Wow fantastic effort! I'll digest it all tomorrow 😀

One thing I notices ages ago, it also depends what DVD playback software you use. In general, the older, the less demanding. A really old version played fine on a Pentium 3, but when I downloaded the latest trial version (latest version of that time) it would just lag.

I remember these cards being troublesome indeed. I never used any myself but I knew people who tried them. They really had a small window of opportunity too since PII 400 can play a DVD on its own.

I'd like to hear about the capabilities of the early ATI cards with MPEG2 hardware. Rage II, I think. Maybe one of those Chromatic Research MPACT cards too.

Well yes, this would be the next best option to an accelerator card. The main problem I had with the ATI cards is to find the correct DVD Player that supports the acceleration capabilities.
On the Rage 5.30 and 5.24 CD there is Ati Play which seems to support VCR1, VCR2 and Mpeg1 only.
On the CD for Rage Fury Maxx seems to be DVD Player 6.2.0.0-CD17.
I could try if this works with a normal Rage128 as I don't own a FuryMaxx.
But maybe someone has mor eexperience with the Ati DVD Player versions and the required hardware combinations?

Then it is always difficult to proof if the acceleration is really used...

I use a Radeon 7000 PCI for MPEG2 acceleration on my old Deskpro 4000.
Specs are P2-300, 440FX, 192MB EDO, WinME.

With PowerDVD XP (4.0), the Radeon 7000 handles most DVDs just fine. Fast motion doesn't appear to be a problem, but slow-moving scenes with lots of fine detail sometimes lag just a bit. Picture quality is good, though nowhere near as crisp as it is on a modern (Win7, PCI-E, madVR) system.

The Radeon 7000 seems to be a much better MPEG2 accelerator than the GeForce2 MX. With the GF2 PCI, most DVDs play at around 15fps. I blame the system's use of EDO memory.

Those Cinemaster cards were a real PITA to get working as I had to support many a Dell that came with them (usually paired with a Riva 128 AGP card). The fact that the company changed so many hands didn't help matters at all. Finding the right drivers was a big part of the battle. I wasn't very impressed with the output either. It did a halfhearted job at de-interlacing the video. Many rank the Creative Dxr3, which is a rebranded Sigma Designs Hollywood+, as one of the best hardware MPEG2 decoders out there. Software solutions have since surpassed it though.

My Matrox Marvel G400TV advertised partial MPEG hardware decoding support (I think it was motion compensation), but I never actually used it since I had a Dxr3 card. I don't believe my Rage II+ ATI All-in-Wonder supported any MPEG2 acceleration. I do have a circa 1998 Lombard Powerbook G3 with the C-Cube MPEG2 decoder here. If I recall, the output on that was pretty lousy too.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

The Radeon 7000 seems to be a much better MPEG2 accelerator than the GeForce2 MX. With the GF2 PCI, most DVDs play at around 15fps. I blame the system's use of EDO memory.

ATI was at the forefront of integrating video acceleration. Radeon 7000 was something like ATI's 4th generation of full MPEG2 acceleration.

GeForce 2 does not have iDCT hardware and that is why it's vastly slower.

NJRoadfan wrote:

My Matrox Marvel G400TV advertised partial MPEG hardware decoding support (I think it was motion compensation), but I never actually used it since I had a Dxr3 card.

Matrox G400, NVIDIA TNT2 and 3dfx Voodoo3 were all offering partial MPEG2 acceleration. Matrox advertised something called DVDMax too which was a special overlay mode on the second VGA output. But G400 doesn't do MPEG2 motion compensation or iDCT so it's barely an accelerator. They probably cite the color space conversion and bilinear scaling as "acceleration".

Update: Added ATI Rage 128.

Yes a lot of chips had support, but the problem is also to find a player that utilizes the chips features. As for Matrox, I have the Marvel G400 even with the DVD decoder module, but couldn't find a source for the DVD player utilizing it yet. The name could have been something like Zoran SoftDVD.

@Standard Def Steve: RAM speed is probably a brake in this scenario. And there is also the driver+player combination that has to fit.
f.e. I tried on a Dual Pentium 233 MMX in NT4, with PowerDVD, WinDVD etc. but couldn't see any additional acceleration with a ATI Rage Pro. Most of this older acceleration features seem to be available just in Win9x with the right driver+player.

swaaye wrote:

Matrox G400, NVIDIA TNT2 and 3dfx Voodoo3 were all offering partial MPEG2 acceleration. Matrox advertised something called DVDMax too which was a special overlay mode on the second VGA output. But G400 doesn't do mocomp or idct so it's barely an accelerator.

