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Blu-ray disc release list and must-have titles. Buy the latest and best Blu-ray titles to show off in your home theater!

LG drive + PDVD -- Blu-ray great, hd-dvd not so much.
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Mark_A_W




Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 3068
Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia


PostLink    Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 3:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote


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Touchy bugger eh?
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ecrabb
Forum Moderator



Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah

TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010


PostLink    Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just thought I'd see if I could push your buttons again.

Twisted Evil

SC
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MikeEby




Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 5238
Location: Osceola, Indiana


PostLink    Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 5:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My Impressions:
The first Movie I watched with the combo drive was Mission Impossible 3 on HD-DVD. I did see a few dropped frames, nothing too bad.

Next Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix BR. About the same as MI3, a few dropped frames, but stable.

I just finish watching The Simpsons the Movie on Bluray. I didn’t see any dropped frames.

My hardware is similar to lyd’s.
• E6600 but no over-clocking.
• MSI P965 Platinum. Latest audio driver from MSI.
• NVidia 7300GS w/256Mb with latest NVidia driver as of last Saturday.
• Power DVD with latest version as of last Saturday.
• 2 GB Generic 667 MHz Ram (2 Strips).
• Running 1080p @ 60 Hz to NEC 1351. (Haven’t had time to play with custom refresh rates yet)
• Vista Ultra 32bit all updates. (Have not installed SP1)

I may do some research and upgrade my video card. The card I am using now is one with HDMI/DVI out. I am using an Analog adapter on the DVI port. My desktop is pretty darn sharp for an 8” CRT @1080p.

I’m thinking about an EVGA 8500GT 256MB with good ole Analog & DVI out but has HDCP circuits. I hope this could resolve some of my dropped frames as HD advisor says my video card is not up to the task. I am really not crazy about ATI Products.

I am using an analog signal path to the projector as I have given up on Moome or digital inputs for now and maybe forever. I see no advantage to them as long as I am able to run full resolution because with my setup I have very short analog cables.

No problems with crashing and the system is very stable except Power DVD has some quirks. What I have found is, if I run PowerDVD with the keyboard it is very robust. Never hangs or crashes, when using the keyboard for menu navigation. Using the mouse to navigate via the menus I get random hangs occasionally that I first noticed tonight with “The Simpsons” disk. I hadn’t noticed this issue on other disks.

Two annoying Power DVD bugs:
1. When the movie fades to black the mouse cursor will appear. (Fix is to park the mouse out of sight stupid but effective).
2. Moving the mouse cursor around will sometimes cause the disk to pause and have hit play to resume.

Conclusion:
In general, I am happy with the solution, and in time I feel these quirky software bugs will be ironed out.
I am starting to be a Windows Vista proponent, the install was one of the smoothest HTPC I have ever loaded. All I did was type in the Product Key came back in 25 minutes and I had a basic load. Most options are set at the very beginning and end of the load process, why did it take Microsoft 7 revisions to figure that out? I then downloaded the drivers from NVidia and MSI loaded the Power DVD that came with the drive and a PowerDVD update and everything worked. I did disable all power saver features in Vista for some reason my machine didn’t like coming out of sleep mode.

I rebuild the machine when I installed the new LG drive so I don’t know how it performed with XP/WMC. But my guess is all new driver and app development will be focused on Vista. Love it or hate it, Vista is here to stay. My old ATI HDTV card was NOT supported in Vista but to be honest I am not sure I will mess around with it. IMO there is nothing on OTA TV worth recording and I usually don’t watch it in the theater anyway.

About 2-1/2 years ago I quit buying SD DVDs because I felt they would end up with my laser disks in the attic. Now I can finally resume my collection and not be concerned with any type of format wars or future incompatibility.

Mike


Last edited by MikeEby on Sat Dec 29, 2007 11:10 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Mark_A_W




Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 3068
Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia


PostLink    Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't have either of those Powerdvd bugs, interesting. Which build did you use, or is this the OEM version that came with the drive?

(I've ditched HDMI and gone back to analogue too - it just works.)
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MikeEby




Joined: 24 Jun 2007
Posts: 5238
Location: Osceola, Indiana


PostLink    Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2007 1:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mark_A_W wrote:
I don't have either of those Powerdvd bugs, interesting. Which build did you use, or is this the OEM version that came with the drive?

(I've ditched HDMI and gone back to analogue too - it just works.)


Mark I was hoping you would chime in! I installed the OEM version off the disk, I then download and installed the upgrade when it was suggested I do so. What I have installed now according to the PDVD about box is 7.3 then is says SR DVD071122-10 I assume the SR stands for Service Release.

I bought a full version (sort of) a while back on EBay, to use with an Xbox drive. I also did try 72Hz today, for some reason on my projector when changed to 72Hz I get really bad "beating" in the picture, by beating I mean flicker or shake. It seems like is has always done that, but I really can’t be sure, it may have started when I switched to Nvidia from ATI. Perhaps there is something wrong with the projector but it seems odd because it works well on all other refresh rates including 100Hz. With this crummy Nvidia driver it does not seem to allow custom settings.

I have the focus on my XG dialed in pretty well even @ 1080p; my biggest problem area being the lower right corner, the windows clock is very readable on the taskbar. With so many disks released at 2:35AR today that portion of the screen goes mostly unused anyway. There is line overlap I’m sure but it show one hell of a sweet picture all things considered. IMO there is nothing as good as the reds on tweaked out NEC LC projected, it blows away digital.

I could probably be convinced to try an ATI card but I really don’t want to spend much more then $90-$110 US on it. ATI pissed me off by not supporting the HD Wonder in Vista, I never used the card much anyway with MCE so I guess could forgive them if I get flawless BR and HD-DVD picture @72Hz. I would prefer pure analog out, BTW by analog I mean VGA, it seems like most ATI cards require an adapter through one of the DVI ports, it’s probably no big deal using an adapter. What ATI cards work with PowerStrip? I really liked the way you could adjust porch setting real-time and miss those features with the Nvidia products. I believe at one time I actually bought a license for PowerStrip just to encourage future development.

I kind of get a kick out of reading about all the digital converter boards and all their hopes and dreams. Then the controversy over 8 bit DAC’s versus 10 or 12 Bit. It seems that all seem have issues. I really don’t feel like being a part of an R & D team when it comes to debugging hardware I paid for, epically when it just doesn’t seem to be needed.

I feel we can thank Microsoft for creating the VGA loop hole in the HDCP standard. They were thinking in the best interest of themselves, Xbox and HTPC customers. Add to the fact digital monitors were still young when the standard was created and they had the financial muscle to say no to MPAA.

Mike
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lyd




Joined: 15 Sep 2007
Posts: 390
Location: Lake Mills, Wi


PostLink    Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 4:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I seem to have solved my stutter and drop-out problems, for the most part. Turning of the auto-detect new speakers feature of the Realtek Soundmax HD audio chipset was one piece of the puzzle, and switching to single monitor mode instead of running dual head was the other.

The single monitor thing is pretty damned irritating. I hope a fix for that develops.

On the bright side, I went back to the discs that had given me the biggest problems, and they all play fine now.

lyd
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