VOGONS


First post, by computergeek92

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I bought my first ever DVD decoder not so long ago and chose the Realmagic EM8300 card by sigma designs since it was said to be one of the best. How do I get it to work? I've plugged in the card alongside my pci graphics card, installed the driver for Windows 2000, and also unplugged the vga monitor cable and attatched it to the DVD decoders vga port. No display was on the monitor at that point. I notice the card has lots of fancy features, like spdif and several internal plugs. One of them is "CD-in" which I usually see on sound cards but I normally plug the cable from CD-in to the back of my CD drive to get midi playback. I'm a confused noob. 😜 Where do I wire the internal ports? Here is a picture of the card: 2wdubdd.jpg

Dedicated Windows 95 Aficionado for good reasons:
http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html

Reply 1 of 23, by Stiletto

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I've a REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback card. Here's a brief excerpt from the installation manual:

Note: If you are installing a DVD-ROM drive at the same time as the REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card, remember […]
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Note: If you are installing a DVD-ROM drive at the same time as the REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card, remember to attach the CD-Audio cable from the DVD-ROM drive to your sound card. Otherwise, you will not be able to play CD-Audio titles with the DVD-ROM drive. This will not affect the audio of DVD-Video or DVD-ROM titles.

Chapter 2: Hardware Installation 6

Video Connection
Your REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card must be connected to your VGA card or your PC's VGA output port in order to display MPEG video on your VGA monitor. (Refer to Figure 1 earlier in this Chapter for reference.) Follow the steps to connect the DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card to your VGA output (see Figure 2).

1. Attach the round 9-pin DIN connector of the provided External VGA Pass-Through Cable to the VGA IN connector at the back of the REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card (refer to Figure 1).
2. Attach the other end (15-pin "D" shape) of the cable to the output port on your VGA card or your PC's VGA output port.
3. Connect the VGA cable from your VGA monitor to the VGA OUT of the DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card.

Figure 2. Video Connection

Chapter 2: Hardware Installation 7

Audio Connections
There are two audio outputs on the REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card: the Stereo Out and the S/PDIF connector. The Stereo Out outputs a standard analog stereo signal that can be used by virtually any stereo receivers or amplified speakers. It also contains the Pro Logic Surround Sound encoding that allows you to achieve surround sound by attaching this signal to a Pro Logic receiver.

If your system has a sound card, we recommend attaching the Stereo Output signal to the LINE-IN port on your sound card, and then attach your Pro Logic receiver or speakers to the LINE-OUT or SPEAKER port on your sound card. This will allow you to use one set of speakers to listens to both DVD/MPEG-2 audio as well as other types of audio from your sound card. It will also allow you to control the volume by using the mixer program provided with your sound card. A standard mini jack audio cable can be used for this audio connection of the DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card and the sound card. Otherwise, attach this signal directly to a Pro Logic receiver or speakers. Connect your Dolby Digital Surround Sound receiver to the S/PDIF connector. This signal contains all six Dolby Digital Surround Sound channels.

Figure 3. Audio Connections

Chapter 2: Hardware Installation 8

TV Connections
There are two options for connecting your REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Cad to a television: S-Video by using a standard S-Video cable, or composite video by using an S-Video to Composite converter cable.

The REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback card can be connected directly to a TV using an S-Video cable. The S-Video TV Out connector on the REALmagic Hollywood Plus is a 7-pin S-Video connector, which can be connected directly to a TV using a standard S-Video cable. If your television set does not have an S-Video input port, you may connect it the the REALmagic Hollywood Plus by using an S-Video to Composite converter cable.

Composite Video is more common and works with most televisions.
The S-Video connector provides better picture quality.

Figure 4. TV Connections

Chapter 2: Hardware Installation 9

Advanced Connections
The DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card also includes an internal CD Audio In connector that allows you to pass CD audio through to the internal CD Audio In connector on your sound card. To do this, attach the CD audio cable from the DVD-ROM drive to the REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card, then attach another cable from the internal Line Out port from the REALmagic Hollywood Plus to the CD Audio In connector on your sound card. Please refer to Figure 1 for the locations of these internal connectors.

The signal from the Line Out port combines the CD Audio In signal from the DVD-ROM drive with the same signal that is output through the Stereo Output Port on the REALmagic Hollywood Plus. This solution eliminates the external audio cable that normally goes from the DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card to your sound card.

