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Ok....I have been around the forums and have noticed that many of us are having the same types of issues with AMD DivX and some form of TV card.
I have 3 machines dedicated to DivX creation and of those 2 for playback....until recently when i performed a hardware swap all was working fine....
Original machine specs are as follows;
***GiZMo
ASUS P3b-f socket 1 with bios ver 1.006
128mb transcend pc100
Pentium III 550
Matrox G400 16 Mb dual head bios from unified ver .2.51.002
driver revision 555
SMC 9432 10/100 NIC
Soundblaster live
Windows 98 Second Edition
DivX 3.11 alpha
G400 divX patch from RRR rev 2.0
stock standard Media Player (mplayer2) or microDVD 1.1
***Theophanos
MSI 6330 (KT7 pro2a) bios ver 3.1
VIA drivers rev 4.35
128 mb transcend pc133
AMD Duron 800 - not overclocked
Diamond Viper 770 with det drivers 3.61
3Com 3c905C TXM NIC
Windows 2000 sp1
DivX 3.11 alpha
stock standard Media Player (mplayer2) or microDVD 1.1
***ScallyWag
This one has had now hardware changes.
OK, so the desire was to put the AMD components into the GiZMo for better playback in the entertainment room......yeh right!
All my machines have 300watt power supplies so it's not a power issue.
GiZMo is exactly what the Theophanos used to be except it now uses an onboard soundcard (generic pc99 scungy thing. and since the trouble, the MSI pc alert III for monitoring.
Points to note about GiZMo
This machine although stuffed in a closet never gets above 48 degrees celcius and is rated to 95 degrees
power supply is guaranteed ok - tested independently
the matrox has it's own IRQ
MPEG 1/2, Quicktime and other formats playback ok
asf playback packs it in also.
DivX 3.x content is not played back using the DivX 4 codec
processor usage rarely gets above 43% on fullscreen payback
The initial problem occured about 5 seconds into playback or when scanning. DivX creation works fine and I have since installed the 4.11 DivX codec but to no avail. Somehow i managed to get it to be kind of stable and now it will randomly die 1/2 way through playback.
Interestingly enough the original Theophanos with the Diamond Viper played back perfectly. And the newly reconfigured Theophanos still functions perfectly.
Ok so my idea?
It is not hardware but software and i'm not convinced that it is the codec. I have tried various versions of the G400 driver as well as various versions of the VIA chipset patch.
I have except for the G400 and VIA drivers duplicated all the DivX installations into Theophanos running windows 2000 and have not experienced problems there either. ScallyWag has also had an upgrade of software components and has exhibited no unusual behaviour.
Being an industry tech i don't often get stumped and its been a couple of years. But could it be the VIA chipset and a common feature of the TV out cards? or the microcode of the AMD processor and a common feature of the TV out cards?
New Addition! I have recently noticed that the system will crash harder when playing from cd as opposed to playing from hard drive or network.
I have 3 machines dedicated to DivX creation and of those 2 for playback....until recently when i performed a hardware swap all was working fine....
Original machine specs are as follows;
***GiZMo
ASUS P3b-f socket 1 with bios ver 1.006
128mb transcend pc100
Pentium III 550
Matrox G400 16 Mb dual head bios from unified ver .2.51.002
driver revision 555
SMC 9432 10/100 NIC
Soundblaster live
Windows 98 Second Edition
DivX 3.11 alpha
G400 divX patch from RRR rev 2.0
stock standard Media Player (mplayer2) or microDVD 1.1
***Theophanos
MSI 6330 (KT7 pro2a) bios ver 3.1
VIA drivers rev 4.35
128 mb transcend pc133
AMD Duron 800 - not overclocked
Diamond Viper 770 with det drivers 3.61
3Com 3c905C TXM NIC
Windows 2000 sp1
DivX 3.11 alpha
stock standard Media Player (mplayer2) or microDVD 1.1
***ScallyWag
This one has had now hardware changes.
OK, so the desire was to put the AMD components into the GiZMo for better playback in the entertainment room......yeh right!
All my machines have 300watt power supplies so it's not a power issue.
GiZMo is exactly what the Theophanos used to be except it now uses an onboard soundcard (generic pc99 scungy thing. and since the trouble, the MSI pc alert III for monitoring.
Points to note about GiZMo
This machine although stuffed in a closet never gets above 48 degrees celcius and is rated to 95 degrees
power supply is guaranteed ok - tested independently
the matrox has it's own IRQ
MPEG 1/2, Quicktime and other formats playback ok
asf playback packs it in also.
DivX 3.x content is not played back using the DivX 4 codec
processor usage rarely gets above 43% on fullscreen payback
The initial problem occured about 5 seconds into playback or when scanning. DivX creation works fine and I have since installed the 4.11 DivX codec but to no avail. Somehow i managed to get it to be kind of stable and now it will randomly die 1/2 way through playback.
Interestingly enough the original Theophanos with the Diamond Viper played back perfectly. And the newly reconfigured Theophanos still functions perfectly.
Ok so my idea?
It is not hardware but software and i'm not convinced that it is the codec. I have tried various versions of the G400 driver as well as various versions of the VIA chipset patch.
I have except for the G400 and VIA drivers duplicated all the DivX installations into Theophanos running windows 2000 and have not experienced problems there either. ScallyWag has also had an upgrade of software components and has exhibited no unusual behaviour.
Being an industry tech i don't often get stumped and its been a couple of years. But could it be the VIA chipset and a common feature of the TV out cards? or the microcode of the AMD processor and a common feature of the TV out cards?
New Addition! I have recently noticed that the system will crash harder when playing from cd as opposed to playing from hard drive or network.
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