. There may be some success stories, but they are rare. Personally I have tried ATI X1600 Pro and NVIDIA 7600GT, both fail miserably. It is probably a combination of driver problems and PowerDVD's implementation. We need more player choices!


OS GPU Driver PowerDVD VC-1 H.264
============================================================ =====
XP ATI X1600 Pro AGP 7.2 7.3 FAIL FAIL klillevo
MCE05 ATI X1950 Pro AGP 7.2 7.3 FAIL FAIL Haze2k
XP NVIDIA 7600 GT AGP 93.71 7.3 FAIL FAIL klillevo
? NVIDIA 7600 GT AGP ? ? FAIL ? guysb
? NVIDIA 7600 GS ? ? 7.3 FAIL ? Fearless.Spiff
MCE05 NVIDIA 7600 GS ? ? 7.2 OK edrossy
XP NVIDIA 7950 GT PCIE 93.71 7.2 OK ? kc
Vista NVIDIA 8800 GTS PCIE 100.65 7.3 OK OK dthigpen
Vista NVIDIA 8800 GTS PCIE 101.41 7.3 FAIL FAIL RichB

Despite the marketing, hardware acceleration does not work for almost anyone with PowerDVD and HD DVD. It probably works for MPEG-2, but not H.264 and VC-1. There may be some success stories, but they are rare. Personally I have tried ATI X1600 Pro and NVIDIA 7600GT, both fail miserably. It is probably a combination of driver problems and PowerDVD's implementation. We need more player choices!

Works fine for me on everything I've tried (both blu-ray and hd-dvd) using Vista w/ Geforce 8800GTS and 100.65 drivers along with PowerDVD Ultra 7.3. No hacks or workarounds involved, just worked out of the box.

7600GS, MCE2005, PDVD7.2, XBOX HD-DVD Drive....works fine with HW accel

7600GS, MCE2005, PDVD7.2, XBOX HD-DVD Drive....works fine with HW accel
Great! Is that PCI-E or AGP? Also, VC-1 and/or H.264 (use Show Information in PowerDVD or look up on highdefdigest.com)

You guys running Anydvd HD or not? Hmm guess it doesnt matter, as one of my machines has it, one doesnt. Nevermind.

You guys running Anydvd HD or not? Hmm guess it doesnt matter, as one of my machines has it, one doesnt. Nevermind.

I'm running AnyDVDHD to circumvent HDCP as my LCD doesn't support it.

on my HTPC I am using component output, and no AnyDVD HD yet. Last night I tried playing XMen3 BD, and it wasnt smooth with hardware accel. Without it, I could nearly playback smooth, but CPU was pegged at 100% (Intel E6300). Guess I need to OC or get a new CPU too, just to be safe.

Works fine for me on everything I've tried (both blu-ray and hd-dvd) using Vista w/ Geforce 8800GTS and 100.65 drivers along with PowerDVD Ultra 7.3. No hacks or workarounds involved, just worked out of the box.

I do not understand this. I cannot get it working with hardware acceleration.
I tried 100.65 and 101.41. I run Ultra too.

I guess this is not science.

- Rich

Maybe I am confusing things here... When Vista dumps back to Basic mode from Aero to play the files, is that not an indication that it is running in Overlay? Or in other words, if it was using VMR9, it would stay in Aero?

I do not understand this. I cannot get it working with hardware acceleration.
I tried 100.65 and 101.41. I run Ultra too.

I guess this is not science.

- Rich

Maybe it has to do with copy protection? Do you run AnyDVDHD?

Maybe it has to do with copy protection? Do you run AnyDVDHD?

Yes. I have tried it both ways. Perhaps I should wave a chicken-leg in front of it :p

- Rich

I do not understand this. I cannot get it working with hardware acceleration.
I tried 100.65 and 101.41. I run Ultra too.

I guess this is not science.

- Rich

my WON'T work unless i SET HW accel ON.otherwise it says i have an imcompatible driver and card!

Works fine for me on everything I've tried (both blu-ray and hd-dvd) using Vista w/ Geforce 8800GTS and 100.65 drivers along with PowerDVD Ultra 7.3. No hacks or workarounds involved, just worked out of the box.


Do the test and post your screen shots...

Despite the marketing, hardware acceleration does not work for almost anyone with PowerDVD and HD DVD. It probably works for MPEG-2, but not H.264 and VC-1. There may be some success stories, but they are rare. Personally I have tried ATI X1600 Pro and NVIDIA 7600GT, both fail miserably. It is probably a combination of driver problems and PowerDVD's implementation. We need more player choices!


OS GPU Driver PowerDVD VC-1 H.264
============================================================ =====
XP ATI X1600 Pro AGP 7.2 7.3 FAIL FAIL klillevo
XP NVIDIA 7600 GT AGP 93.71 7.3 FAIL FAIL klillevo
? NVIDIA 7600 GT AGP ? ? FAIL ? guysb
? NVIDIA 7600 GS ? ? 7.3 FAIL ? Fearless.Spiff
MCE05 NVIDIA 7600 GS ? ? 7.2 OK edrossy
XP NVIDIA 7950 GT PCIE 93.71 7.2 OK ? kc
Vista NVIDIA 8800 GTS PCIE 100.65 7.3 OK OK dthigpen
Vista NVIDIA ? ? 101.41 ? FAIL RichB





You can add X1950 256mb agp, XP MCE05, 7.2 driver, 7.3 PowerDVD ,Fail, Fail.

This sucks does anyone actually know what the physical problem is with this? Does Power dvd suddenly realise that actually its not an ATI avivo graphics card as it first thought? Is this a driver issue or program issue, is there a setting in the registry were all missing that could fix it? HHEEEELLLPPP!!! I'm fed up of choppy HD content, won't someone please give me a straight answer!

Tried Cyberlink they say its the ATI drivers, try ATI they say its a configuration problem, who am I to believe and more to the point is either one of them working on a solution!?!

Any guidance / supporting words would be great!

Haze2k: Thanks! Done. I kind of suspect AGP to a problem for some reason. If anyone with a working hardware acceleration AGP card reads this, please speak up :)

what processors? I think you need SSE2 for video-hw accel, i.e., Athlon XP machines can't get it.

Despite the marketing, hardware acceleration does not work for almost anyone with PowerDVD and HD DVD. It probably works for MPEG-2, but not H.264 and VC-1. There may be some success stories, but they are rare. Personally I have tried ATI X1600 Pro and NVIDIA 7600GT, both fail miserably. It is probably a combination of driver problems and PowerDVD's implementation. We need more player choices!


OS GPU Driver PowerDVD VC-1 H.264
============================================================ =====
XP ATI X1600 Pro AGP 7.2 7.3 FAIL FAIL klillevo
MCE05 ATI X1950 Pro AGP 7.2 7.3 FAIL FAIL Haze2k
XP NVIDIA 7600 GT AGP 93.71 7.3 FAIL FAIL klillevo
? NVIDIA 7600 GT AGP ? ? FAIL ? guysb
? NVIDIA 7600 GS ? ? 7.3 FAIL ? Fearless.Spiff
MCE05 NVIDIA 7600 GS ? ? 7.2 OK edrossy
XP NVIDIA 7950 GT PCIE 93.71 7.2 OK ? kc
Vista NVIDIA 8800 GTS PCIE 100.65 7.3 OK OK dthigpen
Vista NVIDIA ? ? 101.41 ? FAIL RichB





Just to fill in my part of this chart.

