DVDs

[John Brett]

The v18 release notes imply that THE feature I've been waiting for - playing DVDs directly - is now in. I've been trying to get this to work, but haven't figured out how to do it, yet.

I don't see a 'DVD' menu button on the front screen.
Adding the DVD drive itself into the Video library means I can see the DVD contents (shows as \.dvd), which I can then attempt to play.

I'm using Overlay, currently (tried VMR7 with no differences, VMR9 doesn't work on my system).
With the video decoders set to Default, or InterVideo Video Decoder, the DVD drive spins up, but I see nothing on the TV; set to CyberLink and the drive doesn't even spin.

Hardware: PVR350 to TV, onboard video (VIA chipset).
Software: XP Pro, v0.18l GBPVR, trial versions of WinDVD & PowerDVD installed (I'll buy whichever once this works). Numerous DVD ripping programs.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

[hvcpvr]

I think you have to uninstall any previous version first(if you did not do that) then install the new one. Check the configuration screen for the option to show the button in main menu.

[sub]

I notice you have a PVR350 connected to TV. DVD playback will not work for this configuration. As it says in the release notes, it will only work for VMR/Overlay/XCard playback (not the PVR350 or MVP). In other words, you must set the Hardware Decoder option to "None - use software" and you must view the DVD via your PC normal video card.

[sub]

The DVD button will not show on the main menu if DVD playback is not supported for the active client (MVP or PVR350)

[HarR]

I often switch between watching GB-PVR on the PC screen and via the PVR350 TV out.
Is there an other way to to this than going in to the configuration of the playback decoder device setting. Maybe a startup switch ?

... talking about startup switches. Is there a listing of these ?

Thanks
Harry

[sub]

All the startup switches are listed (as they were added) in the change.log

[audetteb]

I've got another (partial) solution for people with PVR-350's who want to also play DVDs and don't have room to add a PCI XCard to their small form factor PCs (these typically include one PCI and one AGP slot)...

I have my sff htpc system setup with the 350 in a pci slot and a graphic card with svideo out capability in the agp slot. My TV is connected to the RCA ports on the 350 for normal TV watching, and the SVideo out of the vid card for DVD movie watching. I have winDVD setup to auto play (in full screen) the DVD when it is inserted in the drive... after doing this, I also programmed the irremote.ini file to do the play/ff/rew/skip/pause/etc functions of the winDVD software.

So, when I want to watch a DVD, or see the output from my video card (instead of having an additional monitor in my living room too), I put the DVD in, Windows loads winDVD, and winDVD is configured to autoPlay it. I can control the DVD navigation using the Hauppauge remote, and as long as I switch the TV input over to the svideo input, and am not trying to watch a recording or livetv through gbpvr, it works like a charm... and the audio output comes out of my surround sound speakers too. Finally, i have programmed the remote to close the winDVD app with a button on the remote, and so it comes right back to gbpvr when I press the button, closing winDVD...

Now, if we could somehow get a plugin programmed that opened up an external dvd playing program to do this automatically through gbpvr, it would be even slicker... but for now, this works well, without having to but extra hardware, etc.