If you are using this solution, attach the Pro Logic receiver to the Line Out port of your sound card to obtain the surround sound signal.

Note: With this solution, the volume for both CD audio and MPEG audio will be controlled by the CD Audio portion of your mixer.

Note: Due to the copyright protection circuit in use by this product, please do not connect any recording device, such as a VCR, to the Composite Video Out or the S-Video Out connectors of the DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card. For best playback, make sure the DVD title is played directly from the DVD/MPEG-2 Playback Card onto a TV, not through a VCR.

Chapter 2: Hardware Installation 10

In summary, you need the custom proprietary 9-pin DIN to 15-pin DSUB (VGA) cable to connect your decoder card to your video card, and then you connect your monitor to the 15-pin VGA connector on the decoder card. Running the internal audio cable is optional but allows you to eliminate the external audio cable that runs from the back of the card to your sound card.

I may have an older card than you though, mine expressly came with Microsoft Windows 95/98 support only if I recall correctly. Hope this helps.

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 2 of 23, by Roman78

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Do you have a Driver CD? Just bought this card on ebay without anything, so I don't have a driver, found some on the internet although I would like to have a copy of the original CD. Could you make and ISO and upload is to vogonsdrivers.com?

And are there also DOS drivers available for this card?

Reply 3 of 23, by JayCeeBee64

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Roman78 wrote:

Do you have a Driver CD? Just bought this card on ebay without anything, so I don't have a driver, found some on the internet although I would like to have a copy of the original CD. Could you make and ISO and upload is to vogonsdrivers.com?

And are there also DOS drivers available for this card?

I have a REALmagic Hollywood Plus also. No driver CD though, only floppies:

e1IMiBsl.png RbSuS9ql.png

No DOS drivers that I know of, either.

Ooohh, the pain......

Reply 4 of 23, by Roman78

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Ah, right. The good old times when most computers didn't had a CD-ROM Drive 😊

Could you make disk images of those two disks (e.g. with WinImage) and upload those, or e-mail those to me. I trust those more than some downloaded files I found on Google.

Reply 5 of 23, by Stiletto

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Roman78 wrote:

Could you make disk images of those two disks (e.g. with WinImage) and upload those, or e-mail those to me. I trust those more than some downloaded files I found on Google.

If he can't, I can.

IIRC my card did come with a CD (actually a double-sided DVD I believe) but it just had sample videos on it and no software, the drivers came on floppies. I'll check before the weekend.

Still, I think VOGONSDrivers downloads are generally more trustworthy than the average DriverArchive download found on Google 😉
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=72

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 6 of 23, by JayCeeBee64

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Roman78 wrote:

Could you make disk images of those two disks (e.g. with WinImage) and upload those, or e-mail those to me. I trust those more than some downloaded files I found on Google.

Sure thing, no problem 😀 . Just give me some time to create the images and test them out, to make sure they work. I'll upload them to my Dropbox account and post the links here once they're done.

EDIT: Images are done and uploaded. Here's the link to the zip file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wbbgjks5hkgwwsw/rmhp17di.zip?dl=0

Two images are inside the zip (Drivers Disk and Applications Disk, both version 1.7). WinImage 5 was used to create them, no problems found during testing.

Enjoy! 😀

Ooohh, the pain......

Reply 7 of 23, by bnewland

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Not sure if anyone still needs the driver cd, but here is an image of mine. The PCI card is a Rev. A4., P33L4964. Hope it helps....Here is the README.TXT
--------
README.TXT For REALmagic Hollywood Plus(TM)
Release 1.6.2 (B.113b) ------ 5/20/99
===========================================

Congratulations on your purchase of REALmagic Hollywood Plus DVD/MPEG2
multimedia Playback . This file contains important information for
installation of the drivers and application software for this card.

_____________________________________

FOR FUTURE UPDATES & NT DRIVERS VISIT OUR WEB SITE
http://www.sigmadesigns.com
Latest Drivers & FTP Access - Hollywood_Plus
____________________

WHAT'S NEW IN THIS RELEASE 1.6.2
=================================
- A fix for the playback with AC-3 audio output for some movies
(in the previous release it needed to start in Stereo output mode)
- An improvement in the auto-calibration
- The Help file shows a description for the buttons which did not
have one in the previous release.
- Support for Chinese help under Chinese Windows
- There is a special audio output now for the Formosa (nFIC) sound
card based on the ESS Canyon3D sound chip. This audio output
setting will route internally the audio output to the sound card,
downmixing to 6 channels WAVE API. NO output comes from the stereo
audio jack of Hollywood Plus. This setting is ONLY good for this
sound card. If you don't have this sound card, please do not use
this setting.