Vista Ultimate, 8800GTS 640MB, 101.41 7.3, Fail, Fail ;)

Processor AMD 4600+. Everything is green running the Cyberlink BD/HD DVD advisor.

- Rich

Thanks. The chart now looks like this:

OS GPU Driver PowerDVD VC-1 H.264
============================================================ =====
XP ATI X1600 Pro AGP 7.2 7.3 FAIL FAIL klillevo
MCE05 ATI X1950 Pro AGP 7.2 7.3 FAIL FAIL Haze2k
XP NVIDIA 7600 GT AGP 93.71 7.3 FAIL FAIL klillevo
? NVIDIA 7600 GT AGP ? ? FAIL ? guysb
? NVIDIA 7600 GS ? ? 7.3 FAIL ? Fearless.Spiff
MCE05 NVIDIA 7600 GS ? ? 7.2 OK edrossy
XP NVIDIA 7900GT PCIE 93.71 7.3 OK OK Haze2k
XP NVIDIA 7950 GT PCIE 93.71 7.2 OK ? kc
Vista NVIDIA 8800 GTS PCIE 100.65 7.3 OK OK dthigpen
Vista NVIDIA 8800 GTS PCIE 101.41 7.3 FAIL FAIL RichB


The CPU capabilities (SSE2 etc) might matter too. I don't know. In my case, I tried both a Northwood without SSE3 and a Prescott with SSE3, and this did not make any difference. You have to go pretty far back to find CPUs without SSE2. Another factor could be BluRay vs HD DVD. I have tried HD DVD only.

With regards to HDCP problems, I think everyone knows how to get around this by now. Use analog connection, or AnyDVD HD.

When I find time, I may go back a few pages in this thread and see if anyone has posted enough information to add more entries in the table.

The CPU capabilities (SSE2 etc) might matter too.

If it's being added to the table to try and figure it out, I'm using a QX6700 in this machine. (And again, AnyDVD HD) Just tested it with a couple more titles and the HD Acceleration is definitely there.

In xp i get fine playback no issues. In vista i get nothing but black screen yet it plays just cant see anything. Now it wont let me reinstall 6.5 because its saying you cant revert to old/same version once installing 7.3

In vista i get nothing but black screen yet it plays just cant see anything.

I get the same, but 6.5 never worked properly for me. The video would play but would be displayed twice, one full screen and then again in the top left like a PIP.

Using X800XT.

Anyone have trouble to play the UK HD-DVD(Studio Canal) version of "The Pianist" movie? Doesen't seem to work with Xbox addon, PDVD 7.3 and AnyDVD 6.1.3.2... :(

I get the same, but 6.5 never worked properly for me. The video would play but would be displayed twice, one full screen and then again in the top left like a PIP.

Using X800XT.


Same thing here. On the right side of the GUI there's a panel that extends out if you clik, and it has a centering icon???. I clicked it and small screen gone. When Captions not highlighted on right click, I use Ctrl U to change language captions and eventually to off. Sometimes it takes a few tries. My experience with 6.5

Sorry if this has been discussed already, the thread's so big now its hard to find anything. I have a 8800 GTS and I recently installed 7.3. Everything plays great, except AVC encoded HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray. Things stutter badly when I play those movies (Equilibrium on HD-DVD and Brothers Grimm on Blu-Ray). However, if I turn hard ware acceleration off in configurations/video everything works fine. There's no stutter and everything's smooth. Any idea why with acceleration on things actually work worse? Is it because of the notoriously poor nVidia GeForce 8800 Vista drivers?

My Specs are:

Core 2 Duo 6400 @ 3.3ghz
2gb ram
GeForce 8800GTS/640mb
Vista 32bit Ultimate

How can I get a the upgrade patch from 7.1 to 7.3 I purchased the software and I can't find the upgrade patch.

Installed forceware 93.71, powerdvd ultra 7.1 to watch HD-DVD through XBOX-360 hd-dvd add on and everithing works fine (despite a gray circle on the graphic driver in the hd-dvd advisor ). Installed powerdvd ultra 7.3 and no picture (red circle in the advisor for the 93.71). Any idea ?
AMD X2 5000+
XFX Geforce 7950gt
Roberto from Rome, Italy.

Sorry if this has been discussed already, the thread's so big now its hard to find anything. I have a 8800 GTS and I recently installed 7.3. Everything plays great, except AVC encoded HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray. Things stutter badly when I play those movies (Equilibrium on HD-DVD and Brothers Grimm on Blu-Ray). However, if I turn hard ware acceleration off in configurations/video everything works fine. There's no stutter and everything's smooth. Any idea why with acceleration on things actually work worse? Is it because of the notoriously poor nVidia GeForce 8800 Vista drivers?

My Specs are:

Core 2 Duo 6400 @ 3.3ghz
2gb ram
GeForce 8800GTS/640mb
Vista 32bit Ultimate

I have a very similar result with an 8800GTS and 4600+ with 1 gig. I can play all titles fine with no problems with no stutters and I have much less processor than you. I looks like there is an incompatibility between the 8800 and PowerDVD at least on Vista32.

- Rich

I "upgraded" to 7.3 for HD-DVD playback after using AnyDVD. Aside from overlay, I STILL have the following problems:

The subtitles are driving me crazy. I suppose it is fine for Babel but other films, like Training Day, I cannot turn them off at all in Open Movie File From Hard Disk. Though I can switch from English to French or Spanish subtitles using the U key....great! Cyberlink needs to get off their azz and fix this bug.

Going from 7.1 to 7.3, I now cannot open the EVO media files at all. I used to be able to select the FEATURE_1.EVO and FEATURE_2.EVO and skip all the preview junk. Now I get a blank screen or "Cyberlink has encountered a problem and needs to close." If I select all the files in the HVDVD_TS directory, I can get Training Day to play without subtitles in file mode. However, getting the control bar to turn off is a hassle and if I use a keyboard shortcut like N for next chapter, it crashes. Any suggestions ? I suppose the one good thing is the video plays fine without stutter.

E6600
P5W
2gb RAM
7600GT HDMI out with Forceware 93.71
MCE

Installed forceware 93.71, powerdvd ultra 7.1 to watch HD-DVD through XBOX-360 hd-dvd add on and everithing works fine (despite a gray circle on the graphic driver in the hd-dvd advisor ). Installed powerdvd ultra 7.3 and no picture (red circle in the advisor for the 93.71). Any idea ?
AMD X2 5000+
XFX Geforce 7950gt
Roberto from Rome, Italy.

Since I installed 7.3 I have had no issues with driver compliance, using 93.71 in XP with a 7600GT.

As far as the banding in overlay with 7.1/7.3 it really isn't that bad on my TV the only time I see it is in fog with light. The scene fron KK when the ship is drifting in the fog before they hit the rock you can clearly see banding but very faint. To the average viewer they wouldn't even notice it.
But it sure would be nice to have that overlay switch like in MP11, hey Cybercrap can hear me it's just a switch!
http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/mp.jpg

@ max, I finally got 7.1 to play in VMR but now the video is really grainy and just looks plain terrible. I got tired of working on their broken software and just went with 7.3 with no better results, of course the only advantage to 7.3 is BD intergration. Other than that I see nothing different in playback performance.

I "upgraded" to 7.3 for HD-DVD playback after using AnyDVD. Aside from overlay, I STILL have the following problems:

The subtitles are driving me crazy. I suppose it is fine for Babel but other films, like Training Day, I cannot turn them off at all in Open Movie File From Hard Disk. Though I can switch from English to French or Spanish subtitles using the U key....great! Cyberlink needs to get off their azz and fix this bug.

