Report: DVD on your TV with a PC – Tips for TV-Out (6/9) ELSA Video Module
The current line of ELSA cards isn't available with TV-Out. Instead you can purchase an upgrade called "ELSA Video Module", that can be attached to the Gladiac GTS, ULTRA and MX cards. Besides the TV-Out, the module also offers a Video input, but I won't get into that in this article. The module uses a Phillips SAA7108E chip for which there currently aren't any tools (that I know of). Fortunately these may not even be necessary. Elsa included all the relevant options into its (old v5.30) driver. The desktop picture can be scaled and can be displayed full-screen and without any black borders on a TV using an automatic DVD mode.
DualView doesn't work with the shipping drivers (v5.30) unless you enable it using a registry hack. (Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHIN\Software\ELSA\VideoIO\VideoOut, create a DWORD called Gladiac_Enable_Monitor and set the value to 1. Thanx Lamy and c't!) Despite its many options I was left wishing for one more vertical zoom-step, as there is still a small border (0,5 - 1cm). Due to the wide-screen format of most movies, this isn't so tragic though. The resulting distortion is hardly noticeable. This solution is more than sufficient to watch DVDs on, in any case. The software player, ELSA Movie 2000, is included with most ELSA cards anyway. The only thing missing to make this package perfect would be a 16:9 (widescreen) option. Conclusion: Not bad at all! It looks like ELSA learned its lesson with the ill-fated Elsa Erazor Video, which was heavily criticized at the time of its release. The only things this module doesn't offer is DualView and a way to get around the Macrovision copy protection. But don't hold your breath for that... |
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Copyright: 19.12.2000 -
RIVA
Station 2000 - Lars Weinand URL of this Article: www.rivastation.com/tv-out_dvd_e.htm - If you want to link to it, please use this URL! :-) |
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