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MacAttack · Sep 8, 2001, 01:42 PM

I keep hearing all these glowing reviews of the DVD Player in 10.1. However, the player does not work, or even install, on machines with hardware DVD decoding (B&W and Beige G3's, Lombards, PCI Graphics G4's, etc.). Even the player in the latest leaked build (5G48) does not work on these machines, even though it is no longer an expired app.

I have a B&W G3 with the original Rage 128 card with DVD daughtercard. The original DVD-ROM drive has been replaced with a Toshiba combo drive. Perhaps the system just isn't recognizing my replacement drive as a DVD-capable drive, but it works perfectly fine in 9.x.

Now I know what many of you will say, "don't base your thoughts on an unfinished OS." However, we are getting VERY close to GM, and if it's still not showing any signs of supporting these configurations, it makes me very concerned.

I hope I'm worrying over nothing...but if 10.1 final comes out and nothing has changed in this situation, there are going to be MANY unhappy campers out there, myself included.

[ 09-08-2001: Message edited by: MacAttack ]

Sep 8, 2001, 02:39 PM

Be prepared to be an unhappy camper then.

Norm1985 · Sep 8, 2001, 04:20 PM

Originally posted by MacAttack:
I keep hearing all these glowing reviews of the DVD Player in 10.1. However, the player does not work, or even install, on machines with hardware DVD decoding (B&W and Beige G3's, Lombards, PCI Graphics G4's, etc.). Even the player in the latest leaked build (5G48) does not work on these machines, even though it is no longer an expired app.

I have a B&W G3 with the original Rage 128 card with DVD daughtercard. The original DVD-ROM drive has been replaced with a Toshiba combo drive. Perhaps the system just isn't recognizing my replacement drive as a DVD-capable drive, but it works perfectly fine in 9.x.

Now I know what many of you will say, "don't base your thoughts on an unfinished OS." However, we are getting VERY close to GM, and if it's still not showing any signs of supporting these configurations, it makes me very concerned.

I hope I'm worrying over nothing...but if 10.1 final comes out and nothing has changed in this situation, there are going to be MANY unhappy campers out there, myself included.

[ 09-08-2001: Message edited by: MacAttack ]

It has nothing to do with the fact you now have a combination drive installed on your computer. As you would know, all Macs with AGP graphics have software DVD decoding. They all have diffrent DVD/combination drives though. And many AGP/Gigabit Ethernet/Digital Audio/QuickSilver G4 owners have replaced the drive with a another DVD drive or a combination drive. Yet, I have heard that DVD is able to function perfectly in 10.1 5G48 with the replaced drives.

MacAttack · Sep 8, 2001, 05:28 PM

Originally posted by Norm1985:


It has nothing to do with the fact you now have a combination drive installed on your computer. As you would know, all Macs with AGP graphics have software DVD decoding. They all have diffrent DVD/combination drives though. And many AGP/Gigabit Ethernet/Digital Audio/QuickSilver G4 owners have replaced the drive with a another DVD drive or a combination drive. Yet, I have heard that DVD is able to function perfectly in 10.1 5G48 with the replaced drives.

Well I suppose the issue then is that the current player doesn't provide software decoding on machines with PCI graphics. When the DVD Player app first appeared (in 5F24?) it launched on my B&W and even showed the FBI warning or the DVD menu...so it has to be possible. And there are hacks to get the OS 9 software DVD players to work on PCI graphics machines.

So, Apple, what's up?!

OverclockedHomoSapien · Sep 8, 2001, 05:42 PM

Apple wants you to buy a shiney new Quicksilver Powermac.

AirSluf · Sep 8, 2001, 06:53 PM

The lions share of the software decoding heavy-lifting is done in the altivec module. All the Software decoding only boxes are G4's. The G3's all had ATI's with daughter-cards to do the decoding in hardware. As a supported machine I would expect it will be implemented eventually, but it is probably realistic to believe it is very low on the priority list as that installed base is quite narrow compared to all the supported Macs out there right now.