Going from 7.1 to 7.3, I now cannot open the EVO media files at all. I used to be able to select the FEATURE_1.EVO and FEATURE_2.EVO and skip all the preview junk. Now I get a blank screen or "Cyberlink has encountered a problem and needs to close." If I select all the files in the HVDVD_TS directory, I can get Training Day to play without subtitles in file mode. However, getting the control bar to turn off is a hassle and if I use a keyboard shortcut like N for next chapter, it crashes. Any suggestions ? I suppose the one good thing is the video plays fine without stutter.

E6600
P5W
2gb RAM
7600GT HDMI out with Forceware 93.71
MCE

If you use a remote you can turn off the subtiles in menu (I use the MS Media center remote).

Regarding the EVO files, I noticed the same thing.

If you use a remote you can turn off the subtiles in menu (I use the MS Media center remote).

Regarding the EVO files, I noticed the same thing.

Another way to turn off subtitles that don't seem to go away is to edit the XPL file and set the stream to # to 0 from 1 (for english). Not the slickest way to do it, I'm sure but it gets the job done.

It is probably a combination of driver problems and PowerDVD's implementation.

Yeah, although MPEG2 really should work for everyone, VC1 most people. H264 is trickier though.

For ref, With Vista and 100.65, I get:

6600GT: MPEG2 and VC1 hardware acceleration works very well. With h264, cpu usage doesn't change one iota.

7300GS: H264 works as well (and very nicely). Slight problem is that with 7.3, HD-DVD h264 doesn't work, although h264 Bluray does!

Maybe I am confusing things here... When Vista dumps back to Basic mode from Aero to play the files, is that not an indication that it is running in Overlay? Or in other words, if it was using VMR9, it would stay in Aero?

Yes, you're right. Overlay is incompatible with Aero.

If you use a remote you can turn off the subtiles in menu (I use the MS Media center remote).

Regarding the EVO files, I noticed the same thing.

Does Training Day even have a menu? My disc went right to the movie. I can toggle through all the subtitles with the U button all day long but they do not turn off when playing the back up from hard disk.

Another way to turn off subtitles that don't seem to go away is to edit the XPL file and set the stream to # to 0 from 1 (for english). Not the slickest way to do it, I'm sure but it gets the job done.

I would do this but I need more specific instruction. In the XPL file there are entries that look like this for various titles:

<Audio track="1" streamNumber="1" mediaAttr="3"/>

Should I change all the streamNumber="1" to "0" ???

I really just want subtitles on when people are not speaking English, not all the time...like in Babel.

Haze2k: Thanks! Done. I kind of suspect AGP to a problem for some reason. If anyone with a working hardware acceleration AGP card reads this, please speak up :)
Certainly does look that way. Anyone got any Ideas why that would be? Does agp 8X have the bandwidth for HD?

We need data! Everyone start running PowerDVD 7.3 on every PC you can get your hands on that has a modern AVIVO or PUREVIDEO graphics card!

Oh, before I forgot my other PC is running XP pro with a PCIe 7900GT 93.71 and PowerDVD 7.1 and 7.3 work fine. If we’re adding processors to the list (though I doubt that has anything to do with it) the X1950 has a Athlon 64 3500+ and the 7900gt has a Athlon 64 3700+

AGP 8x does not have any bandwidth limitations for HD.

AGP in its lowest speed mode has a bandwidth of 254.3 MB/s. That's AGP 1x.
AGP 8x is 2.1 GB/s

Uncompressed HD at 1920x1080 and 60 fps needs less than 450 MB/s

Since I installed 7.3 I have had no issues with driver compliance, using 93.71 in XP with a 7600GT.

As far as the banding in overlay with 7.1/7.3 it really isn't that bad on my TV the only time I see it is in fog with light. The scene fron KK when the ship is drifting in the fog before they hit the rock you can clearly see banding but very faint. To the average viewer they wouldn't even notice it.
But it sure would be nice to have that overlay switch like in MP11, hey Cybercrap can hear me it's just a switch!
http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/mp.jpg

I have a 7600 with the same drivers in XP, and the banding is just awful in parts. 11 minutes and 16 seconds into Batman Begins, there's the most atrocious banding visible in the ceiling of the room. Just awful. Some parts are worse than others, but boy does Cyberlink need to fix this. The banding is always there, but it does vary in visibility.

For those interested in PowerDVD and the ability to bypass AACS with utilities like AnyDVD, it looks like there are new versions of software coming out to fix the vunerabilities:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10059349&&#post10059349

Regards,
Dean

For those interested in PowerDVD and the ability to bypass AACS with utilities like AnyDVD, it looks like there are new versions of software coming out to fix the vunerabilities:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=10059349&&#post10059349

Regards,
Dean

Don't worry I sure someone else at AnyDVD will be working on providing us with "Mandatory Managed Copy" ;)

PowerDVD should be working on fixing bugs, but it is not their fault. Newer disks will be encoded with keys invalidated for the older PowerDVD versions. PowerDVD has no choice but to upgrade the player for new titles and neither do we :(

- Rich

AGP 8x does not have any bandwidth limitations for HD.
That's true, but there seems to be some other problem preventing hardware acceleration on AGP cards, probably a bug in the drivers or PowerDVD.

I have a 7600 with the same drivers in XP, and the banding is just awful in parts. 11 minutes and 16 seconds into Batman Begins, there's the most atrocious banding visible in the ceiling of the room. Just awful. Some parts are worse than others, but boy does Cyberlink need to fix this. The banding is always there, but it does vary in visibility.

I'm going to buy BM today and I'll let you know how it looks on the Sharp, if that drives you crazy try the scene in KK 48:23. But like I said it not that bad on my set up you can definetly see it but it's not disturbing, maybe your just more sensitive than me.

Just to add my experience to the collective...

I am finally able to playback hd-dvd and blu-ray smoothly with the following set-up:

C2D E4300 overclocked to 3GHz (333 FSB)
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Motherboard
Radeon X1650XT Video Card
1 GB Ram
Catalyst 7.2
PowerDVD 7.3
Reclock 1.7b4
I use RGBHV out to a Mitsubishi RPTV at 1920x1080i.

I started out with a 7600GT video card, because I read that Nvidia had better hardware acceleration for HD. I tried several versions of the Nvidia drivers, but I could not play back anything without horrible stutters. I decided to change video cards and suddenly everything started to work smoothly. There were still some micro stutters, but I got rid of them by using reclock. I don't have a lot of titles, but X-Men III plays smoothly with about 50-60% CPU usage.

It seems that every time I try to use an Nvidia card in my HTPC, I end up coming back to ATI. I think the Nvidia drivers need some work.

Just to add my experience to the collective...

I am finally able to playback hd-dvd and blu-ray smoothly with the following set-up:

C2D E4300 overclocked to 3GHz (333 FSB)
Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 Motherboard
Radeon X1650XT Video Card
1 GB Ram
Catalyst 7.2
PowerDVD 7.3
Reclock 1.7b4
I use RGBHV out to a Mitsubishi RPTV at 1920x1080i.

I started out with a 7600GT video card, because I read that Nvidia had better hardware acceleration for HD. I tried several versions of the Nvidia drivers, but I could not play back anything without horrible stutters. I decided to change video cards and suddenly everything started to work smoothly. There were still some micro stutters, but I got rid of them by using reclock. I don't have a lot of titles, but X-Men III plays smoothly with about 50-60% CPU usage.

It seems that every time I try to use an Nvidia card in my HTPC, I end up coming back to ATI. I think the Nvidia drivers need some work.

