[Huey]

I have Athlon 1.3/384R/Win98SE/ATI Radeon VE w/ drivers 7199 and tried PowerDVD XP and it's jerky and DVD movie is displayed on BOTH heads. This not normal as overlay is only supported on one head at a time. Thus, I don't think it's using overlays at all. Sound is fine but image is going at 15 FPS. PowerDVD 3.0, WinDVD 2000 v2.8, ATI 4.1, Cinemaster 2000, and Zoomplayer 2.12 all displays smoothly and perfectly with overlay showing on 1 head at a time. Tried bob, weave, auto without improvement. Tried hardware accel on and off--no go. Tried to uninstall and reinstall PowerDVD XP and it's the same. Ended up reinstalling PowerDVD 3.0 and all is well again.


The same program is very good on my TNT2 based 2nd PC upstairs with Win98SE but PII 400 Mhz based. Go figure. Probably another Radeon VE quirk/feature.


Anyone has any ideas? If image on my upstairs PC was not so good I would not care to try to get 4.0 to work

 

[LynxFX]

I had the same problem with PowerDVD XP. I have a radeon VE as well and I'm running windows XP pro. I had it showing up on both my monitor and lt150. The picture showed tons of artifacts and pixels would get stuck for a second then move. DD and DTS worked fine though. I tried PowerDVD 3 and the picture was much better but I couldn't get spdif to work. So no digital sound, DD or DTS. Guess I'll stick with winDVD 2000 which has worked perfectly for me so far.

 

[Branxx]

Don't give up!


Following an advice from the forum I set-up two new modes (you can assign hot keys): Projector only (head 1) and monitor only (head 2).


If you start PowerDVD in either of this two modes it will properly use the overlay mode and the PQ is excellent.


In my other HTPC (WinXP) I use Radeon 64 DDR @ 1920x1200 and so far it looks as Radeon VE @ 1368x1024 (under W2K) gives better PQ.


The readme file for PowerDVD actually states an improved support for dual head video cards, but it looks to me they got it completely wrong as to make the player un-usable. If you try the player with Hydravision ON it crashes immediately.

 

[Huey]

That makes a lot of sense. Thankyou. I will try it tonight after work You're right about PQ. It's near ATI player/Cinemaster 2000 quality in my eyes. Much better than Powerdvd 3.0. Slightly better than Windvd 2.8. This plus DTS output is great if I can get it to work. Thanks again for answering. I'm new to this dual head stuff.

 

[Troubleshooter]

I've got the same problem,under WinXP. PQ is really great but I swear that hardware accel just isn't working. Radeon VE here as well, 2nd display disabled (supposedly). Running the latest drivers (tried the older ones too). It's not horrible for me but it definitly isn't completely smooth. I went back to WinDVD and after going 'ewwww' at the PQ, I went 'ahhh' at the smoothness. I dunno what's up but something sure is and it's a shame since it does indeed look so damn good picture wise.

-Trouble

 

[janovetz]

Yes... I've had this problem in Win2k with 3281 drivers and PowerDVD XP.


Note that the hotkey handling with the ATI drivers is buggy. Changes made via hotkeys is NOT the same as changes made by going through the display settings dialog and selecting the same scheme. Not sure why this is, but there is a difference.


The only solution I've been able to come to is to setup the schemes (monitor primary w/projector, projector primary w/monitor, projector only). The only reliable way to get overlay is to select the projector only option and play the movie. This must be done through the display settings dialog -- NOT the hotkeys.


I have been able to get projector primary with monitor secondary and watch movies with the overlay, but it's difficult to repeat and I haven't spent much time trying to figure out what I did.


Jake

 

[Huey]

Thanks all. I fixed PowerDVD XP 4.0 by doing like you guys said: disabling one of the heads and overlays work perfectly with DD and DTS output via my SPDIF. Imaging rivals ATI 4.1 player with DTS support. Yeah !!!


I'm also happy that my Radeon VE played entire movie without crashing I wish ATI get their act together on the VE drivers. I love the dual head as I can avoid switch box.