DVDMax allowed any video in a window on a primary display be output full screen on the secondary display. It was primarily used to output NLE projects to tape (screen #2 on the Marvel was the Composite/S-Video out unless you got the DVI output card, which I happen to have).

I liked it because it properly sized the video with overscan, something only dedicated professional NLE capture cards at the time could do. I never did get the ATI Theater function on my HD3870 to do that properly.

NJRoadfan wrote:

DVDMax allowed any video in a window on a primary display be output full screen on the secondary display.

I liked it because it properly sized the video with overscan, something only dedicated professional NLE capture cards at the time could do. I never did get the ATI Theater function on my HD3870 to do that properly.

I had a G400 myself and I did experiment with DVDMax but I was not using my computer for video much back then.

I have used many a ATI card on SDTVs via SVideo. Cards like Radeon 7200, 7500, 8500 and 9600. They tend to work much better than NVIDIA cards of the same vintage for TV output, with better overscan adjustment and picture quality. Many of these cards use the same ATI Rage Theater TV encoder chip which spanned I think from the original Radeon to X850. But I haven't tried more recent ATI cards with SVideo. I wouldn't be surprised if old analog SD TV has been deprioritized.

elianda wrote:

As for Matrox, I have the Marvel G400 even with the DVD decoder module, but couldn't find a source for the DVD player utilizing it yet. The name could have been something like Zoran SoftDVD.
.

I have the original CD here. Its..... Software Cinemaster branded as "Matrox DVD Player". About 9MB per language. Point me to a place to upload it and its yours.

swaaye wrote:

I have used many a ATI card on SDTVs via SVideo. Cards like Radeon 7200, 7500, 8500 and 9600. They tend to work much better than NVIDIA cards of the same vintage for TV output, with better overscan adjustment and picture quality. Many of these cards use the same ATI Rage Theater TV encoder chip which spanned I think from the original Radeon to X850. But I haven't tried more recent ATI cards with SVideo. I wouldn't be surprised if old analog SD TV has been deprioritized.

I have an AIW 9600XT in my AGP video capture rig. I never did think to try its video out since it has the Theater 200 chip on it. I also have an original AIW here with ATI's ImpacTV chip. I don't recall it being all that flexible though.

None of my work really involves outputting to a VHS deck anymore. I really wanted to use the HD3870 as a NTSC test pattern generator, but I have since gotten a Video Toaster to do that duty.

Well, I stepped the ladder down and installed a Ati Rage IIC AGP and the DVD Player refuses playback (i.e. crashes).
Then I tried a ATI Rage II+DVD PCI and it played. The P2 233 MHz is obviously too slow for this now. So I have to upgrade the CPU slightly. Let's see if I can find a 266 MHz.

I did some reading and it seems that prior to Rage 128, ATI did not have iDCT processing onboard. Rage II+DVD does have motion compensation though. For the competition you need GeForce 256 / Voodoo3 / Parhelia to get that.

Thoroughly enjoyed watching your videos elinda! A lot of work went into this well done 😀

I have an ati xpert@play and also the original dvd player software if its of any use to anyone version 127

I would like to see 6326DVD beat those big brand bullies and finish the whole field with nuke called Mpact. Is there a dvd player that would provide neutral hardware acceleration ground?

Back in the day when DVD players were too expensive I bought a cheaper DVD-ROM drive to install on my PII 350MHz, at first I was afraid it wouldn't play DVD movies because my graphic card had only 8MB (somehow in my head these things were connected 🤣 ) but that wouldn't be a problem since I could still use the drive for software DVDs that also started to came with PC magazines...

I was amazed to watch movies full screen on my 15" Trinitron without any lag!
The card was, and still is, a 1998 Matrox Millenium G200 AGP. True story 😉

7) Matrox Marvel G200-TV with DVD Upgrade Module […]
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7)
Matrox Marvel G200-TV with DVD Upgrade Module

the card: http://mail.lipsia.de/~enigma/neu/pics/...module.jpg

comparison video footage: ftp://78.46.141.148/videos/dvd_decoders...module.mkv

Matrox G200 AGP + DVD Upgrade Module (G2+/MVA/8I GS/DVDMOD/I), SB16
graphics mode 1024x768x32 Bit

Matrox DVD Player (internal Ravisent 2.0) (Found thanks to a lost disk from NJRoadfan)

Where did you eventually find the G200 DVD decoder module?

I bought the G200 incl. the DVD Module from a collector.

As for the test of the SIS6326DVD and mPact, I don't own those so I can't test it. Maybe someone else could test those?