Turn hardware acceleration OFF, and your stutters will go away.

I'm going to buy BM today and I'll let you know how it looks on the Sharp, if that drives you crazy try the scene in KK 48:23. But like I said it not that bad on my set up you can definetly see it but it's not disturbing, maybe your just more sensitive than me.

I'm a rather sensitive soul. :)

Turn hardware acceleration OFF, and your stutters will go away.
I tried that. It made no difference.

I tried that. It made no difference.

Very odd. I just cannot run with h/w accel on currently on the 93.71 drivers. I could with the 100.87 XP beta drivers floating around, but then I couldn't fix my overscan. Grr! :(

"For those interested in PowerDVD and the ability to bypass AACS with utilities like AnyDVD, it looks like there are new versions of software coming out to fix the vunerabilities:"
Um-if you are running AnyDVD and using PowerDVD (current version) the disc appears to be unencrypted so changing the keys on the Studio Canal titles or for that matter any title wouldnt work would it? A new version of PDVD with new keys also wouldnt matter since again the title appears as unencrypted due to AnyDVD. However if PDVD sniffs out the AnyDVD process and refuses to playback any content then this may be a problem but the easy solution is just to rename the AnyDVD binary/process/executable/tweak the installation and you can circumvent this hack.

Maybe I am missing something but if AnyDVD in fact has cracked the AACS encryption scheme or is able to update its key database, then since it is a man in the middle I think there is nothing they can do and can change keys as many times as they want and it wont matter.

The only people who will be affected are the ones using PDVD without AnyDVD since the title will be seen as encrypted and refuse to play when it sees the blacklisted PDVD key.

Oh my-the MPAA has undoubtedly spend tens of millions of dollars+ on encryption and this will be handed off to the consumer by increased pricing/reduced profits. All for nothing in the end.

What ever happened to mandatory copy functionality supported by the CE manufacturers/studios? I always thought it was just a marketing farce and they never intended to actually give us this feature.

Thank you to AnyDVD for giving us consumers UNMANAGED MANDTORY COPY.

"For those interested in PowerDVD and the ability to bypass AACS with utilities like AnyDVD, it looks like there are new versions of software coming out to fix the vunerabilities:"
Um-if you are running AnyDVD and using PowerDVD (current version) the disc appears to be unencrypted so changing the keys on the Studio Canal titles or for that matter any title wouldnt work would it? A new version of PDVD with new keys also wouldnt matter since again the title appears as unencrypted due to AnyDVD. However if PDVD sniffs out the AnyDVD process and refuses to playback any content then this may be a problem but the easy solution is just to rename the AnyDVD binary/process/executable/tweak the installation and you can circumvent this hack.

Maybe I am missing something but if AnyDVD in fact has cracked the AACS encryption scheme or is able to update its key database, then since it is a man in the middle I think there is nothing they can do and can change keys as many times as they want and it wont matter.

The only people who will be affected are the ones using PDVD without AnyDVD since the title will be seen as encrypted and refuse to play when it sees the blacklisted PDVD key.

Oh my-the MPAA has undoubtedly spend tens of millions of dollars+ on encryption and this will be handed off to the consumer by increased pricing/reduced profits. All for nothing in the end.

What ever happened to mandatory copy functionality supported by the CE manufacturers/studios? I always thought it was just a marketing farce and they never intended to actually give us this feature.

Thank you to AnyDVD for giving us consumers UNMANAGED MANDTORY COPY.

My guess is that at least, new disks will not accept the old PowerDVD key so AnyDVD and PowerDVD will not play them. Old disks with new PowerDVD will probably play unless there is a sniffer. But the sniffer could detect the alternate disk driver which may make it more difficult.

My guess is until we will be in tit-for-tat situation until AnyDVD has a complete crack. Then we will see the sniffer attack.

Mandatory Managed Copy was probably not in the cards. If they think they can make money without it, it is done for.

- Rich

How can I get a the upgrade patch from 7.1 to 7.3 I purchased the software and I can't find the upgrade patch.

I would like the answer to this question also...

write to tech support telling them your looking for a blu ray and hd solution at same time.

Yes, Rich is most likely right. New versions of PowerDVD/WinDVD will not have the same vulnerability that is exploited by AnyDVD and BackupHDDVD/BD. New disks will be printed, not recognizing the old software as valid, requiring an upgrade to the new software to play.

It's difficult to predict if (or even how) the new version of the software would refuse to play ripped HD DVDs, but it's possible they'll try it. Personally, if I were them I'd chalk that part up to "learning experience" and move on, but we'll see.

Anyone have trouble to play the UK HD-DVD(Studio Canal) version of "The Pianist" movie? Doesen't seem to work with Xbox addon, PDVD 7.3 and AnyDVD 6.1.3.2... :(

Have anyone tried this title? It jams and stops all the time. In PDVD's "Open Media Files" mode it works nice, but then I can't switch audio tracks and subtitles.

The same when I use AnyDVD's "Remove all menus from HD DVD" setting. The movie plays nice and smooth, but no audio or subtitle change are possible (it plays french audio without subs :o ).

Anyone figure out yet how to revert back to 6.5 after trying 7.3 and it F'ing up playback for both formats. It says cant revert to old version blah blah blah thanks cyberlink.....

I am trying to play Serenity HD-DVD using Power DVD 6.5 HD. I am running AMD64 3500+, 1 GIG of Ram, PCI Express 7950 GX2 Video Card. When i go to play the main feature all Power DVD does is hang up and nothing plays. Is the something i am doing wrong?

Well, there will be some competition soon, the latest update to Nero prompts you to buy a plug-in for HD-DVD and BDAV playback when you try and open a folder in Showtime. Right now the plug-in isn't available yet, but it's suppose to be soon. I also get full Hardware acceleration using the Nero Mpeg2 Encoder under Vista using the Nvidia 100.65 drivers with the latest update.

Given Nero's track record of releasing quality, all-inclusive products, I'm exicted about this prospect and wouldn't doubt if you'll be able to import HD-DVDs into NeroVision for transcoding in the future (Which means media server streaming!).

Anyone figure out yet how to revert back to 6.5 after trying 7.3 and it F'ing up playback for both formats. It says cant revert to old version blah blah blah thanks cyberlink.....

I have reverted back fron 7.3 to 6.5 with no problems, but then again I manually clean out the files sometimes to get the green digits back in the player.



I am trying to play Serenity HD-DVD using Power DVD 6.5 HD. I am running AMD64 3500+, 1 GIG of Ram, PCI Express 7950 GX2 Video Card. When i go to play the main feature all Power DVD does is hang up and nothing plays. Is the something i am doing wrong? .

6.5 is a buggy player it won't play my ripped copy of The Departed from the HDD, 7.1/7.2 play it with no prob.

That's true, but there seems to be some other problem preventing hardware acceleration on AGP cards, probably a bug in the drivers or PowerDVD.
Has anyone contacted Cyberlink with these findings? It seems apparent that AGP is the issue, and not just with ATI but with AGP Nvidias as well. This therefore suggests a program issue not driver, and is for Cyberlink to sort.

When I had ATI, I tried to file a bug report with them, but that was completely futile, not to mention infuriating (their response). I expect about the same with NVIDIA. I will file a bug report with Cyberlink tonight, but I do not have much hope it will help. (1) No one cares about AGP owners any more, (2) No one cares about XP owners either (it seems), (3) No software/driver vendor cares about bug reports, if they are not from their internal QA department.

