README.TXT For REALmagic Hollywood Plus(TM) Release 1.5 (B.101) ------ 12/21/98 =========================================== 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 www.sigmadesigns.com Latest Drivers & FTP Access - Hollywood_Plus ____________________ 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 www.sigmadesigns.com - "Knowledge Base, FAQ about Ventura" 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. 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) 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 ====================================================================== END OF FILE