README.TXT For REALmagic Hollywood Plus(TM)
Release 1.5I (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 95/98 will detect the card. Insert the CD
containing REALmagic Hollywood Plus Drivers in your DVD/CD-ROM drive.
The drivers are located in Drivers/Win9x/drivers on this CD.
Provide this path to drivers as asked during installation. Click Finish.
This will install Hollywood Plus drivers on your hard disk.
3. To install the DVD navigation software run SETUP.EXE from
Drivers\Win9x\App on the installation CD.
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 SETUP.EXE from the installation CD from Drivers\Win9x\App.
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 Drivers\Win9x\App 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 drivers, and run SETUP from Drivers\Win9x\App,
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
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.