WHAT'S NEW IN RELEASE 1.6
==========================
- The TV output option has two new settings :
- MultiSystem : the output will follow the source of the movie,
i.e. if an NTSC movie the output will be NTSC
and the same for PAL
- PAL 60 : the output will be at a frequency of 60 Hz, the same
as NTSC but with PAL colors (needs TV set with this
capability)
- A fix for the playback on some systems that were crashing when
outputting to TV
- A fix for the permanent display of some movies' subtitles
- A better handling of the AC-3 output to suppress noise appearing on
some Dolby Digital decoders (when AC-3 output is enabled)
- A fix for the disappearance of the second subtitle line or the
highlighting of a wrong area for the menus buttons on TV (when
loopback cable is not present)
- A fix for movies encoded the same way like "Die Hard III" region 4
which was not played back properly
- A larger tolerance range for the PAL TV sets
- Addition of a button in DVD Station to set your preferred default
DVD-ROM drive
- Addition of the option "/f=filename" on the command line of
DVD Station to allow the direct play back of the file
- Compatibility with the IBM MPEG 2 title "Worldbook 1999"

CONTENTS
========
I - DRIVER AND APPLICATIONS INSTALLATION
II - BORDER ADJUSTMENT AND COLOR CALIBRATION
III - DVD REGION CODE CHANGE
IV - TV OUT
V - FULL SCREEN PLAYBACK
VI - HINTS TO RESOLVE PROBLEMS AND BETTER PLAYBACK

I - DRIVER AND APPLICATIONS INSTALLATION
====================================

After the hardware installation of the card do the following:

1. For an existing installation (if not go to step 2): uninstall the
previous software by going to the REALmagic Group - Uninstall,
reboot, and follow next steps 2 to 7 below.
NOTE : You do not need when running SETUP of step 5 to set the
region code again as mentioned in step 6.

2. On booting your system, Windows 95 will detect the card. Insert the
REALmagic Hollywood Plus Drivers Disk in your floppy drive A and
click Finish. This will install Hollywood Plus drivers on your hard
disk.
3. To install the DVD navigation software insert Application Disk into
drive A and run SETUP.
4. The Setup program will show two options: Install the REALmagic DVD
application or Change the DVD region code.
5. Check the DVD application installation option and follow the
instructions.
6. After the files are copied, set a DVD region code as part of the
setup program.
Note: Setup will not ask you to set the DVD region code if you
install the card later in the same region.
7. Click Finish to complete the installation process by performing
Auto Calibration.

II - BORDER ADJUSTMENT AND COLOR CALIBRATION
=======================================

NOTE: If the border is not adjusted properly after Auto Calibration
you may need to set the Border Adjustment to get more
accurate adjustment. You need to set the Border Adjustment
only once for each setting of display resolution.

1. At the Start button, click Programs and select REALmagic Hollywood
Plus program group. Click REALmagic Configuration.
2. Click on Adjust Border and use the proper buttons to adjust the
black rectangle in the magenta box.
3. Change different values to adjust stability if you are viewing
jumping pixels on MPEG video. Click OK when you are done.
4. The Reset Default button will reset the color calibration and
border adjustment values to the factory default settings.

Note 1: Color calibration is required if the colors are not
normal or the screen is pink or not clear. If color
calibration is required, Click on "Auto Calibration". The
screen will flash for 5 to 10 seconds then displays a
message that the calibration is complete. Click OK.
Note 2: In the cases where this calibration is unsuccessful,
you can click on Advanced..., then the Manual
Calibration. This will involve fixing the R, G, B
sliders as shown in the window four times. You can use the
up/down arrow keys for fine tuning and you don't need
necessarily to see the cross but just the disappearance
of the vertical bar.

