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View Full Version : Hacking the Margi DVD-to-Go


phunkyguy
3rd October 2002, 04:41 PM
Most of you that have a laptop have either heard of Margi's DVD-to-go adapter, or have one. Product Link Here (http://www.margi.com/products/prod_dvd_dtg.htm) .

It's a PCMCIA card that's a dvd decoder, and if your laptop has zoomed video supprt, it'll take the load off your laptop's video memory to run the DVD. It'll also send the video out to either svideo or composite connections. Right now it'll pipe out VCDs, DVDs, etc to those outputs.

I've got an email in to see if we can somehow re-write the WDM-based drivers so that we can use these cheap ($40USD on Ebay) cards as either a second display, or an internal (well, kinda) scan convertor. Margi has a product called display-to-go that is a pcmcia video card, but it's $300USD, rare, and only 4mb ram. It also outputs to SVGA, which means we'd have to scan convert it anyway.

Point is, trying to make this DVD decoder more useful than it is. I may need some help, i'll let you guys know what Mr. Skirkant from Margi Systems says, he's supposedly the head of software development.

Maybe if we can somehow send a DirectShow call to the card it would work, pretty sure the card is using direct show to spit out the video on desktop, and let's just hope the card translates whatever is in that directshow window out to the connections on the dongle... I'll keep you all posted.

Evan
evan@thedigitalfire.com
aim - phunkyguy

MoRpH
3rd October 2002, 04:55 PM
Sounds excellent how ever there are already PCMCIA card zooming scan convertors, I think there was a TView gold PCMCIA unit... anyway, most new laptops that have DVDs have composite/s-vid out anyway, I think the time would be spent better getting decent 2nd monitor support in VJ apps, IE fullscreen out on a second monitor for VJAMM or Visualjocky, or fullscreen out on Resolume that still allows you to have the preview window on your LCD display aswell.

phunkyguy
3rd October 2002, 07:08 PM
Thanks for the help, Morph. Good to see you've always got others in mind.

MoRpH
4th October 2002, 12:04 AM
:alien: are you takin the piss mate....... sorry for trying to tell you about something already doing the job