I know that isn't what you wanted to hear, but I do have my fingers crossed for you.

bmedina · Sep 8, 2001, 07:22 PM

And there are hacks to get the OS 9 software DVD players to work on PCI graphics machines?

Yes, and it works very well. I'm assuming someone will create a patch to get DVD Player 3.0 to work, as well. Well, I'm hoping, anyway.

The lions share of the software decoding heavy-lifting is done in the altivec module.

"Software decoding" is somewhat of a misnomer. A majority of the work in playing DVDs is done by the ATI cards in hardware. Altivec plays a minimal role.

All the Software decoding only boxes are G4's.

Not true. Half of Apple's current hardware lineup uses G3s. All of them use the "software decoding" of DVD Player 2.x.

Norm1985 · Sep 8, 2001, 07:30 PM

Originally posted by AirSluf:
All the Software decoding only boxes are G4's.

Uh, no. Actually, ALL AGP MACs use software decoding. This includes the Power Macintosh G4 AGP Graphics, Gigabit Ethernet, Digital Audio, and QuickSilver G4s, the PowerBook G3 FireWire and PowerBook G4, ALL of the iBooks, and ALL of the slot loading iMacs.

DaveGee · Sep 8, 2001, 07:49 PM

Originally posted by <piracy>:
Be prepared to be an unhappy camper then.

I'm not happy about it... but I have to agree with P on this one. Not saying it'll never happen (I think it will) just not with 10.1

D

wir3d · Sep 8, 2001, 11:51 PM

I have a Yikes G4 with PCI graphics. If I got an ATI Radeon PCI, which I'm planning to do anyway, and a combo drive to replace the CD drive it came with, would that work?

MacAttack · Sep 9, 2001, 12:05 AM

Originally posted by wir3d:
I have a Yikes G4 with PCI graphics. If I got an ATI Radeon PCI, which I'm planning to do anyway, and a combo drive to replace the CD drive it came with, would that work?

As of 5G48, no. The current DVD Player app in 10.1 does not support machines that use a PCI graphics card, regardless of DVD drive type.

Hopefully we'll see this corrected for 10.1 GM.

AirSluf · Sep 10, 2001, 02:02 AM

Well Norm, you're right that there are some later G3's with software DVD decoding. Unfortunately, that doesn't change anything for the folks with hardware decoding only. They are still stuck.

Congratulations, you are hereby awarded 2 Macho Zeke Officious Geek points for consecutive condescending reply's on the thread. Maybe if you did a Francis and lightened up your chances at becoming a Mod might be a little better!

Norm1985 · Sep 12, 2001, 01:36 AM

Originally posted by AirSluf:
Well Norm, you're right that there are some later G3's with software DVD decoding. Unfortunately, that doesn't change anything for the folks with hardware decoding only. They are still stuck.

Congratulations, you are hereby awarded 2 Macho Zeke Officious Geek points for consecutive condescending reply's on the thread. Maybe if you did a Francis and lightened up your chances at becoming a Mod might be a little better!

I think it's absolutly lousy of Apple not to support Lombards, Yosemites, and Beige G3s. Some people payed 4+ thousand for those machines and they are now rendered useless with some of the features.

By the way, I don't appreciate your second comment. I was merely trying to help people out.

edddeduck · Sep 12, 2001, 07:09 AM

Just thought I would add this DVD only works if you have a ATI or NVIDIA card... ie You cannot watch DVD's on a voodoo5500 monitor

So there must be a remnant of hardware use in all machines???

Either that or apple left in some code they could have deleated in the software dvd players...

Edd

sordid · Sep 12, 2001, 07:41 AM

Well the dvd player (for me) is TOTALLY awesome! I think it is much much much much better than the dvd player in os9. I'm on an imac dv 400 with 512 meg ram and 5g48. PPPoE doesnt work for me tho, but i'm successfully running roaring penguine instead.

bmedina · Sep 12, 2001, 12:12 PM

So there must be a remnant of hardware use in all machines???