III - DVD REGION CODE CHANGE
======================

1. Run the set program from Application disk. Select DVD Region Code
change option. Set the region code according to the country you
are in.
_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Note: The setup program will allow you to change the region code
for five times. If you want to reset the region code settings
after five times contact the card manufacturer or an
authorized distributor or service center. A nominal handling
fee will be charged.
_______________________________________________________________

IV - TV OUT
======

The REALmagic Hollywood Plus can display on a VGA monitor or a TV.
To switch between these modes an icon is provided on the left
corner of the DVD Station control panel that toggles between
computer monitor and TV.

In order to display on a TV, some additional settings may be
required. From the DVD Station control panel click Options button.
This will open a window for options setting. Click the settings tab.
Select the options according to your TV type. The color control,
brightness, and contrast controls have also been provided for TV.

Note : Some TVs are sensitive with video frequency input and may
show Black and White video on TV. This has specially been
noticed on some PAL TVs. In such a situation do the
following WHILE the TV-Out option is active and DVD/MPEG is
playing on TV.:
1. From the DVD station click the "Options Dialog -
Settings tab.
2. Press Configure and then press Advanced Settings.
3. Select Expert Settings and click the mouse. This
will open a pop-up window. Adjust different values
until you have color picture on TV. Notice that you
need to keep on going in one direction when changing
the values i.e. either always increasing or
decreasing because of the hysteresis nature of this
adjustment.

V - FULL SCREEN PLAYBACK
====================

In order to playback in full screen, double click the left button
of mouse anywhere in the MPEG window or press Ctrl+Z. This will
playback the video in full-screen mode. In order to go back to the
window mode, press Space in full-screen mode and it will start
playback in a scalable MPEG window.

VI - HINTS TO RESOLVE PROBLEMS AND BETTER PLAYBACK
=============================================

1. The drivers are installed and the Hollywood Plus appears in the
"Device Manager" but the CD's won't play.

Run SETUP from the second diskette (Applications) to create the
"REALmagic Hollywood Plus" group. This group contains the
DVD-Station, README file, REALmagic Configuration, and Uninstall.

2. With the Hollywood Plus board and the drivers correctly installed
the system crashes after boot-up.

Start Win '95 in the Safe mode, select the Hollywood Plus board in
the Device Manager, manually change the Memory Range to a different
setting for the Hollywood Plus and reboot.

3. The REALmagic Configuration can be run but when the DVD-Station is
started (or the Media Player with an MPEG file ) the system hangs.

Check the Device Manager for a conflict in the IRQ resources and
make the necessary change(s).

4. After installing the first disk for the drivers, and run SETUP from
the second disk, the following message comes up : "Driver cannot be
loaded, another instance from the driver may be running". Or when
playing an MPEG file after the software installation, there is an
error message "MMSYSTEM 266 : undetectable error ...".

Make sure that the pass-thru cable is linking the display adapter
with Hollywood Plus. If it is there, reseat Hollywood Plus in
different PCI slots because of some of the motherboards BIOSes.

View of the 9 pin socket of the pass-through cable,
seen from the bracket:

_________
/_________\
| |
| 9 8 7 |
| 6 5 4 3 |
\ 2 1 /
---------

1:Blue IN
2:GND
3:Green IN
4:GND
5:Vsync IN
6:Hsync IN
7:Red IN
8:SDA (from pin12 of DB15) - for PnP monitors
9:SCL (from pin15 of DB15) - for PnP monitors

5. The MPEG files play and the audio can be heard but the video is a
solid color.

Run "REALmagic Configuration" and select "Auto Calibration." Or,
make sure that the output of the Display Adapter is routed to the
Hollywood Plus input and the Display Adapter's output is routed to
the monitor.

6. The picture is waving.

Run "REALmagic Configuration," select "Border Adjust" and adjust
the STABILITY: smoothness of the two vertical sides.

7. MPEG 1 files run normally, but DVD movies are shaky.

Make certain that the DVD-ROM drive is connected as a Master on the
IDE controller. And, if your version of Win 95 is OSR2, turn ON the
DMA flag in the "Device Manager-DVD ROM drive-Settings-DMA."

8. When running Video CD on the CD-ROM drive, the playback is shaky.

Connect the Video CD drive as a slave to the hard disk and not on
the same controller with the DVD-ROM drive. If you are using the
original release of Win 95 make sure you have installed the
Microsoft fix (IOSYSUPD.EXE - from their web site). This fix
smoothes the playback of Video CDs from the slave drives.

