[PVR]

I have a Radeon equipped PC running 1920x1080p

for DVD playback.


I all but gave up on getting ATI DVD player 4.1

to work and as it turns out I think my problem

was that I was running "too new" radeon drivers

which were DXVA enabled and caused problems for

the old version of the ATI player.


Now that ATI DVD player 5.0 (DXVA compliant)

is out I gave that a try and the video

worked great, but I could

not get SPDIF (DD passthrough) audio to work.

I think there is a known problem with ATI DVD

player 5.0 and SPDIF so I bailed on that too.


Now I tried Cineplayer4 software and put it

on my Radeon system. The video works great

(better than PowerDVD3) and the SPDIF audio

works as well. This is all working with the

latest 4.13.7189 Win98SE Radeon drivers that

were just released.


I know people are real touchy in the "DVD player"

wars these days, but my vote now goes for

Cineplayer4 running on a Radeon.


In my case I have a Radeon LE flashed with the

Radeon 32DDR VGA bios all running on Win98SE

with ATI 7.13.7189 drivers. [email protected]

and beautiful anamorphic DVD playback with

SPDIF passthrough to a Fortissimo 1 card.


You can buy Cineplayer4 here:
http://www.ravisentdirect.com/dvd4/cpdvd.html


I suppose when PowerDVD XP-pro and

the rumored "new sheriff"/"dark horse" DVD

players show up, I can try them to see if

there is any improvement, but I am starting

to think the picture I have now is about as

good as I will ever see from a DVD.

 

[MKANET]

This is consistent with what I saw. However, I didn't know you could get ATI player 5.0 picture quality, S/PDIF, DXVA all under a non-XP machine.

 

[Steve Smith]

I've been trying to find a copy to check out. Does it have all of the overlay controls for the Radeon available?

 

[JKohn]

In addition to Radeon overlay controls, I'm curious does it support DTS or just DD?

 

[MKANET]

Jeff, it supports both in passthrough s/pdif.


Overlay controls are not built into the software player. I could be wrong, but I think you only need to set your overlay colors once...such as the 0IRE reg patch. I dont know if that patch even applies to the latest ATI drivers.

 

[Baggy]

I've got CinePlayer V4.0 that came with a G550 and under Win ME it doesn't support SPDIF passthrough.Got told that I need to upgrade to the retail version.Is this correct?

 

[Ralf Buschmann]

Quote:

Originally posted by Baggy I've got CinePlayer V4.0 that came with a G550 and under Win ME it doesn't support SPDIF passthrough.Got told that I need to upgrade to the retail version.Is this correct?

Apparently yes, see http://www.ravisentdirect.com/ubb/Fo...ML/000010.html


You can buy the retail version at http://www.ravisentdirect.com/dvd4/cpdvd.html

 

[Baggy]

Sorry that was my thread I started on Ravisent, should have explained better.

Was interested to know how PVR took the Cineplayer4 software from a Matrox and got the SPDIF audio to work or am I just getting confused.

 

[lawdawg]

Are there any goodies that make this player a must buy? Can you shift the image around on the screen? Can you setup presets for different aspect ratios? I guess what I'm asking is those that have it, do you see any benefit of using this over a properly configured ati 4.1 player (gamma patch, spidf output for 5.1 working etc) on windows me?


I'm ready to plunk my money down, but would be sorely disapointed if its no better than what I have now.


Thanks for the help,

 

[mistasteve]

Maybe Its my system but the player is exhibiting a MAJOR red chroma problem.


Its pretty much the worst that Ive seen.


Im using Windows XP with a Visiontek Gegorce 3. Anyone else have this problem or is it in my configuration (I also have Windvd and PowerDVD on the system. Could they be causing it?)


Thanks

 

[PVR]

Baggy:

People should just buy the product...


Lawdawg:

It was a "must have" for me because ATI4

just wouldn't run on my hardware. I think

for some platforms, Cineplayer4 is more stable

and flexible than the ATI product. Once we

find a way to get SPDIF out of ATI5.x then

it might be a toss-up.



The reds look fine on my system...

 

[JonMarsh]

The nice thing about this is that it appears to support *all* the features on whatever "compatible" video card you have. Which means that hopefully it will work well with the Radeon with full iDCT and alpha subblending support. This is Ravisent's latest technology, and is what their OEM's like ATI and Matrox are basing their newest players on.


I'll try it on one of my secondary systems, which uses a 64MB SDR Radeon (audio test and occasional bedroom HTPC), and if that's clean, then try upgrading the main system.


Cross fingers, here's hoping.


