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Anyone successfully got blu-ray playback with an nvidia card?

dirtydog

dirtydog

dirtydog

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I have a 9600GT. From googling it seems common that people cannot get blu-ray to work with their card.

The Cyberlink BD advisor tells me my computer is not compatible as well. But on paper it should be?

Q6600
9600GT (HDCP capable according to the nvidia drivers)
SM 2233RZ monitor connected via dual-link DVI cable
Windows XP

It has been suggested nvidia blu-ray playback is problematic and it is better to use an ATI card?

Any feedback please as I want to have blu-ray playback on my PC but don't want to buy a player and find it doesn't work :)
 
ATI 4670 or similiar with native HDMI are prolly better suited for blu-ray... but I have played blu-ray fine on a range of nVidia cards without a single problem including 8500GT, 8800GT and 260GTX.

The problem is HDCP imo - I've often had it tell me it can't enabled HDCP when trying to play back blu-ray even on setups using 100% certified parts... I had to change the videocard 3 times in my media PC even tho my projector supports HDMI/HDCP, the cable is "certified" for it and the GPUs were using native HDMI slots, OS supported it, etc. depending on the setup BD Advisor would sometimes tell me it was capable and on other slightly different configurations it would tell me the digitial connection failed to pass HDCP... I ended up using AnyDVD HD on that machine - tho it works fine from my gaming PC.
 
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Would it play through the DVI dual link cable, or would I need to buy a separate HDMI to DMI cable and swap them around every time I watch a blu-ray film? (my monitor only has a single DVI input)
 
I have this:

fvvh9x.png


Does the closed padlock mean it is locked?!
 
Can you get a screen of the BD Advisor display? from teh nVidia drivers it would appear the display and link are capable of HDCP.
 
Ah the videocard doesn't support HDCP over dual link DVI... your options are a bit limited as the display only has DVI input I think.

*cough* anyDVD HD *cough*

EDIT: Most HDMI adapters break HDCP anyhow so thats probably not going to help btw.

EDIT2: Can't seem to find an updated list of video cards with dual link HDCP capability - most haven't been updated for 2 years.
 
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Are you sure, cos googling brings this up from 2007 on a review of the Geforce 8500 and 8600...

It is important to emphasize the fact that HDCP is supported over dual-link DVI, allowing 8600 and 8500 hardware to play HDCP protected content at its full resolution on any monitor capable of displaying 1920x1080.
Click to expand...
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2970&p=3

I assume the 9600GT has at least the same functionality as those older cards.

Why is it all so confusing :(
 
Its been disputed whether the 8600/8500 can even do it even tho they say they can... my 8500GT certainly couldn't.

HDCP is rubbish :(
 
Yeah price sucks - but I ended up using it on my media PC even tho its made up of fully HDCP "certified" parts...

Do you have a HD TV or anything you can connect to via analog?
 
Sadly not :)

Other than this 22" Samsung, all I have is an old CRT telly. While blu-ray might well play on that telly (via s-video), it would be pointless as it wouldn't be in HD.
 
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8600GT does Bluray just fine as does the GTX260-216. For 8600GT however you need Vista as Nvidia only support Bluray on certain budget cards in Vista not XP so that could be your problem as my 8600GT will not play hi-def in XP but its flawless in Vista which is all down to Nvidia drivers not being fully featured under XP anymore. My brother uses my old 8600GT via VGA under Vista and he can watch BD + HDDVD just fine via PowerDVD7.3 so as your 9600 is a better spec card to the 8600GT it should be flawless under Vista.

In general I found Nvidia cards are better than ATI for Bluray playback as ATI keep updating their HDCP encryption keys every month yet Nvidia last around 3 months before you must upgrade the drivers to the latest.

Also that Cyberlink BD advisor is buggy as hell run it 2 different times to get different results but it nearly always wants you to have the latest gfx drivers anyway as it does an online check for this before allowing BD playback (part of the HDCP spec apparently). When you turn on your monitor/hdtv and PC also affects things as not all handshake the HDCP correctly so more often that not its best to turn on the display first then the PC.