Well, there will be some competition soon, the latest update to Nero prompts you to buy a plug-in for HD-DVD and BDAV playback when you try and open a folder in Showtime. Right now the plug-in isn't available yet, but it's suppose to be soon. I also get full Hardware acceleration using the Nero Mpeg2 Encoder under Vista using the Nvidia 100.65 drivers with the latest update.

Given Nero's track record of releasing quality, all-inclusive products, I'm exicted about this prospect and wouldn't doubt if you'll be able to import HD-DVDs into NeroVision for transcoding in the future (Which means media server streaming!).

Nero Showtime is PowerDVD, just repackaged.

Another day with PowerDVD, another day I won't be buying another HD-DVD until this banding is fixed. I'm frustrated since PowerDVD was NOT cheap.

*face_grumpy*

I need help please..I just installed powerdvd ultra and when i go to see what version it is , it sas on the top version 7.2 and on the bottom it says version 7.3.2605..What is the latest version and do i have the latest version ?

gpb007, that sounds right. Cyberlink are weird with their numbers.

Any news from anyone on a banding fix? Everyone with an Nvidia 7-series (and 8 series?) card in Windows XP has banding, so what's going on here?

I'm perplexed why so many of you have problems with PowerDVD 6.5 and certain titles. 6.5 works fine for me for: "The Departed", "V for Vendetta", "Happy Feet", "Fearless", "Serenity", and "Batman Begins". I haven't tried others yet.

BTW, I have to decrypt them first as my card is not HDCP compatible. Inconvenient.

I think I had problems with subtitles on one of them - I can't remember which. But they've all played fine, with the exception of the stupid PowerDVD screensaver always kicking in after I unpause a movie. THAT is irritating.

I am trying to get PowerDVD running on my notebook. It has a FireGL 5250 graphics processor and Core 2 2Gig processor. It plays fine but I get no image, even on the VGA output.

I tried the stuff on the Cyberlink web site, tried going VGA only, disabling vga and I cannot get any image. Has anyone got PowerDVD 7.3 working on a notebook?

Thanks,

Rich

I'm perplexed why so many of you have problems with PowerDVD 6.5 and certain titles. 6.5 works fine for me for: "The Departed", "V for Vendetta", "Happy Feet", "Fearless", "Serenity", and "Batman Begins". I haven't tried others yet.

BTW, I have to decrypt them first as my card is not HDCP compatible. Inconvenient.

I think I had problems with subtitles on one of them - I can't remember which. But they've all played fine, with the exception of the stupid PowerDVD screensaver always kicking in after I unpause a movie. THAT is irritating.

I have no problem playing back the movie's in "disk mode" on 6.5 it's just when I ripped The Departed that's the only one that wont't play in HD DVD mode on 6.5. Also I'm still using AnyDVD 1.2.3 and I had to manually go into the .xml file to take out the AACS sometimes it forgets to do this, so it may be the way I edited the .xml file. Because it's doing the... it wants to play routine it just spits it back out and stops playing. So now that I think about it I'm sure it just needs to be re edited.
I run 6.5 on my workstation that is hooked up to my Sony 520GS CRT as you know Max, it's the only player that will playback without the compliance and it looks great on CRT.

When I had ATI, I tried to file a bug report with them, but that was completely futile, not to mention infuriating (their response). I expect about the same with NVIDIA. I will file a bug report with Cyberlink tonight, but I do not have much hope it will help. (1) No one cares about AGP owners any more, (2) No one cares about XP owners either (it seems), (3) No software/driver vendor cares about bug reports, if they are not from their internal QA department.

I have been in communication with cyberlink and ATI on this issue for some time (see earlier posts).
Hardware acceleration does not work for vc-1, hence the problems with HD-DVD and not with Blu-ray. It's a driver issue. ATI is working on it.
It's taking them quite a while, but they are working on it.
As far as I am aware the issue is independent of whether the graphics card is AGP or PCIE.

I asked this question in the Chicken Little thread in Blu-ray area. Just curious.

I'm perplexed why so many of you have problems with PowerDVD 6.5 and certain titles. 6.5 works fine for me for: "The Departed", "V for Vendetta", "Happy Feet", "Fearless", "Serenity", and "Batman Begins". I haven't tried others yet.

BTW, I have to decrypt them first as my card is not HDCP compatible. Inconvenient.

I think I had problems with subtitles on one of them - I can't remember which. But they've all played fine, with the exception of the stupid PowerDVD screensaver always kicking in after I unpause a movie. THAT is irritating.


Errr... you're perplexed? Eh? I think you said it yourself. Most of us just want to place a disc in our drives and play it, 100% legitimately. I don't want to decrypt anything. I want it to play, without banding. I seriously don't understand Cyberlink at all.

I'm going to buy BM today and I'll let you know how it looks on the Sharp, if that drives you crazy try the scene in KK 48:23. But like I said it not that bad on my set up you can definetly see it but it's not disturbing, maybe your just more sensitive than me.

Oh...my....gawd. If that banding at 48:23 (and 49:20, and EVERYWHERE in that scene) isn't enough to convince you how broken PowerDVD is, NOTHING will. That's without doubt the worst banding I've ever seen! :( :( :( :(

William, I see you dont give up complaining for a problem only existent with Nvidia cards..
For the last time, pleeease, do us a favor and buy your self an ATI card...This way you *might" stop whining for the one issue Powerdvd is NOT responsible for...

William, I see you dont give up complaining for a problem only existent with Nvidia cards..
For the last time, pleeease, do us a favor and buy your self an ATI card...This way you *might" stop whining for the one issue Powerdvd is NOT responsible for...


"only" existent with Nvidia cards is a pretty BIG statement. Seriously. I refuse to buy a new video card based 100% on PowerDVD's problem. The fact remains that version 6.5 experiences NONE of these problems. Heck, WinDVD 8 doesn't have these problems either, but has a "blurry" quality to the image so I won't use it either. So, PowerDVD 6.5 had no image issues, and WinDVD 8 has no banding, and somehow it's my video card's fault?

No sir. Cyberlink have already said they're "working on it," so I intend to whine until it's fixed, since they seem to be taking their sweet time fixing something that shouldn't have been changed in the first place. :)

Oh...my....gawd. If that banding at 48:23 (and 49:20, and EVERYWHERE in that scene) isn't enough to convince you how broken PowerDVD is, NOTHING will. That's without doubt the worst banding I've ever seen! :( :( :( :(

hmm. this is weird i have a nvidia card (8800 GTS) and I see NO banding there at all. and believe I do know what banding is after the mess i went through with my early version 2407 panels before switching to samsung 244t. i'm running the latest beta driver from nvidia and powerdvd 7.3 and have the colorspace bit in the registry for powerDVD HD DVD section swapped from original setting and nvidia control panel not set to adjust colors for all video types.

for blu-ray I must set nvidia panel to adjust for all panel types and it's weird that each driver and combo (and OS) seems to need different ones btu currently for blu-ray 44 bright,68contrast,50 saturation seems to be reasonable. if i don't then it is all washed out. oddly for fusionhdtv i need to set much different settings otherwise blacks are not deep than for blu-ray although i would've thought they'd use the same settings. weirder is that on one boot partition i seemingly had same drivers and all and didn't need to adjust nvidia panel once i set bits that seemed to do nothing on the other partion and later on did different things on the original one.

well, one nvidia user who has no banding issues at all with powerdvd 7.3 (or 7.1 and 7.2).

hmm. this is weird i have a nvidia card (8800 GTS) and I see NO banding there at all. and believe I do know what banding is after the mess i went through with my early version 2407 panels before switching to samsung 244t. i'm running the latest beta driver from nvidia and powerdvd 7.3 and have the colorspace bit in the registry for powerDVD HD DVD section swapped from original setting and nvidia control panel not set to adjust colors for all video types.

for blu-ray I must set nvidia panel to adjust for all panel types and it's weird that each driver and combo (and OS) seems to need different ones btu currently for blu-ray 44 bright,68contrast,50 saturation seems to be reasonable. if i don't then it is all washed out. oddly for fusionhdtv i need to set much different settings otherwise blacks are not deep than for blu-ray although i would've thought they'd use the same settings. weirder is that on one boot partition i seemingly had same drivers and all and didn't need to adjust nvidia panel once i set bits that seemed to do nothing on the other partion and later on did different things on the original one.

well, one nvidia user who has no banding issues at all with powerdvd 7.3 (or 7.1 and 7.2).

btw should also add i ONLY run HD stuff with powerdvd with HW accel turned ON and de-lacing turned off and easy subtitles on.

