Thread: Frustrated - need GOOD advice....

Originally Posted by Mark9

I was lead to believe (through the VIA advertisements) that the 10000 played videos flawlessly, which obviously is not true.

What resolution are you trying to play the video at?

Originally Posted by Mark9

("Quest for 800x480")

The summary of that thread appeared to be you still **** out of luck (SOL).

Originally Posted by Mark9

If so, can you use good display rates - or are you stuck down around 60 hz?

60hz is a good display rate on an LCD. Why would you need higher? It's not like a CRT where 60hz has noticable flicker.

Originally Posted by Mark9

QUESTION 3: Please name a _GOOD_ DC-DC power adapter board, please..

mp3car.com sells several. Take a look and see which meets your needs. The 220W one with built in SDC seem to be the best all round solution currently but is quite a hefty price to swallow. On the other hand, having tried it the hard way (built my own 12V DC-DC regulator, tank circuit and used the $50 plug in psu without 12V regulation), the price looks a lot more reasonable than it used to - even if my solution was quite a bit cheaper overall . 220W is pretty overkill for your setup though.

1. I always thought the via had good output on a 7" screen, even when it wasn't in 800X480.

2. Get the Opus for power. You wont' be sorry.

3. I've heard of jerky playback with the Via but I've also heard of many with no issues at all. Is the DVD drive you are using a USB drive? Also, how much memory do you have on your board?

BTW - I haven't heard anyone complain about the rates on the M13000.

Originally Posted by Mark9

Playing videos..I'm playing the videos back in resolutions from 800x600 up to 1280x1024, with best playback (least amount of jerkiness) at a screen resolution 0f 1024x768.

What DVD decoder are you using? 800x600 was worse than 1024x768. That's strange.

Originally Posted by Mark9

This is on a NEC 17" LCD. We have had all LCD's for the past 2 1/2 years on our network (14 systems). Video play at refresh rates less than 75mz always brings complaints from various members of the family (this is on NEC, Samsung and Viewsonic units). Hence my question regarding getting away from the slower refresh rate.

That's pretty bizarre. The video itself is only playing back at 25 fps. What do your family members complain about with a 60hz lcd? Is it the response time? I.e. a cheaper older lcd will have a slower response time which means game and video playback gets a kind of motion blur effect. That's not related to the refresh frequency of the display which should have no effect on video enjoyment.

Power: Between a 9-12 small watt LCD and the VIA motherboard, I would think that even an 80 watt PS would be overkill.

Whatever you get make sure you plan for a startup/shutdown controller. You'll regret not having one.[/QUOTE]

You know how your graphics adapter has a driver for it? NEC monitors have monitor profiles available that you can download and install. Its a .INF file (and two other files) that describe the capabilities of the monitor. If you don't install this, the monitor will usually show up as a default plug and play monitor. You might try going to the NEC site and downloading the monitor profile and after installing it look and see what refresh rates are supported for your monitor. If this solves the problem while you're bench testing, it will give you a clue about where to focus when you put it in the car with a different monitor and have problems. Sometimes the process of elimination can save you a lot of time.

Jerkiness with videos is often because your CD or DVD drive doesn't feed the data to the PC at a fast enough rate.

What does task manager show your CPU utilization at when you're watching a movie?

Also, the video codec being used to play the movie can make a big difference. Have you tried the PowerDVD software for playing your movies?

So you're playing back higher than DVD quality video? I.e. greater than the typical 7-10Mbps data rate?