Thumbs up for Nvidia's new DVD decoder

[vogelap]

Originally Posted by emg178

Wow - just upgraded from all in wonder 8500dv to 9550 and turned on nvidia's decoder w/ hardware accel, and hardware deinterlace. What a juge difference. Haven't played around a lot, but on best quality recordings with a pvr150 card, it is realy hard to tell the difference b/t a recording or delayed tv and just using the televisions built in tuner (which has noise reduction). On good recordings, the picture is a bit blurry when viewed on 32 inch screen from 5 feet. From 12-15 feet on that tube, either record quality is fine. I've not noticed the deinterlacing problem, although I have directx9c. I'm running windows 2000.

Aww... Heck. This is the post that finally has pushed me over the edge... I'm going to install the latest NVIDIA decoder on my ATI9600 and see what it looks like.

[MonsterHTPC]

Anyone know what the GUID is for the Audio portion of Nvidia Decoder?

FYI a few asked about getting this to work in Beyond Media.

Open the BeyondMediaSettings.xml file and all the way near the bottom you will see a list of the decoders, audio and video used. Basically use the GUID listed many posts above, and create an entry for the Nvidia Decoders. For Example:

    <Property>
      <Name>Nvidia Decoder</Name>
      <Value>71E4616A-DB5E-452B-8CA5-71D9CC7805E9</Value>
    </Property>

[Bilar Crais]

Originally Posted by MonsterHTPC

Anyone know what the GUID is for the Audio portion of Nvidia Decoder?

6C0BDF86-C36A-4D83-8BDB-312D2EAF409E

[vogelap]

Originally Posted by Bilar Crais

6C0BDF86-C36A-4D83-8BDB-312D2EAF409E

What do I need to do in Beyond Media / Beyond TV to use the Audio portion?

[darren_e]

Here's my testimony-

I finally upgraded my system. I installed a PNY 6600GT video card into my system. In doing so, I re-installed windows XP and did *NOT* install service pack 2 (nor do I want to right now), installed nVidia's new codecs, and I must say- video plays clean with no jerkiness.

Colors look good, but the picture is not as sharp as when I was using my ATI 9600XT but keep in mind, that I have no tweaked anything on my new video card yet.

Overall, I agree- THUMBS UP TO NVIDIA'S NEW DVD DECODER. Right now I'm using the trial version of the decoder...I'm hoping with a little research, I can find out if I can get this decoder for free since purchasing a new video card but I highly doubt it.

In conclusion, I should have picked up an nVidia video card a long time ago and be done with it. I'm 90% satisfied and with a few tweaks, I think I can reach 100%.

[MonsterHTPC]

Vogue

For BTV use the XML addition as posted above. You don't need to make any other adjustments for sound.

For Beyond Media in the XML file I stated above if you scroll to the bottom its apparent which areas are for audio and video, will post some very specific methods of doing it once I get it down.

Bilar - Big Farscape fan as well

I tried that GUID however still no sound in Beyond Medio unless I use another decoder. I want to get the NVidia sound working as I plan to get the advanced sound pack version of the NVidia decoders, just don't want to purchase them if we can't get sound in Beyond Media.

Anyone else successfully using this with Beyond Media for DVD playback?

Another odditie I have noted in BTV, see if anyone can reproduce or not. I noticed that in BTV you can't adjust the brightness, contrast, gamma style functions, well you can change them in BTV but they don't effect the picture. I also tried changing them in the Nvidia settings icon, still no luck.

[Bilar Crais]

Originally Posted by MonsterHTPC

Bilar - Big Farscape fan as well.

I was kind of hoping they'd bring it back, but I've heard production costs are astronomical.

Originally Posted by MonsterHTPC

Another odditie I have noted in BTV, see if anyone can reproduce or not. I noticed that in BTV you can't adjust the brightness, contrast, gamma style functions, well you can change them in BTV but they don't effect the picture. I also tried changing them in the Nvidia settings icon, still no luck.

I have the same thing. You could try bringing the Windows display properties applet up from the desktop and adjust the Video Overlay to your taste...that works. I have no idea why the decoder's native adjustments don't work.


If anyone is coming in on the tail end of this thread, and have an Nvidia FX card, do yourself a favor and install the Forceware 67.03 drivers. They have the lowest CPU usage of any recent drivers I've tried when used with the Nvidia Decoder. It's something like 10-15%. Nvidia just released 71.80 and I gave them a try. CPU use increased to 65% during LiveTV, so I rolled back to 67.03.

[MonsterHTPC]

Bilar

Yeah it was like 2 mil an episode to create. At least they did a mini series to wrap everything up and kinda end it.