9. I get an "MMSYSTEM error 275" when I try to play a DVD encrypted
movie.

This can happen if you are using the original release of Win 95 and
you have the CD-ROM drive as a slave to the DVD-ROM drive. Replace
the file ESDI_506.PDR with its equivalent in OSR2 in the
subdirectory IOSUBSYS of Windows/System. Or, you can download from
http://www.sigmadesigns.com - "Knowledge Base, FAQ about Hollywood Plus"
an ATAPI driver compatible with most IDE DVD-ROM drives.

10. For DVD-ROMs that require high data transfer rates, it is better to
have the DVD-ROM drive connected to an IDE controller with the
"Bus Master" mode activated.

11. If you are using Rel OSR2 of Win 95, check on the DMA feature of
your DVD-ROM drive. This can be found in the Device Manager by
double-clicking the entry for the DVD-ROM drive, clicking the tab
Settings, and checking 'On' the DMA feature.

12. Playing long DVD movies, above 4 GB in size, is supported by the
Microsoft CDFS.VXD of Win 95 Rel OSR2 and later versions.

13. Capturing of an MPEG frame from an encrypted DVD movie is not
supported because of Copyright issues. In other cases the capture
feature gives its best results at a color depth of 64K (16 bits)
or higher.

14. Playing VOB files using the Media Player might not show the best
performance because of different navigation schemes. Use the
DVD Station for this.

15. Playing DVD under WIN98(Beta version) will show better performance
if you run MSCONFIG, General, Advanced and Disable UDF file system.

16. Video is fine on VGA but is Black and White on TV.

Please see section for TV-Out.

17. When watching the movie on TV, the picture gets dimmer and brighter
at short intervals and with some movies some yellow horizontal
lines appear on the TV screen.

The TV set is connected to the PC system via a VCR or an alike
device. This device initiates the Macrovision protection of the
movie. Connect the TV directly to the PC system.

18. The S-Video connector on Hollywood Plus is a 7-hole jack and
my S-Video cable has a 4-pin socket only.

The 4-pin cable is compatible with the 7-pin socket. There are
more pins on the 7-pin socket to provide for the composite TV
output.

19. I lost the S-Video/Composite Converter cable and have no access to
another one.

Order another one from your supplier. In the USA, you can check
the phone number of the fulfillment center on the web site. The
pinout of this converter is as follows :

_________
/ \
| 7 6 5 |
| 4 3 2 1 |
| |
\ OOOOO /
---------

1:GND
2:Composite
3:GND
4:GND
5:Luma
6:not connected
7:Chroma

20. You can watch some movies but not others, using a Toshiba DVD-ROM
drive model SD-1202 with the firmware number 1018.

Upgrade the firmware to 1020.

21. If the TV button is missing in DVD Station and you only have the
fullscreen button, do the following :

- Close DVD Station
- Run RegEdit
- Go to H_KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, SOFTWARE, Sigma Designs,
REALmagic, Station
- Delete the "Board" entry
- Close RegEdit
- Run DVD Station

22. The Hollywood Plus drivers do not support DTS audio on DVD movies.

23. You want DVD Station to check your DVD-ROM first and it has a
drive letter after the CD-ROM.

- You can change in the Device Manager the letters of the drives.
- Or, you can create a shortcut for DVD Station and add in the
target line /d=x (where x is the drive letter of the DVD drive)

Rel 1.6 and later of this DVD Station allows you to set your
preferred drive.

24. You see the video but no audio.

- Try first the speakers plugged in Hollywood Plus and be sure the
output from DVD Station is Stereo.
- Then check the audio jumper cable from the output of Hollywood
Plus to the input of the sound card. If no sound, check the
volume mixer to have Line-in NOT muted or at low level.
- If you are using a Dolby Digital Receiver, make sure that it
accepts AC-3 streams (if your setting in DVD Station is AC-3),
otherwise it must be a PCM decoder and in this case set the
DVD Station output to PCM.

25. The maximum refresh rates allowed with the Hollywood Plus MPEG
playback depends partially on the display board. However, the
following can be used as a guideline:

640 x 480 120 Hz
800 x 600 100 Hz
1024 x 768 85 Hz
1152 x 864 85 Hz
1280 x 1024 85 Hz (75 with some boards)
1600 x 1200 85 Hz

26. The Hollywood Plus does NOT support the MP3 files playback.

27. While the movie is playing, the DVD Station freezes.

Check if you have a network card 3C905B. If it is, uninstall its
driver and install only the 4th disk (avoiding the diagnostic
program).

