README.TXT For NetStream 2000 (TM)
Version Rel 1.11 (Build 124) FOR WINDOWS 95/98 -- Mar., 2000
=============================================================
Congratulations on your purchase of REALmagic NetStream 2000 DVD/MPEG2
multimedia Playback . This file contains important information for
installation of the drivers and application software for this card.
_____________________________________
FOR FUTURE updates DRIVERS VISIT OUR WEB SITE
www.sigmadesigns.com
Latest Drivers & FTP Access - NetStream 2000
____________________
WHAT'S NEW IN RELEASE 1.11 :
==========================
- Support for the movies with DTS audio : now you can route this
stream to an external DTS decoder through the S/P DIF output.
- A fix for the crash when changing display resolutions on the fly
while playing back MPEG under DirectShow.
CONTENTS
========
I - GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
II - HARDWARE & SOFTWARE INSTALLATION
III - BORDER ADJUSTMENT AND COLOR CALIBRATION
IV - TV OUT
V - FULL SCREEN PLAYBACK
VI - HINTS TO RESOLVE PROBLEMS AND BETTER PLAYBACK
VII - SYSTEM MONITOR
VIII- RELEASE ISSUES AND KNOWN BUGS
I - GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
=======================
You can use either the new, DirectShow-based Media Player (MPLAYER2.EXE),
or the older, MCI-based Media Player (MPLAYER.EXE) to play files on your
computer using the NetStream 2000.
1 - MCI Support :
A standard MCI driver is supplied. Interactive multimedia
titles can use the MCI interface to display high quality
MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video. To play an MPEG file using MCI, open
the standard Windows Media Player (MPLAYER.EXE), select
"NetStream 2" from the "Device" menu, and open an MPEG file.
Standard MCI compliant programs will automatically select the
NetStream 2000 for playback of MPEG files.
2 - DirectShow Support:
A standard DirectShow driver is installed with NetStream 2000.
To use DirectShow with the NetStream 2000, install the latest
version of the Windows Media Player (MPLAYER2.EXE), which can
be found on the Microsoft web site at www.microsoft.com/Windows/
Downloads/Contents/Products/MediaPlayer. The Windows Media Player
and other DirectShow compatible applications will automatically
select the NetStream 2000 hardware to play MPEG video. In addition,
a wide variety of 3rd party streaming video products provide
DirectShow filters and players which use the DirectShow interface
to stream MPEG video using the NetStream 2000.
3 - File Format Support :
MPEG-1 Video Streams
MPEG-1 Audio Streams
MPEG-1 System Streams
MPEG-2 Video Streams
MPEG-2 Audio Streams
AC-3 Audio Streams (
MPEG-2 Program Streams
MPEG-2 Transport Streams
MPEG-2 System Streams
Video Servers/Clients used :
- Microsoft NetShow Theater
- Minerva VNP Encoder
- OptiVision LiveWare
- MediaNow! StreamRider
- InfoValue QuickVideo Suite (VOD and multicast)
- First Virtual VCache and VCaster
- Oracle Video Server
- Silicon Graphics MediaBase
- Starlight Networks
- Cisco IP/TV (in progress)
II - HARDWARE & SOFTWARE INSTALLATION
================================
HARDWARE INSTALLATION :
---------------------
- Open the PC case according to its manual.
- Insert the NetStream 2000 (NS 2000) in one PCI slot and fix its
bracket in the chassis with the screw that was covering the slot.
- Connect the pass-thru cable between the NS 2000 and the display
adapter.
- Connect the audio patch cable between the audio output of NS 2000
and the Line-In of the sound card.
- close the PC case.
SOFTWARE INSTALLATION :
---------------------
=========================================================
YOU NEED TO INSTALL DIRECTSHOW PRIOR TO THIS 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 9X will detect the card. Insert the
REALmagic NS 2000 Drivers Disk in your floppy drive A and
click Finish. This will install NS 2000 drivers on your hard disk.
3. To install the application software insert Applications 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. Re-run the SETUP program from the applications disk and select
this time "Set the region code" and follow instructions.
7. Click Finish to complete the installation process by performing
Auto Calibration.
III - 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 NetStream
2000 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.
IV - TV OUT
======
The REALmagic NS 2000 can display on a VGA monitor or a TV.
The TV could be NTSC or PAL regardless of the NTSC/PAL encoding
of the MPEG/movie data. A PAL 60 option is provided for a
smoother playback of NTSC movies on PAL TVs with this support.
To switch between VGA/TV 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.
The TV output option has four settings :
- MultiSystem : the output will follow the source of the movie,
i.e. if NTSC movie the output will be NTSC
and if PAL movie the output will be PAL (50)
- NTSC : For NTSC TVs
- PAL : For standard PAL TVs with 50 Hz frequency
- PAL 60 : the output will be at a frequency of 60 Hz, the same
as NTSC but with PAL colors (needs TV set with this
capability)
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 resume
playback in the restored MPEG window. If you need to start
DVD Station in full-screen mode, you can do it by adding the line
"fullscreen=1" in the [Settings] section of WVP.INI in the
directory where you installed the applications (usually REALmagic).