Cyberlink still make the best BD software (unfortunately their support is not great but others are worse so best of a bad bunch) go for PowerDVD7.3 if you want HD-DVD playback as well otherwise PowerDVD9 is the latest and very stable for BD playback but not HD-DVD. Its still a real minefield to get decent HD Disc playback on the PC due to HDCP and poor software players as no-one offers a free hidef player which can playback all discs without problems although Slysoft are developing a free software player which will support all known formats but no timescale has been given.

Also be aware that spdif playback on HD-DVD has issues after PowerDVD7.2 as Cyberlink broke the lipsync so it lags after around 15 mins. If HD-DVD is not something you have then ignore otherwise you need to install PDVD7.2 and rename a file to prevent the software asking to update itself and refusing to play any media!

Forget WinDVD9 as the PQ is poor vs PDVD9 and HD-DVD is broken on several discs as the encoder cannot handle the material so the PQ breaks up into pixellated blocks.

Same for Arcsoft Total Media. Most versions have issues with hidef playback and its not cheap so forget that as their support is much worse than Cyberlink (if thats even possible!!).

If your using a high end soundcard in your PC you may also find additional problems as not all pass the audio correctly as some use dongles which break the HDCP chain & or the software player will not recognise it!

Apart from all that :rolleyes: enjoy as PC provides a superior PQ to any standalone hidef players :D
 
AWPC said:
8600GT does Bluray just fine as does the GTX260-216. For 8600GT however you need Vista as Nvidia only support Bluray on certain budget cards in Vista not XP so that could be your problem as my 8600GT will not play hi-def in XP but its flawless in Vista which is all down to Nvidia drivers not being fully featured under XP anymore. My brother uses my old 8600GT via VGA under Vista and he can watch BD + HDDVD just fine via PowerDVD7.3 so as your 9600 is a better spec card to the 8600GT it should be flawless under Vista.

In general I found Nvidia cards are better than ATI for Bluray playback as ATI keep updating their HDCP encryption keys every month yet Nvidia last around 3 months before you must upgrade the drivers to the latest.

Also that Cyberlink BD advisor is buggy as hell run it 2 different times to get different results but it nearly always wants you to have the latest gfx drivers anyway as it does an online check for this before allowing BD playback (part of the HDCP spec apparently). When you turn on your monitor/hdtv and PC also affects things as not all handshake the HDCP correctly so more often that not its best to turn on the display first then the PC.

Cyberlink still make the best BD software (unfortunately their support is not great but others are worse so best of a bad bunch) go for PowerDVD7.3 if you want HD-DVD playback as well otherwise PowerDVD9 is the latest and very stable for BD playback but not HD-DVD. Its still a real minefield to get decent HD Disc playback on the PC due to HDCP and poor software players as no-one offers a free hidef player which can playback all discs without problems although Slysoft are developing a free software player which will support all known formats but no timescale has been given.

Also be aware that spdif playback on HD-DVD has issues after PowerDVD7.2 as Cyberlink broke the lipsync so it lags after around 15 mins. If HD-DVD is not something you have then ignore otherwise you need to install PDVD7.2 and rename a file to prevent the software asking to update itself and refusing to play any media!

Forget WinDVD9 as the PQ is poor vs PDVD9 and HD-DVD is broken on several discs as the encoder cannot handle the material so the PQ breaks up into pixellated blocks.

Same for Arcsoft Total Media. Most versions have issues with hidef playback and its not cheap so forget that as their support is much worse than Cyberlink (if thats even possible!!).

If your using a high end soundcard in your PC you may also find additional problems as not all pass the audio correctly as some use dongles which break the HDCP chain & or the software player will not recognise it!

Apart from all that :rolleyes: enjoy as PC provides a superior PQ to any standalone hidef players :D
Click to expand...

All sounds like a lot of faffing around when all I want to do is watch a film - I guess I'll wait until it's all a lot easier. If it ever is.
 
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