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HCR · Apr 5, 2002, 02:08 PM

Caution: Radeon 7000 Mac edition has no DVD decoder capability whatsoever. DVD playback is software only although ATI advertises DVD playback.

"Experience the incredible 3D and DVD playback capabilities of RADEON� 7000 MAC EDITION with flat panel displays to enjoy crisper and clearer images"
(http://www.atitech.com/products/mac/radeon7000me/index.html)

That means that if you exchange your rage 128 PCI with MPEG daughter board for it, you lose DVD playback in OS 9 (DVD player lets you know that you now miss the required hardware). So you are screwed if you bought it to use its video out to watch DVDs. This also affects all who are using patched Apple DVD players to enable software playback on G3 and G4 Yikes. The patch is not compatible with the required ATI extensions and will results in immediate crash. ATItech tried to avoid taken up the issue, but they are clearly aware of it. They told me in order to have DVD I need an AGP Mac with card in it-what would be the reason to buy an PCI video card if you have AGP grafik? (the link from a corresponding question in their faq leads to page not found).
The work around is to use the card with OS X and DVD playback is fine. But than, the XCLAIM� TV USB EDITION they offer as a combo with the 7000 is not compatible with X and is OS9 only. This looks like a sour deal and misrepresentation of the product capabilities, since there is no information about these severe limitation for most of the customers potentially interested in this card on the ATI web page.

COmie JOe · Apr 5, 2002, 04:09 PM

ATI doing it's best once again to "serve" the mac community.

torndownunit · Apr 9, 2002, 12:01 PM

That kinda sucks. What model mac are you using? I have the same card installed on a G4 Sawtooth and it works well for DVD playback to my TV. I have it in one of the PCI slots, and the original Rage 128 still installed. I mainly bought the card to watch DVD's and downloaded video.

HCR · Apr 9, 2002, 01:15 PM

Your are fine as long as you keep the original card in your sawtooth. The radeon will not do any DVD playback per se. DVD will work as software playback only through apple dvd player, which works as long as it finds the required hardware in your case the AGP garfic card ( in this case its software playback anyway). I have a Yikes G4/400 and I installed the Radeon instead of the ATI Rage, so apple dvd player won't work anymore under OS9.2.2. I agree that the advertisement strongly suggests that the radeon will do or improve DVD playback, which is complete B.S, it depends entirely on apple dvd player and apple software decoding. You fell for it like I did, and I can tell you we are not alone. When I ask ATI Tech about this they said:" Oh that is how you interpreted the ad? " They felt that they did not misrepresent the cababilities of the product, but they didn't tell the whole truth either. Probably their laywers and the sales stuff felt that this is close enough to the real thing that one could weasle out on misinterpretation excuses, but still have DVD in the ad to boost sales.
May be a case for class action, but not sure how many are affected or bothered by this.

Catalyst236 · Apr 9, 2002, 03:13 PM

This is sorta related, there's an ATI driver upgrade announced on Xlr8 today.....web page

Links to here .....March 2002 driver updates

I believe I have the 128 pro 8mb, in my iMac. I'm running 9.0.4, and it says minimum 9.x required, but on the xlr8 page it says 9.2 or better, so there's some confusion there also.

Will this driver improve my machine's performance?
Or should I stay clear of it?

I'm not sure if this is off-topic or belongs in another forum, so sorry.

[ 04-09-2002: Message edited by: Catalyst236 ]