Like I said, the majority of work in playing a DVD is done by the ATi (or nVidia) cards. It's only "software decoding" in the sense that there is not a dedicated card specifically for MPEG decoding. But ATi's video cards incorporate a wealth of MPEG2 decoding features.

godzappa · Sep 12, 2001, 03:00 PM

I have a PCI G4, but no DVD drive on that mac.

From what I've seen, up until recently, the DVD Player for OSX wasn't up to snuff, now of course many people are praising it. Its very possible that in order to assure the dvd player would run on the majority of supported machines, it was decided to hold off on support for older machines.

It could (hopefully) be that within the next few months or by 10.2, all the supported OSX machines will be supported on the DVD player, just that they can't make it in time for 10.1

bmedina · Sep 12, 2001, 06:41 PM

Well, I'm not holding my breath. Those "older machines" were never supported in any of the DVD Player 2.x versions, and it's been several years.

Sep 12, 2001, 07:00 PM

True, but the B/W g3 did at least have a working version of DVD player for 9.x.

In 10.x there will apparently be none.

I expect the hacker community to patch apple's (OSX)player to allow older unsupported hardware with the appropriate hardware (ATI 128 or better) to function.

Either way, 10.1 has so many other promising updates/fixes that DVD is not my primary hope.

Playing Q3 on my Beige g3 with PCI Radeon for example, would me nice. Until today the crappy PCI Radeon drive bombs out in the beige g3.

This is also true for Alice, which I payed for just to play in OSX, and crashes...

So, I'm licking my chops for 10.1, whether or not I get DVD support on day1, isn't that big a deal (as long as it comes).

Marty

Sep 12, 2001, 10:17 PM

Originally posted by bmedina:
Well, I'm not holding my breath. Those "older machines" were never supported in any of the DVD Player 2.x versions, and it's been several years.

That's actually a very good point. From memory, the history has been (and I could have the version numbers slightly wrong, so hold the matches):

PowerBook / PC-Card DVD decoder / Mac OS 8.1 / DVD Player 1.0-1.2

PowerMac G3 Blue & White / Mac OS 8.5 / DVD Player 1.2-1.3

-> DVD Player 1.3 (last update to version 1.x, hardware player)

iMac DV, PowerMac G4, iBook, PowerBook / Mac OS 9.0 / software DVD decoder / DVD Player 2.0b (introduced software decoding... BADLY!)

-> DVD Player 2.7 (last update to version 2.x, software player)

Mac OS X / DVD Player 3.0 (software DVD decoder)

In other words, DVD hardware support ended in the player at version 1.3. In the soon to be released version 3.0, I guess it is no real surprise that it is missing.

I feel sure that some kind hacker will work out a patch to allow the version 3.0 player to function on hardware intended for the 1.3 player.

Sep 12, 2001, 10:41 PM

Originally posted by bmedina:

Like I said, the majority of work in playing a DVD is done by the ATi (or nVidia) cards. It's only "software decoding" in the sense that there is not a dedicated card specifically for MPEG decoding. But ATi's video cards incorporate a wealth of MPEG2 decoding features.

I think an ATI engineer has said before on another board that Apple didn't take advantage of much of the "hardware assist" functionality of their cards. This may have changed recently.

I think a much more likely scenario for the DVD player not working for PCI machines is that the higher bandwidth requirements necessitated by Quartz's compositing makes it impossible to have an acceptable framerate. If the DVD player can do full screen (which would theoretically let them disable compositing) and they still have it being disabled on PCI machines then I wouldn't expect it to ever perform acceptably. That isn't to say a 3rd party solution might not be doable, but at some point it's easier to boot back into OS 9 for viewing movies.

Sep 12, 2001, 11:04 PM

Originally posted by <jethro>:


I think an ATI engineer has said before on another board that Apple didn't take advantage of much of the "hardware assist" functionality of their cards. This may have changed recently.