28. You have a third generation DVD-ROM drive (RPC2 specs that require
a region code on the drive) and you cannot playback movies.

Run the utility for this drive to set the region code to your
country code.

29. One of the possible reasons of being unable to play encrypted
movies is having a Virus Scanner running on the system.
Another reason could be the presence of a CD-RW Burner software
which uses special SCSI drivers. Disable these drivers before
playing movies (such as SCSIHLP.VXD, PU66VSD.VXD, .... )

======================================================================

END OF FILE

Attachments

  • Filename
    REALHOLLYWOOD.cdr.zip
    File size
    4.1 MiB
    Downloads
    263 downloads
    File comment
    REALmagic Hollywood Plus(TM)
    CD Release 1.6.2 (B.113b) 5/20/99
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 8 of 23, by bnewland

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Also, I still have a couple of these cards, new in the static bags, never installed, with cables and drivers cd's if anybody is looking for one of these classics. $10.00 ea + shipping from CA.

Reply 9 of 23, by MrGlasspoole

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Just saw this thread and have newer drivers and DVD Station (2.0 Build 86) . How to upload them to the Driver Library?

2011 i wrote a mail to Sigma:

Hello from Germany, […]
Show full quote

Hello from Germany,

I have a RealMagic EM7210 here and i can't find something about this card.
Just found one image in the web. All other sites who talk about this chip talking about netstreaming cards and they look different.

I bought this card around 1997 together with a Philips DRD 5200/30 DVD-Rom.
Must be one of the first DVD-Rom player. It also had come with the game "Muppets Treasure Island" and
on the cover it says "Enhanced DVD-Rom Edition offered only with Philips DVD-Rom kits".

On the manual it says "REALmagicDVD Hollywood 2" but the Hollywood cards look different.
And if i remember allready in 1997 in was confusing to find driver on your website
because the floppy disks hat not "REALmagicDVD Hollywood 2" on the lable.
The SN is 0543143 and the P/N 53-000511.

Must be one of the first SigmaDesign cards 😀

Would be great if you can tell me what card this is and can give me a link to Win95/Win98 drivers and software.

The answer was:

Thanks for your detailed info. Yes, this is a very very old Hollywood 2 board. Here attached are the Win 95-98 drivers for the region 2 DVD playback (Germany/Europe).
Sorry, no drivers for more recent Operating Systems. Next message will have the applications disk. Please read the readme.txt file for installations procedures.
Note also that there is no support for this very old board.

Back then i bought the card and DVD-ROM cause i wanted to watch DVDs and have DD 5.1.
DVD Players where really expensive when they came out.
Ok the card and DVD-ROM weren't cheap neither. I paid 600 German Mark - that was ~350$ back then.

EDIT
Ok confused by the date of the readme i saw my drivers are not newer but for the Hollywood and Hollywood 2.
The Hollywood Plus is a newer card (1999) and my card is from 1997 😀
The Plus had DTS output?

Here is my card:

Attachments

Reply 10 of 23, by JayCeeBee64

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MrGlasspoole wrote:

How to upload them to the Driver Library?

Read this post by SquallStrife, it will tell you what to do:

VOGONS Driver Library

(I'd rather do my own thing, much faster and easier for me 😜 ).

Ooohh, the pain......

Reply 11 of 23, by Robin4

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I found all the floppy drivers for this realmagic hollywood Plus DVD decoder card:

http://www.filewatcher.com/b/ftp/208.179.5.20 … al-Magic-0.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20040611141028/htt … _plus_win9x.htm
This is the original website: (drivers wont download anymore, but have the correct information on the file and file size..
They are version 2.41.. Anyone should upload them to vogons drivers..

Here is even more information:

mastersp.homeip.net/Drivers/MultiMedia/ ... &recursive

Even the pinout is there..

~ At least it can do black and white~

Reply 14 of 23, by derSammler

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Could anyone please upload the Win95/98 driver disks for the Hollywood Plus? Got one of these and want to use it with Windows 95.

//edit:
Nevermind. Found the last version 2.41 of the driver a few minutes after posting this.