I need help please..I just installed powerdvd ultra and when i go to see what version it is , it sas on the top version 7.2 and on the bottom it says version 7.3.2605..What is the latest version and do i have the latest version ?

mine says 7.2 in about but 7.3 on the red screen.
i think they just didn'tupdate the text in the abotu menu yet.
anyway on 8-series nvidia at least i get no banding at all, NONE, even the scenes selcted as having the worst banding ever seen by man. i hope the fix won't give me banding, haha.

"only" existent with Nvidia cards is a pretty BIG statement. Seriously. I refuse to buy a new video card based 100% on PowerDVD's problem. The fact remains that version 6.5 experiences NONE of these problems. Heck, WinDVD 8 doesn't have these problems either, but has a "blurry" quality to the image so I won't use it either. So, PowerDVD 6.5 had no image issues, and WinDVD 8 has no banding, and somehow it's my video card's fault?

No sir. Cyberlink have already said they're "working on it," so I intend to whine until it's fixed, since they seem to be taking their sweet time fixing something that shouldn't have been changed in the first place. :)

You are not telling the whole truth and you know it... Powerdvd 6.5 works in VMR9 and that is why it works fine with the Nvidia cards. Powerdvd 7.1-7.3 works only in Overlay, hence the problem : From all we know, the problem lies with the Overlay function of (some?) Nvidia cards and/or drivers and NOT with the program (Powerdvd). If it WAS Powerdvd problem it would affect ATI cards as well.... So, it might be a better idea to bug Nvidia to fix this problem and not repeat the sames things, post after post, after post, after post...

I think the problem lies in the drivers. I am running Vista with 101.41. I cannot play a DVD with PowerDVD nor with TheaterTek. There is tearing softness artifacts. It is just a mess.

HD with 7.3 works fine with my 8800GTS.

It is amazing how unprepared they are for Vista.

- Rich

I have been in communication with cyberlink and ATI on this issue for some time (see earlier posts).
Hardware acceleration does not work for vc-1, hence the problems with HD-DVD and not with Blu-ray. It's a driver issue. ATI is working on it.
It's taking them quite a while, but they are working on it.
As far as I am aware the issue is independent of whether the graphics card is AGP or PCIE.
Yes, that may be so for ATI, where h/w acceleration can not be enabled. I have since switched to NVIDIA 7600 GT, for which it can be enabled. However, it crashes for all AGP cards, and generally tends to work for PCIE cards (NVIDIA).

hmm. this is weird i have a nvidia card (8800 GTS) and I see NO banding there at all. and believe I do know what banding is after the mess i went through with my early version 2407 panels before switching to samsung 244t. i'm running the latest beta driver from nvidia and powerdvd 7.3 and have the colorspace bit in the registry for powerDVD HD DVD section swapped from original setting and nvidia control panel not set to adjust colors for all video types.

for blu-ray I must set nvidia panel to adjust for all panel types and it's weird that each driver and combo (and OS) seems to need different ones btu currently for blu-ray 44 bright,68contrast,50 saturation seems to be reasonable. if i don't then it is all washed out. oddly for fusionhdtv i need to set much different settings otherwise blacks are not deep than for blu-ray although i would've thought they'd use the same settings. weirder is that on one boot partition i seemingly had same drivers and all and didn't need to adjust nvidia panel once i set bits that seemed to do nothing on the other partion and later on did different things on the original one.

well, one nvidia user who has no banding issues at all with powerdvd 7.3 (or 7.1 and 7.2).

Which drivers are you using? 100.87 for Windows XP?

Which drivers are you using? 100.87 for Windows XP?

I see the banding in KK with a 800GTS/Vista/101.41.

- Rich

I cannot play Superman Returns with 7.3 on Vista. It crashes within one minute. It crashes immediately if I try to enter the menu.

Has anyone else had this problem?

- Rich

I cannot play Superman Returns with 7.3 on Vista. It crashes within one minute. It crashes immediately if I try to enter the menu.

Has anyone else had this problem?

- Rich

After first ripping with AnyDVDHD on Vista with 7.3 I can play the whole movie fine. (I can't test it otherwise as while everything else in my system is, my monitor isn't HDCP compliant and I like my 24" Dell LCD too much too spend the cash to replace it right now)

After first ripping with AnyDVDHD on Vista with 7.3 I can play the whole movie fine. (I can't test it otherwise as while everything else in my system is, my monitor isn't HDCP compliant and I like my 24" Dell LCD too much too spend the cash to replace it right now)

Even ripped it crashes when I try to bring up the menu.
I even uninstalled and reinstalled.

Weird.

- Rich

There seems to be conflicting reports on the KK scene so I posted some jpg's as some of you may not know what William and I are talking about. And this depends on on what your viewing it through and what type of hardware.

On my AMD sys 7600GT Diamond, PDVD 6.5/7.1/7.3 and using 49.20 drivers on XP all look this way on my 46" Sharp just like the plasma "rainbow effect"

http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/9b.jpg

I print screened this shot on my Intel rig using 2.4 Northy 9700 pro and PDVD 6.5 I forget which drivers I think 7.2 with old control panel on my Sony 21" 520GS CRT. It still kicks butt over any LCD TV I've owned as far as natural color balance just can't beat CRT's ;) .

http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/49.jpg

I can't test 7.1/7.3 with my Intel set up due to compliance contraints so if somebody out there with an nVidia card and a CRT could post a jpg of the same scene this should could help us narrow down our little Gremlin.
Like I said on my Sharp TV using 6.5 and up all look this way and it actually looks better in overlay on the Sharp if I go to VMR I get atrifacting and banding and it looks horrible on the Sharp...

I just played KK on my HD-A1 and there is definately less banding than with PowerDVD 7.3 but then again we are using overlay. Until we can use VMR, I am not sure there is any hope of improving this.

- Rich

I completely uninstalled with System Restore. Made sure there were not files or registry entries. Re-installed PowerDVD 7.3.

Still the menus crash Superman Returns every time.
I have no problem with Superman though.

- Rich

dthigpen the dell 2407 if thats what you have is HDCP compliant. Maybe this link will help you.

http://vissione.wordpress.com/2006/10/23/1080p-for-cheap-dell-2407wfp/

Boy, I now understand your frustation with the color banding issue!
Yesterday I toyed around with an HTPC of a friend with an Nvidia 7950 (latest drivers on) on a Jvc-Hd1 projector.
I can tell you that I was reaally annoyed with this card bacause not only the banding was blatanly obvious (check out the HD-DVD demo on the opening of V for Vendetta) but also it was impossible to correctly set the video levels on Powerdvd 7.3 (as stated here)!
To make things worse, the gamma response of the card was terrible! Even with Powerdvd 6.5 which works on VMR9 mode, although I adjusted properly the Video levels (16=black, 235=white), the gamma was way off and crashed the low IRE details...
It goes without saying that those problems do NOT exist with the latest ATI cards (X1650, X1950)...
I now understand how many folks here think that HD-DVD/BluRay playback with HTPCs is not there yet: They must own Nvidia cards!

