NVIDIA GeForce FX Personal Cinema Roundup - Asus, Chaintech, eVGA, and MSI

NVIDIA GeForce FX Personal Cinema — Known Problems and Solutions

For one reason or another, we ran into many more issues than we had originally expected with Personal Cinema cards. Some cards, such as the Asus who deviate from the reference design in the dual display support and remote area, didn't encounter some of the problems that are associated with Personal Cinema because they don't follow the reference design. We should note that not all systems will run into these issues, but these are the problems that we are aware of and have duplicated in our labs.

The first issue we ran into was with dual display, which is supported by the second VGA adapter on the breakout cable. The breakout cable and the second VGA head need to be hooked up before the system starts because of the way some of the newer drivers work. If the nView Display Mode tab was not visible previously, this should solve it.

The other issue we ran into was with plugging in the breakout cable at any given point. On some systems, plugging in the breakout cable while WinDVR or other capture software would lead to system freeze ups. So far, the only thing that we can recommend is a fresh driver install, since it seems to be somehow related to drivers.

Click to enlarge.

Our most perplexing issue was with NVRemote. The application always crashed once the NVRemote software was installed on every NVRemote that we tested. While it isn't the correct steps, NVRemote won't crash if it is installed before the display drivers, but will crash once they are installed. It ended up being an MSI customer who discovered the solution, who posted it on a thread in the MSI forum. MSI was the only company that seemed to address the issue directly, and in their FAQ, it mentioned reinstalling the Personal Cinema drivers. However, this solution didn't work for us. MSI tells us that they will be posting new drivers that should resolve the issue.

The rest of the issues we had all involved the compatibility of GeForce FX based Personal Cinemas and InterVideo's WinDVR. We should note that for whatever reason, it took longer to initialize the program and change channels with GeForce FX Personal Cinemas compared to the GeForce4 based cards, even though the new cards sported a silicon tuner that should, in theory, operate faster. In certain cases, the program would auto-scan and would miss a good deal of channels that had active feeds. There has been no specific solution to this other than to reinstall the OS and start from scratch, though reinstalling the program and drivers should be attempted first.

The only other issue we had with InterVideo's WinDVR was with the recording sound quality and aspect ratio. The sound quality in the recordings wasn't quite crisp as those from our AIW Radeon cards. This was a known issue in the GeForce4 based Personal Cinemas and some of the earlier AIW cards (i.e. AIW 128 Rage Pro), and this seems to be something that hasn't been resolved completely. As for the aspect ratio problem, we first noticed that the aspect ratios were completely screwed up when we played them in Windows Media Player or any other file player for that matter. The reason is because the recording presets Good and Better do not follow the 16:9 or 4:3 resolutions. So unless you have a player that can force the resolution (WinDVR or Home Theater), the aspect ratio at which the TV program is recorded will continue to be a problem. This is particularly uncomfortable for those who want to just burn the file and take it on a flight or a trip without unneeded hassle. The Best preset works fine, though it records at a higher bit rate, and so do the other settings such as NTSC VCD. However, this means that you will need to configure the recording settings before you actually record. This is in contrast to ATI's MMC, which is ready once installation is complete.