Reply 15 of 23, by gex85

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bnewland wrote:

Not sure if anyone still needs the driver cd, but here is an image of mine.

Just wanted to leave a quick note that I have successfully used this driver for installing a RealMagic Hollywood Plus / EM8300 PCI card in Win95C. The .cdr file can be extracted with 7-zip in case you don't want to burn a CD.
This DVD player software from vogonsdrivers.com works pretty well with it, too.
Allows for smooth DVD playback on a P1-233 MMX 😎 I'll probably hardly ever use it but the card popped up on eBay for less than 4€, cable and shipping included, so I decided to get it just to play around with it.

My retro computers

Reply 16 of 23, by MrGlasspoole

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Does somebody have images of the Hollywood 3 and Hollywood +98?

How are they different to the Hollywood 2 and Hollywood Plus?

And when did it start that those cards where no longer needed? CPU or MPEG2 decoding with graphics cards...

Reply 17 of 23, by derSammler

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Afaik, the Pentium II 333 MHz was the first CPU that was able to decode DVDs in software only. However, that was with your average DVD back then. DVDs with higher bit-rates needed some more CPU power. I'd say these cards became finally obsolete with the Pentium III.

Reply 18 of 23, by 386SX

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MrGlasspoole wrote on 2020-06-04, 11:59:

Does somebody have images of the Hollywood 3 and Hollywood +98?

How are they different to the Hollywood 2 and Hollywood Plus?

And when did it start that those cards where no longer needed? CPU or MPEG2 decoding with graphics cards...

I remember the Sigma Reelmagic MPEG1 ISA decoders and the Sigma Real Magic Hollywood+ ("Plus") PCI MPEG2 decoders; different cards that themself were built with different chips revisions/numbers on various pcb layouts/designs together with different onboard rams and tv-out chips etc... (I suppose Hollywood 2, Hollywood+ and Hollywood Plus, same cards) but still the various Hollywood+ revisions were similar and worked on the same drivers up to the 2003 when later they did the X-Card PCI mpeg2/4 decoder which is a "better" card but in a time were cpu and gpu and softwares were the easiest solution. Creative Dxr3 was based on the same H+ design and that too had different chips/revisions of the same named board. I've seen different final video quality of these revisions that might explain why they existed/improved.
The Pentium 2 in the 1998 with a good dvd software player had already the power to decode (with the help of MMX instructions and some basic vga "acceleration" that most cards had already) the mpeg2 process BUT if intended to do that and nothing else; that's why these card were great because when/if configured correctly could bring down cpu usage even in low K6-2 cpu to 10/20% when a software dvd player using only the average Pentium 2 maybe 70% cpu usage probably. But with the decoder cards multitasking were possible with mostly no cpu usage difference and a smooth and high quality image (if compared to 90's sw only decoding and considering the CRT monitors target). Also the basic cpu requirement for these decoder cards were around 166Mhz systems.
In the late 90's vga began to support a bit more of the "usual" basic video process and ATi (SiS too, S3 also..) was one of the first to accelerate part of the (rest of the not already accelerated) process into their chip, the motion compensation support reduced let's say ipotethically 30% less of that 70% above cpu task and later the IDCT acceleration into their chip offloading another part of the whole process. Some vga still didn't have that support or only had motion compensation (others not even that). Software dvd players supported these hardware functions plus SSE instructions and 3DNow!s and decoder cards began to have less reasons to be used. Cpu became also much more powerful, vga began to have DVI output and LCD were not intended to be used or had difficult time to find a good image quality on these cards.
That said, even if a Pentium2/3 around 400/500Mhz seems to be enough with a period correct vga, at the end it would not in multitasking and the cpu would seriously have difficult time. Without a vga supporting also both accelerations, multitasking during mpeg2 decoding was still difficult even with later cpus than that.

Last edited by 386SX on 2020-06-04, 15:33. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 19 of 23, by MrGlasspoole

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I checked the date on my first DVD-ROM and it says February 1998 (Philips DRD-5200/30).
Thats the drive that came with my Hollywood 2 where i posted the image above in 2015.

I'm not sure when i bought the first Dolby Digital amp that i can connect it to the Hollywood.
Just realized that a Pentium II 233 was my first HTPC 😀

What was the first Dolby Digital sound card?