Did you ever get the NVidia Decoders working in Beyond Media with the sound? I can use the NVidia Decoders for Video, but not for audio in Beyond Media.

[Rich A]

Originally Posted by MonsterHTPC

Bilar

Yeah it was like 2 mil an episode to create. At least they did a mini series to wrap everything up and kinda end it.

Did you ever get the NVidia Decoders working in Beyond Media with the sound? I can use the NVidia Decoders for Video, but not for audio in Beyond Media.

OT (sorry) Claudia Black was on Stargate SG-1. She played (guess what?) a karate kicking fighter in a black suit. Sound familiar ?? <grin>

[Hurin]

Getting audio via SPDIF to work with BM also requires setting up SPDIF in the NVIDIA decoder itself.

First, start playing a DVD in windowed mode in Media Player (not BM).

This should show the NVIDIA decoder icon in the system tray while it plays the DVD. Right-click it and open properties. From there, this bit of NVIDIA's website applies. . .

-----------------

How do I turn on S/PDIF mode?
Browse to the NVIDIA DVD Decoder Properties and select the “Audio� properties page. Click on the “Speaker Setup� button and select “a receiver� and then check “via an S/PDIF cable�. After this is done, the NVIDIA DVD Decoder will be in bypass mode and output all audio to an external receiver or decoder, including Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS surround sound.

----------------------

Now, if you've set up the followin properly at the bottom of your xml file as described above in this thread, you should be good to go. Here is how the bottom of my beyondmediasettings.xml file looks (the parts in blue are what I added):

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Snapstream\Beyond Media\BeyondMediaSettings.xml

-------this appears at bottom--------

<PropertyBag>
    <Name>DVDAudioFilters</Name>
    <Property>
      <Name>CyberLink</Name>
      <Value>9bc1b780-85e3-11d2-98d0-0080c84e9c39</Value>
    </Property>
    <Property>
      <Name>InterVideo</Name>
      <Value>7e2e0dc1-31fd-11d2-9c21-00104b3801f6</Value>
    </Property>
    <Property>
      <Name>NVIDIA-Audio</Name>
      <Value>6C0BDF86-C36A-4D83-8BDB-312D2EAF409E</Value>
    </Property>
  </PropertyBag>
  <PropertyBag>
    <Name>DVDVideoFilters</Name>
    <Property>
      <Name>CyberLink</Name>
      <Value>9bc1b781-85e3-11d2-98d0-0080c84e9c39</Value>
    </Property>
    <Property>
      <Name>InterVideo</Name>
      <Value>0246ca20-776d-11d2-8010-00104b9b8592</Value>
    </Property>
    <Property>
      <Name>NVIDIA-Video</Name>
      <Value>71E4616A-DB5E-452B-8CA5-71D9CC7805E9</Value>
    </Property>
    </PropertyBag>
</PropertyBag>

[darren_e]

Nvidia seems to be selling three versions of the Decoder-

Bronze, gold, and platinum.

It looks like the difference in versions is the audio formats supported (and the price of course) such as Dolby 5.1, DTS, Pro-Logic II, and Dolby Headphone.

I'm using SPDIF audio from my motherboard's nForce SoundStorm chip into my Sony receiver for surround sound. Does this mean I am probably using SPDIF passthrough for my audio??
Since I'm using SPDIF as my audio out, is there any reason to get the Platinum version or would I just be wasting the extra $30.00 ???

[MonsterHTPC]

Save yourself the money and just ensure your soundstorm is setup to pass the signal through.

I forget the sound storm settings, but sound storm has the ability to take multi channel sound and encode it into a dolby signal to send over spdif. Just look around and make sure there aren't any settings turned on that would do any processing to the signal before sending it out. Would hate to have an app decode the audio into two channel stereo then the soundstorm reencode it into dolby. Check your BM settings and see that they are set for SPDIF pass through etc... and you should be fine. Unless you are using analog outs, you don't need the upper two versions of NVidia decoders.

[Bilar Crais]

Originally Posted by darren_e

Nvidia seems to be selling three versions of the Decoder-

Bronze, gold, and platinum.

I wondered why the latest only has two speaker option. '58 had full capability.

[MonsterHTPC]

Is anyone actually using this in Beyond Media with analog outs.

Still can't get the audio portion to work, video is a cake walk, but audio wont go through.

[Hurin]

Originally Posted by darren_e

Since I'm using SPDIF as my audio out, is there any reason to get the Platinum version or would I just be wasting the extra $30.00 ???

Save the $30. If you'll only be passing SPDIF to your receiver (and every version of the NV Decoder supports that), it would just be a waste.

H