Regards,


Jon

 

[rick e]

I checked their website and they specifically state


"Supports Dolby Digital (AC-3), 5.1 channel Dolby Digital pass-through (S/PDIF), LPCM, MPEG-1 Layer 2, and MPEG-2 2-channel audio formats"


They do not indicate that they will properly pass DTS.


Anyone check if they are able to get the dts bitstream?


Rick

 

[Frode]

Just a couple of quick notes.


Cinemaster 4 does not support any of the unique ATI player functionalities. This includes adaptive de-interlacing and the color adjustments. Using the 0 IRE reg patch has no effect on any other player - this includes those that use just the DirectShow filters.


Also - someone mentioned LPCM. I wish they would do proper LPCM digital passthrough instead of sending the results through the mixer of the soundcard and thus messing it up. This is really annoying as I have a couple of DVDs with PCM audio and they sound stellar when I use a standalone DVD player - but just plain suck when going through my SBLive 5.1

 

[PVR]

Playing with

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Ravisent\\CineMaster DS DVD\\1.0\\VideoDecoder


( setting "UseDXVA=1" )


and adjusting some of the settings in

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\Software\\Ravisent\\CineMaster DS DVD\\1.0\\VideoDecoder\\DXVAConfig


I was able to get

"Hardware Acceleration: DXVA MC" to work

on my GeForce2MX machine.


*but* the picture looked worse than with

software playback only.


Also, I couldn't find any registry settings

to get hardware acceleration to work on the

Radeon (perhaps confirming what Frode just said).


(If you go into "settings -> information"

you can see if it is enabled)

 

[Steve Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Frode Cinemaster 4 does not support any of the unique ATI player functionalities.

We would have some more options if ATI would produce a video driver that has all of the overlay controls available.


Steve

 

[JonMarsh]

The Cineplayer 4.0 does have a product activation scheme similar to Windows XP- it normally requires an internet connection on the computer it's installed on, though there is a fallback to copying down a long product install number after the initial unlock and sending this via email to Ravisent tech support. That's the stage I'm at, waiting for a response from them.


For the few minutes it will run, it looks quite fine, scaling on a Radeon 64 to 1152X864, though ultimately I will use it at 1280X720.


It's a bit perverse in that you have to right click and hunt in some menus to get the display mode to support "full screen" when expanding the window; the default is to just enlarge the window to the maximum usable screen size. It does have different settings for 4:3 and anamorphic, plus default, plus normal and anamorphic stretch modes. Software playback quality is quite good, running with an old Athlon 600. I won't try to check out all the features and calibration with AVIA until I get it "unlocked" and registered. This is rather more burdensome than the install from CD for ATI, PowerDVD, or WINDVD.


Nothing at all to complain about for picture quality, so far. It does register it's decode filters to the original ATI player, so it won't work either except in a trial mode until Cineplayer is completely unlocked.


I'll have more comments after I can run it and compare with a system running the ATI 4.1.


Regards,


Jon

 

[Hugh Magoo]

can anyone comment on DTS with Cineplayer and Windows ME?


What is the difference between CinePlayer, and CineMaster?

(edit: answer to my question - cinemaster is for 95/98/NT 4.0)

( cineplayer is for 98SE/me/2000/xp)

 

[anogaijin]

I can't get any audio to work out of the spdif that's listed. It worked fine in the cinemaster 99 version I think it was. I am using a 4870 model SBLive! card with the hoontech sb2 adapter (or whatever it was called, the older #2 model) I don't understand how they could have messed this up though. It's the same as when I upgraded to that elsa cinemaster 2000 version, the spdif no longer did anything as well, but reverting back to 99 worked fine. This is on a Win2k sp2 machine with the latest drivers from creative labs.


Also, does everyone else have that ravisent ati spdif adapter listed as their only spdif device in 4.0, or is it just me? That seems to be the only device listed that actually says spdif, so I chose that. On ravisent's site, it specifically says that the 4870 and 5.1 versions of the sblive! work, so I figured I'd plunk down the money, and be good to go, but I was wrong.


On a different note, the video looks great, and has more options for video sizes, etc. It's pretty cool, and more stable than the other 2 versions I used.

 

[frbie]

Quote:

Originally posted by hmcgrath can anyone comment on DTS with Cineplayer and Windows ME? What is the difference between CinePlayer, and CineMaster? (edit: answer to my question - cinemaster is for 95/98/NT 4.0) ( cineplayer is for 98SE/me/2000/xp)

Hi,


perhaps not a perfect info, but dts works fine under XP.


In generell, as first thoughts, the picture seems to be very good, sound works, player seems to be stable and...there is a file mode.