A quick followup to another thread about DVD with comments from Arshad from ATI (who is, without a doubt, one of the coolest employees of a Mac oriented company to post on the net):
http://bbs.xlr8yourmac.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/001466.html

frawgz · Sep 13, 2001, 03:39 AM

Originally posted by <jethro>:
I think a much more likely scenario for the DVD player not working for PCI machines is that the higher bandwidth requirements necessitated by Quartz's compositing makes it impossible to have an acceptable framerate. If the DVD player can do full screen (which would theoretically let them disable compositing) and they still have it being disabled on PCI machines then I wouldn't expect it to ever perform acceptably. That isn't to say a 3rd party solution might not be doable, but at some point it's easier to boot back into OS 9 for viewing movies.

I'd be interested in hearing how Quartz compositing and DVD playback mesh. Someone reported that menus are not transparent over the DVD window, nor does the DVD play minimized in the dock.

RyanG3 · Sep 13, 2001, 04:59 PM

Would it really be that difficult for Apple to build in DVD support for the older hardware based systems? Would it really have taken that much time and effort? Is it not possible to have support in version 3 for the hardware based systems?

I have a B&W G3 that came with DVD support, awhile back I installed a PCI Radeon card and to continue using DVD I had to install a hacked version of a 2.x DVD player. It works great! Why can't this be done with 3.0 for OSX?

This may all be pointless and we won't know until 10.1 is released, but it's looking like systems with hardware decoding are s.o.l.

Developer · Sep 13, 2001, 05:56 PM

I have a B&W G3 that came with DVD support, awhile back I installed a PCI Radeon card and to continue using DVD I had to install a hacked version of a 2.x DVD player. It works great!

Maybe it was just a testing issue. Since the 1.x players worked with the hardware DVD machines they didn't want to spend the resources to fully test the new versions on those machines.

Hopefully it'll work with the OS X DVD player. Otherwise it would be a not so nice move (even though I'm not affected).

developer

ink · Sep 19, 2001, 06:59 PM

Originally posted by Norm1985:


Uh, no. Actually, ALL AGP MACs use software decoding. This includes the Power Macintosh G4 AGP Graphics, Gigabit Ethernet, Digital Audio, and QuickSilver G4s, the PowerBook G3 FireWire and PowerBook G4, ALL of the iBooks, and ALL of the slot loading iMacs.

You're partly correct. There was a thread a few months ago that detailed how MacOS9's DVD player used the ATI mpeg routines *and* did it in software; so most (all?) G3 macs have software+hardware players -- except the early ones that did everything with dedicated hardware.

--Helen-- · Sep 19, 2001, 11:33 PM

Ok,

I have a factory-standard Yosemite Blue & White G3/450 with 512mb ram and 36gig SCSI hard drive. My drive is a DVD-RAM drive that I love. (It works fine under 10.0.4. -as a file transfer capable disk drive)

The DVD Player works OK under OS 9.2.

Will my DVD Player work under 10.1 GM?

MacAttack · Sep 19, 2001, 11:54 PM

[ 09-19-2001: Message edited by: MacAttack ]

godzookie2k · Sep 20, 2001, 12:49 AM

I'd be interested in hearing how Quartz compositing and DVD playback mesh. Someone reported that menus are not transparent over the DVD window, nor does the DVD play minimized in the dock.

with 5g48 Quartz and DVD run peachy with my dp 500. there are no dropshadows on the DVD video but otherwise everything works great. no hiccups no matter WHAT i throw at it. As for playing DVD video in the dock, why would you even want to?

nick

Workers Comp Wampa · Sep 20, 2001, 01:14 AM

Originally posted by godzookie2k:
As for playing DVD video in the dock, why would you even want to?
nick

So you can work on the side.
People think it is great when QuickTime does it, why not the DVD player?

comgil · Sep 20, 2001, 02:49 AM

The 3.0 GM version of DVD player is great. It first came with 5G59, and it has no bug, is even faster. With 5G48, leaving Classic in the background will slow down the player, it is no more the case with 5G59.
Great. But my DVD-ROM make a lot of noise. Like it did with 2.0 through 2.4 players (OS9). With 2.7, it didn't make any noice, so I hope Apple will correct this soon.

But still happy !