To make things worse, the gamma response of the card was terrible! Even with Powerdvd 6.5 which works on VMR9 mode, although I adjusted properly the Video levels (16=black, 235=white), the gamma was way off and crashed the low IRE details...


PDVD 6.5 is an asbolute trainwreck - the only reason people use it is cos of VMR9.

Have you tried 7.3 for Bluray? It's less wacky for colour accuracy (still not perfect on the colour ramps, but a lot better), and uses VMR9 so no colour expansion problems. Still overlay for HDDVD though.....

I tried it and it was NOT using VMR9, at least with this NVIDIA 7950 card, but the image was tad better in comparison with the HD-DVD playback. Far from perfect, though...

It goes without saying that those problems do NOT exist with the latest ATI cards (X1650, X1950)...
I now understand how many folks here think that HD-DVD/BluRay playback with HTPCs is not there yet: They must own Nvidia cards!

What banding? I run PD 7.3 with an nVidia 8800GTS. Playback looks as close to perfection as one can get.

The banding mentioned numerous time in this thread. I dont know about your 8800 though..

I have 10 movies that I playback on my HTPC and I do not see "banding" at all.

I have:

Constantine
King Kong
Mummy
Mummy Returns
Aeon Flux
Phantom of the Opera
Van Helsing
Terminator 3
Swordfish
Italian Job

Do you have a picture demonstrating the banding in any of these movies?

I'll be happy to check. But so far my setup has been perfect. *knock on wood*

Also I am using Component Video out, my Mits RPTV only has analog Component Video in. (waiting to move into my new house so I can utilize a JVC-RS1).

I tried it and it was NOT using VMR9, at least with this NVIDIA 7950 card, but the image was tad better in comparison with the HD-DVD playback. Far from perfect, though...

That's weird - it definitely is for me with a 7300GS as I can do Vista flybys (what OS are you using?), take screenshots etc. Even sillier is I can connect the PDVD HDDVD filters in graphedit to VMR9 no problem, yet the application itself falls back to overlay :rolleyes:

So we have:

1) different video cards do the overlay colour expansion with varying quality. 8800 people seem a lot happier with this, which makes some sense: the 8800 series can do image processing on vc1/h264, 7 series can't.

2) some video card/driver/OS combos can do Bluray VMR9, some can't.

3) gamma and several other things are screwed with 6.5. This is likely because this version was intended only for laptops with certain GPUs.

I have 10 movies that I playback on my HTPC and I do not see "banding" at all.

I have:

Constantine
King Kong
Mummy
Mummy Returns
Aeon Flux
Phantom of the Opera
Van Helsing
Terminator 3
Swordfish
Italian Job

Do you have a picture demonstrating the banding in any of these movies?

I'll be happy to check. But so far my setup has been perfect. *knock on wood*

Also I am using Component Video out, my Mits RPTV only has analog Component Video in. (waiting to move into my new house so I can utilize a JVC-RS1).


Ahhh, you are using component...That is probably why...Most users reported the banding through digital connection..

That's weird - it definitely is for me with a 7300GS as I can do Vista flybys, take screenshots etc. Even sillier is I can connect the PDVD HDDVD filters in graphedit to VMR9 no problem, yet the application itself falls back to overlay :rolleyes:

I forgot to mention it was running WinXP pro not vista. I checked it via powerstrip (it has a gamma slider which works in VMR9-if it affects the desktop AND the powerdvd window with a movie playing, then it is VMR9, if not it is overlay).

I forgot to mention it was running WinXP pro not vista

I wonder if it's a driver issue - the Vista drivers seem to be almost on a completely separate development path now.

There seems to be conflicting reports on the KK scene so I posted some jpg's as some of you may not know what William and I are talking about. And this depends on on what your viewing it through and what type of hardware.

On my AMD sys 7600GT Diamond, PDVD 6.5/7.1/7.3 and using 49.20 drivers on XP all look this way on my 46" Sharp just like the plasma "rainbow effect"

http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/9b.jpg

I print screened this shot on my Intel rig using 2.4 Northy 9700 pro and PDVD 6.5 I forget which drivers I think 7.2 with old control panel on my Sony 21" 520GS CRT. It still kicks butt over any LCD TV I've owned as far as natural color balance just can't beat CRT's ;) .

http://home.earthlink.net/~smurfer/49.jpg

I can't test 7.1/7.3 with my Intel set up due to compliance contraints so if somebody out there with an nVidia card and a CRT could post a jpg of the same scene this should could help us narrow down our little Gremlin.
Like I said on my Sharp TV using 6.5 and up all look this way and it actually looks better in overlay on the Sharp if I go to VMR I get atrifacting and banding and it looks horrible on the Sharp...

Thanks for these pictures. Definitely shows what I'm seeing in PowerDVD 7.3.

I am definately not getting the banding on my 8800GTS using component video out.

I have tried to do a screen capture, but when I go to a smaller resolution and open the file it's totally black.

Any ideas on how to capture so I can show you what my display looks like?

Jim no doubt about your resuts, but most of us are using it as a primary display using DVI/HDMI you can't screen cap with 7.1/7.3 unless you use the doom9 hack.

Jim no doubt about your resuts, but most of us are using it as a primary display using DVI/HDMI you can't screen cap with 7.1/7.3 unless you use the doom9 hack.

What is the Doom9 hack? Never heard of it before.

Here's a new question:

My friend just plugged his new computer into his Sony XBR2 52" 1080p LCD via DVI -> HDMI using his HDCP Geforce 7900GS.

He can watch between 5 and 30 minutes of an HD-DVD and then he gets a message saying something along the lines of, "The display driver is incompatible (HDCP)."

Any idea what might be causing that?

He's using 97.31 XP drivers.

I was at a Sony store and noticed banding on open season BD. This is off their BD player - not PDVD. I didn't see the model # of the player but the LCD was a XBR3.

Here's a new question:

My friend just plugged his new computer into his Sony XBR2 52" 1080p LCD via DVI -> HDMI using his HDCP Geforce 7900GS.

He can watch between 5 and 30 minutes of an HD-DVD and then he gets a message saying something along the lines of, "The display driver is incompatible (HDCP)."

Any idea what might be causing that?

He's using 97.31 XP drivers.

I have pretty much the same setup except it's a 52" sharp (1920x1080p) LCD via DVI->HDMI and using HDCP Geforce 8800GTX with no issues. You're using the latest version of the driver right? Also is it XP or Vista?

I have pretty much the same setup except it's a 52" sharp (1920x1080p) LCD via DVI->HDMI and using HDCP Geforce 8800GTX with no issues. You're using the latest version of the driver right? Also is it XP or Vista?

LOL. Basically the same setup except for the fact that all the components I listed are not the same as yours? :D :D

It's XP, for what it's worth. :)

why does banding only seem to effect blue spectrum???

If anyone cares I've seen it too on blu ray Kingdom of Heaven

Which drivers are you using? 100.87 for Windows XP?

97.92 for XP and whatever the latest beta is for Vista.

I see the banding in KK with a 800GTS/Vista/101.41.

