All In Wonder Radeon + XP + new MMC = buy a new CD?

[Barry]

I finally got around to installing XP and now I find out my original
Radeon is a "legacy" product.

It appears as if, according to the "optional XP software download" for
the Radeon, that I need to purchase a new CD to install the MMC 8.5
DVD support.

Do I need 8.5 DVD support? Do I need 8.5? What do they give me?

Does 7.7.0.1 still work? Which is more stable? More functional?

Any other gotchas?

-Barry

 

[patrickp]

I finally got around to installing XP and now I find out my original
Radeon is a "legacy" product.

It appears as if, according to the "optional XP software download" for
the Radeon, that I need to purchase a new CD to install the MMC 8.5
DVD support.

Do I need 8.5 DVD support? Do I need 8.5? What do they give me?

Does 7.7.0.1 still work? Which is more stable? More functional?

Any other gotchas?

-Barry

The point about the new DVD player, Barry, is that it's got a new core
licensed from CyberLink, rather than the previous one which was licensed
from Ravisent. That's why they charge for the DVD players (they did for the
old one, too; if not so much). It's still a lot cheaper than you would pay
for PowerDVD, which is essentially what that core is.

I'm not sure if DVD 7.7 works with MMC 8.x, but the 7.7 MMC still works just
as well as it ever did, and it certainly should work with XP.

As to whether you need MMC/DVD 8.5 - only one person can answer that.

patrickp

 

[Barry]

I'm not sure if DVD 7.7 works with MMC 8.x, but the 7.7 MMC still works just

as well as it ever did, and it certainly should work with XP.

As to whether you need MMC/DVD 8.5 - only one person can answer that.

Thanks for the prompt reply Patrick. I bet there is more than one
person who can shed some light on my MMC/DVD 8.5 question ...
Seriously, have you used both? Is one more stable than the other ...
especially on my old All In Wonder Radeon?

-Barry

 

[Guess Who]

We cannot say that one works better than the other, as each system is
different. Personally, for me, both worked equally as well. Maybe some
people would find that 7.x works better than 8.x, and others will find that
8.x works better than 7.x.

Your question really has no meaningful answer to you, as no-one else has the
exact system/hardware/software that you do.

 

[patrickp]

Thanks for the prompt reply Patrick. I bet there is more than one
person who can shed some light on my MMC/DVD 8.5 question ...
Seriously, have you used both? Is one more stable than the other ...
especially on my old All In Wonder Radeon?

-Barry

Bear in mind that I'm using W98SE, not XP, Barry, but I'd say that MMC 7.7
is more stable and less resource-hungry than MMC 8.1, and especially 8.5.
Much better for lower end machines and, I would think, lower end cards.
Incidentally, if you want to use 8.x, I'd definitely recommend MMC 8.1 over
8.5 unless you specifically want EazyLook (for the remote).

The only concerns I had with MMC 7.7 were with Library (all versions of MMC
7.x with Library seemed to miss out on a needed file, atioops.dll - I kid
you not! - so it didn't work) and the DVD player,which was sometimes prone
to jerky playback, although there were ways round that. There's a thread on
the Rage3D forum about the atioops.dll file, with a link to download it and
instructions on how to install it, and that took care of the Library
problem.

patrickp

 

[Paul Murphy]

I'm using MMC 8.1 with my vintage All In Wonder Radeon 32 MB Retail card and
Remote Wonder (bought that a few months ago. IMHO its well worth the small
cost (at least here in the UK) to buy the MMC 8.1 CDROM because its just
soooo much simpler to install that way than the modular download... install
in the "right" order way.

In terms of benefits over 7.7 - I believe the DVD Playback is smoother
(certainly under my SMP machine with Win2K) and the TV App has a feature
where it uses Teletext info to provide subtitling automatically on muting
(not sure if that was in 7.7). There's lots of other little "bits and
pieces" changes but its also more reliable (more bits work as they should).
The only "biggie" ;-) that they've still to fix is this one here:
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4250.html (unwanted zooming bug) + the
Teletext needs reskinning. MMC 8.5 was just too unreliable for my liking
(sound cut-outs on changing channels, crashes when exiting, inoperative new
teletext app to name just a few - as well as the zooming issue above).

Paul