VI - HINTS TO RESOLVE PROBLEMS AND BETTER PLAYBACK
=============================================
1. The drivers are installed and the NS 2000 appears in the
"Device Manager" but the CD's won't play.
Run SETUP from the second diskette (Applications) to create the
"REALmagic NetStream 2000" group. This group contains the
DVD-Station, README file, REALmagic Configuration, and Uninstall.
2. 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).
3. 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 ...".
Reseat NS 2000 in different PCI slots because of some of
the motherboards BIOSes handling of the resources.
4. 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
NS 2000 input and the Display Adapter's output is routed to
the monitor.
5. The picture is waving.
Run "REALmagic Configuration," select "Border Adjust" and adjust
the STABILITY: smoothness of the two vertical sides.
6. 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. Also you can turn ON the DMA flag in the
"Device Manager-DVD ROM drive-Settings-DMA."
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. Playing VOB files using the Media Player might not show the best
performance because of different navigation schemes. Use the
DVD Station for this.
10. The playback of some DVD movies might jump unvoluntarily to different
parts of the movie. Fix this by : Start - Run - MSCONFIG - General -
Advanced - Disable UDF file system. This is under Win 98.
11. Video is fine on VGA but is Black and White on TV.
Please see section for TV-Out.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. I lost the S-Video/Composite Adapter cable and have no access to
another one.
Order another one from your supplier. In the USA, you can check
the phone number or the email address of the fulfillment center on
the web site . The pinout of this adapter 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
15. 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.
16. You want DVD Station to check your DVD-ROM first and it has a
drive letter after the CD-ROM.
DVD Station allows you to set your preferred drive (Options -
Tab : Play List).
17. You see the video but no audio.
- Try first the speakers plugged in NS 2000 and be sure the
output from DVD Station is Stereo.
- Then check the audio jumper cable from the output of NS 2000
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 and your setting in DVD Station is AC-3.
18. The maximum refresh rates allowed with the NS 2000 MPEG
playback depends on a combination of the display adapter, and
the monitor and some of these combinations may show
a little degradation in the desktop display because of the
overlay. The MPEG playback is not affected. However, the
following can be used as a guideline:
640 x 480 100 Hz
800 x 600 100 Hz
1024 x 768 85 Hz
1152 x 864 75 Hz
1280 x 1024 60 Hz
1600 x 1200 60 Hz
19. The NS 2000 does NOT support the MP3 files playback.
20. You have a third generation DVD-ROM drive (RPC2 specs that require
a region code on the drive) and you cannot playback movies.
Run the manufacturer utility for this drive to set the region code
to your country code.
21. You can add the option "/f=filename" on the command line of
DVD Station to allow the direct playback of the file.
22. What is the pinout of the VGA signals on the pass-thru cable ?
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
VII - SYSTEM MONITOR
==============
There are a variety of statistics that are displayed in the
Windows System Monitor utility under the heading RM 8400.
This can be a very useful tool for developers.
These are described below:
1) # interrupts/sec
2) Audio int/sec - "Audio interrupts per second"
3) Video events pending
4) Audio events pending
5) Video bytes queued - "Video bytes queued not sent yet to HW"
6) Audio bytes queued - "Audio bytes queued not sent yet to HW"
7) Video bytes/second - "Video bytes sent per second"
8) Audio bytes/second - "Audio bytes sent per second"
9) VideoFullness - "Bytes in VideoHardware Fifo"
10) AudioFullness - "Bytes in AudioHardware Fifo"
11) MemoryCheck
12) LockedMemorySize
13) LockedPages
14) AllocMemory
15) NewMemory
16) NodesAllocated
VIII- RELEASE INFO AND KNOWN BUGS
===========================
Transport Streams containing multiple Programs (PID's) are supported
under DirectShow. You can select the PID you desire by using the Property
Page of the REALmagic Splitter Filter. This can also be programmably
controlled through C++ programming in DirectShow.
The MCI driver will open the MPEG file window by default with the same
size of the MPEG file frame size. ActiveMovie will open by aspect
ratio.
ActiveMovie and DirectShow support is implemented for MPEG-1 and -2,
including System, Program and Transport Streams.
The standard I_Async_Reader interface (Pull) is supported.
The new I_Mem_Input interface (Push) is supported.
MPEG-1 Payload data is supported.
You can play back video using the standard ActiveMovie
player which is installed with Internet Explorer.
Playing a high bit rate file from a slow device as
a CD-ROM drive, multiple quick SEEKs might cause the player to stop
responding.
Playback from some 24x CD-ROM drives does not work well because some of
these high-speed drives repeatedly speed up and slow down, which causes
the MPEG data to stream very poorly. This causes frequent "drops." Use
the System control panel to set the buffer value for your CD-ROM drive
as high as possible.
We have experienced AV out-of-synch of up to 5 sec. at the play start.
With a combined slow CPU and a high bit rate of the MPEG streams, it
may take longer to synchronize.
There is some lip synch noticed after some time of streaming MPEG.
======================================================================
END OF FILE
Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.