- Rich

that's so weird. i have the exact same, but no banding.

my samsung 244t does seem to be one of the most banding resistant LCD out there perhaps that comes into play. some LCD base displays are very prone to banding issues, some even band gradient tests when left even at the most neutral adjustments possible.

PDVD 6.5 is an asbolute trainwreck - the only reason people use it is cos of VMR9.

Have you tried 7.3 for Bluray? It's less wacky for colour accuracy (still not perfect on the colour ramps, but a lot better), and uses VMR9 so no colour expansion problems. Still overlay for HDDVD though.....


unless you run it on a PC levels 0-255 monitor, then it is has nasty problems and you have to go in and reset color levels using nvidia control panel (occasionally that makes the gamma go screwey, but it if you click and unclick RGB gamma and click aroudn here and there it usually returns back to a good gamma level again). although all the same i can get it adjusted in a way that appears to have the balck and white levels as well as gamma reasonably well adjusted and i see no banding at all.

so 8800 GTS, DVI out, samsung 244T 1080P LCD, XP using 97.92 or Vista using 101.41, powerdvd 7.3, USING HW accel turned on and de-lacing turned OFF. I just do not get any banding at all in those batman begins or KK scenes. I don't recall any from 7.1or 7.2 either.

What is the Doom9 hack for screen caps? Never heard of it before.

Could someone please answer my question?

Could someone please answer my question?
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=809002
;)

Nimo, that doesn't work with the overlay versions of powerdvd!

I will file a bug report with Cyberlink tonight.
After a couple of information exchanges, Cyberlink let me know that the VC-1 h/w acceleration crash on NVIDIA AGP cards is a bug they have added to their list and will investigate:

"We regret to say that the Product Development Department has issued the problem as an bug in the software and they are working in the lab to troubleshoot and resolve the issue. We will update you as soon as we get any response from our concern department. "

I havnt read the whole thread, but I've read quite a few pages without seeing the info I'm looking for. Sorry if its been discussed.

A friend commented that AnyDVD HD can be used for removing the HDCP, but this doesnt work on Vista. Can anyone confirm?

I've just ordered an Xbox360 HD DVD drive, but only have a non-HDCP compliant 7600GS video card in my Vista Ultimate machine. I was hoping to use AnyDVD HD to rip a movie copy to the hard drive and still be able to watch it in full resolution.

Just got powerdvd ultra and the display is like zoomed. I just see like the upper left quadrant all else is off screen. Any ideas as to why its doing this?

Dave

I havnt read the whole thread, but I've read quite a few pages without seeing the info I'm looking for. Sorry if its been discussed.

A friend commented that AnyDVD HD can be used for removing the HDCP, but this doesnt work on Vista. Can anyone confirm?

I've just ordered an Xbox360 HD DVD drive, but only have a non-HDCP compliant 7600GS video card in my Vista Ultimate machine. I was hoping to use AnyDVD HD to rip a movie copy to the hard drive and still be able to watch it in full resolution.

I am using AnyDVD HD 6.1.3.3 on Vista Ultimate 32bit and it works perfect.

Now, if Nvidia would fix their drivers, I would completely happy. I have a 7900GTO and there is no setting in the Nvidia Control Panel to adjust for oversan or underscan. If I set the resolution for 1920x1080, a good deal of the desktop is cut off. If I drop it down to the next lowest resolution which is like 1790x960 or something like that, my desktop doesn't fill my whole tv.

I have a 7900GTO and there is no setting in the Nvidia Control Panel to adjust for oversan or underscan. If I set the resolution for 1920x1080, a good deal of the desktop is cut off. If I drop it down to the next lowest resolution which is like 1790x960 or something like that, my desktop doesn't fill my whole tv.

Why not adjust the overscan on your set? if you mess with the actual video resolution then you will not have the full 1:1 resolution.

Why not adjust the overscan on your set? if you mess with the actual video resolution then you will not have the full 1:1 resolution.

Interesting. I never really thought by adjusting the desktop like that, I would be causing the resolution to not be 1:1. Thanks for the tip. I will do a search to figure out how to get in the service menu of my Sony KDS-60A2000 to adjust the overscan.

And to keep this thread on topic, I am using PowerDVD Ultra 7.3 and love the picture quality I am getting. The only issue I am having is there seems to be an occasional slight stutter in the picture. It looks as if Reclock is the solution for MCE2005 users but that does not work in Vista from what I have read. The movies are watchable....they just seem a bit "off" if you know what I mean.

I am using AnyDVD HD 6.1.3.3 on Vista Ultimate 32bit and it works perfect.

Now, if Nvidia would fix their drivers, I would completely happy. I have a 7900GTO and there is no setting in the Nvidia Control Panel to adjust for oversan or underscan. If I set the resolution for 1920x1080, a good deal of the desktop is cut off. If I drop it down to the next lowest resolution which is like 1790x960 or something like that, my desktop doesn't fill my whole tv.Great - can I just check though, does your card do HDCP? Mine doesnt, and the comment I heard was that HDCP removal aspect of AnyDVD HD didnt help on Vista (which required the secure connect to the display for this type of video - resulting in the lower resolution version).

Great - can I just check though, does your card do HDCP? Mine doesnt, and the comment I heard was that HDCP removal aspect of AnyDVD HD didnt help on Vista (which required the secure connect to the display for this type of video - resulting in the lower resolution version).

My card definitely doesn't do HDCP. I even made a mistake once after I rebuilt my system and tried playing my Serenity HD-DVD without installing AnyDVD first and the movie played for a few seconds and stopped with an error. The errors was along the lines of my system not being compatible and I should run this program. Sorry, I forget the exact error.

Excellent - thanks.

I can confirm AnyDVDHD working in Vista 32 bit as well. I use an 8800gts without hdcp and Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit edition and it all works perfectly.

Just got powerdvd ultra and the display is like zoomed. I just see like the upper left quadrant all else is off screen. Any ideas as to why its doing this?

I'm having the same problem as SNOOT. PDVD 7.3 was working fine for me but after I mucked with the display settings (screen text / icons 120%) PDVD looks to be stuck in a 4x zoom mode as SNOOT reports. Re-installing the nvidia drivers, resetting the screen back to normal and re-installing PDVD does not make any difference. Broken.... :confused:

I can confirm AnyDVDHD working in Vista 32 bit as well. I use an 8800gts without hdcp and Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit edition and it all works perfectly.

Just be warned, the empire is about to strike back ;)

- Rich

For those of you with a zoomed display, make sure your antialising settings in the 3D control panel is set to 2x or Application Controlled. This should solve the problem.

Just be warned, the empire is about to strike back ;)

- Rich

Ok I will bite and you saying Starwars is about to be released on HD DVD or are you saying someone is about to put the smack down on AnyDVD HD?

Originally Posted by bowser15
I can confirm AnyDVDHD working in Vista 32 bit as well. I use an 8800gts without hdcp and Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit edition and it all works perfectly.

Not real sure it is working at all for HD DVD;

I can only watch HD DVD with PowerDVD 6.5 and I do not need AnyHD DVD to do so, however will not work with PowerDVD 7.3 even with AnyDVD HD thus I am not sure if AnyDVD HD is really doing anything.

Ok I will bite and you saying Starwars is about to be released on HD DVD or are you saying someone is about to put the smack down on AnyDVD HD?

I am refering to the delay of Fox titles as they update their AACS and possibly add BD+ to "stike back" at AnyDVD.

Personally, I have a HD-A1, and PowerDVD 7.3 with XBOX drive and Sony BD Drive so that I can play all titles.

- Rich