[Offler]

np. i welcome any discussion about win9x software, when related to stability and performance of system.

[Offler]

i started again my search for FAT32 alternatives. read this:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//lofiversion/i...php?t13056.html

there are a lot of possible solutions...

hmmm: http://www.tucows.com/preview/247503

This post has been edited by Offler: 11 March 2008 - 03:33 PM

[Offler]

ok. right now i have passed almost all tests i have required with my own system. few apps which can be ommitted have been removed from project so i am able to push the project to second phase.

i shall ask some my friends if they wish to install windows 98SE with patches (on first page) and see what the system does and how it looks. in this case i shall ask some friends which are not IT skilled. their references shall be used in further development i hope so...

also some suggestions

current "evolved" windows 98SE miss some things:
- support for hyperthreading (p4 with HT)
- support for multithreading (dual core and higher)
- large ram (partially fixed by commercial product)
- hi cpu speeds (what about test with low speed dualcore? has anybody tried this and measured core performance?)
- driver support (limited by manufacturers, but quite good when searching for all wdm standard drivers)
- files larger than 4gb (NTFS can be applied but window stil cannot write more than 4gb)

this is just very mad question... but... can be these things solved for future?

This post has been edited by Offler: 27 March 2008 - 01:35 PM

[Offler]

back again

DVB-T television support in Windows 98SE Possible:
after few months i was able to run digital TV, using ATI Radeon X850xt and Pinnacle 300i. the mpeg decoder is using GPU to decode. the app is working correctl mostly, but i am using older version and no newer versions are good. development of newer version stopped.

ICQ: Miranda
not bad but not good will test in future. some minor bugs still here.

VSfilter.dll
for better subtitles the version 2,23 is better than other newer...

[Offler]

codecs support:
look for them at www.free-codecs.com

FFDshow - classically the SSE version was developed for NT5 or higher windows kernel (2k, XP and higher). The MMX was developed even for Win9x when it has MMX support - right now i use the previous version of it. The current version was not supported by my system. The unsigned version is as always available for all systems.


first of all you need strong hardware, but i measured that even if you use multicore processor you will hardly gain better performance as with Pentium III. For example q6600 has better performance only due its frequency.

Xvid - Koepi's Build
Decoder and encoder works perfectly even in windows 9x. it has only small trouble in Start panel while the lnk files are linking to rundll32 which is located in system32 directory - default for 2k and Xp systems. also i dont recomend the Nic's build (if i remember correctly it has not been updated since 2004). full deblock, full dering + vsfilter 2.23 is quite CPU consuming but if you have Intel Pentium III-S "Tualatin" or something with similar performance (over 400mflops) you will be able to play movies with this strong realtime postprocessing.

x264 or h264 Mpeg4
i found codec called x264Vfw. not available at freecodecs site, but available at sourceforge. i used rather old version from year 2006 but recently i found newer version from december 2008. very good for decoding, but encoding - allows multithreading, but not usable at all at Win9x systems. any encoding is very time consuming.

Indeo Codec
on freecodecs is available version 5.11 which is newer as version available with win98SE.

Mpeg2
The best codec i found for this format is clsvsd.ax which is part of PowerDVD 6.0. if you use version 7 the player will crash when playback ends or if you close the player. If you own any product where was bundled PowerDVD6 (eg. graphic card as ati x800, or some DVD writers) you may be able to use legally, since powerDVD is not freeware.

the same codec i use for Mpeg2 demux from DVB-T card and for playing DVDs. this codec can use hardware acceleration of your graphics to decode... this works with some ATi cards if i remember correctly. also i read some articles about ATI decoder - obviously the same codec, but in newer version. if you have the correct installation CD you will be able to download it from ATI/AMD page.

Audio:
MP3 codec didnt changed since 1999.

AC3
in some cases it is provided by Creative as a part of its Soundblasters. the question is if that codec work HW or SW based. i dont use it since acessibility to it is terrible.

AC3 Filter
for me the best choice which allows me to set voice level for each speaker separately. still compatible with Win9x


Player: Media Player Classic
I was able to use all renderers including Haali and VMR9. NEVER check "VMR mixer mode". player will freeze in most cases.

[Drugwash]

Codecs installed on my system:
- AC3 filter 1.51
- Bink and Smacker
- DivX 5.2.1
- DScaler 5 MPEG decoders
- Intel A/V Codecs v2.0
- oggcodecs 0.71.0946
- RadLight APE DirectShow filter
- RadLight MPC DirectShow filter
- Valex AC3-DTS codec
- Microsoft Windows Media Video 9 VCM
- Monkey's Audio
- MP3 Parser DirectShow filter
- QuickTime Alternative 1.56
- x264VFW
- Xvid MPEG-4 Video Codec 1.2.1

[sp193]

32bit icon support - Do you mean the icons on the desktop or in the taskbar?

If it is the icons in the taskbar then try -> http://www.dr-hoiby....Color/index.php
I know that it is only 256 colors, but most tray icons are only 256 colors at most right? Even XP seems to only have 256 color support (To me at least)

[Offler]

to drugwash:
dont use Xvid and DivX together. there are two reasons. Xvid can decode any DivX movie, and DivX is more cpu consuming for encoding than other codecs. the stupid divix logo in the corner is also annoying me.

as always try to use so few codecs as possible. you use bit much of them, but if they dont make trouble it is OK. jus be sure that it doesnt happent that two codecs will compete in for the place in decoding stream...

I personally use one single codec for encoding, and other for decoding. if you need only decoder, without codec specific post processing the FFDShow should be the best choice.

Why Xvid... i use two versions of xvid. one of them is extremely old installed in xvid directory. this codec i use for encoding while it has low CPU requirements. then i use the newest koepis, installed in Xvid2 directory for decoding which is the best choice, since it can make video extremely clear - without any sign of quantization.

quite weird installation but it works

to sp193: i mean desktop icons.

[Drugwash]

The reason I've piled up all those codecs is simple: whenever some video wouldn't play, I either let GOMplayer search for the correct codec or I manually googled the web for one.

DivX would've never been present if it could decode older Div3 video files. But GOM complained it couldn't play those, neither with Xvid nor with the built-in codec, so I had to install DivX.

The others have been installed for the very same reason. For example, .bik videos (from older games) can't be played with anything else (to my knowledge) than Bink & Smacker's own player.

I also got lots of troubles with certain very old videos, also from games, which needed a specific Intel Indeo codec, older than the one built into Win98SE. Had a hard time finding the right one, since there were two of them at large and the wrong one was the most available around.

I must say FFDshow has by large failed me, with a very choppy playback back when I was using the 400MHz Pentium II CPU. Back then I tried any and every possible combination of settings, to no avail, so I scrapped it and decided to never touch it again.

The only problem I have currently, is DVD playback. Despite a 700MHz Pentium III CPU, 256MB PC133 RAM and 128MB GeForce4 Ti4200 video, the video is choppy. I've seen a 600MHz P III with same amount of RAM and a lousy 64MB GeForce2 video play DVDs with no problem whatsoever, so it's quite frustrating. Granted, the other machine was running XP so maybe the codecs were more compatible since they were newer. The DVD-RW unit is the same for both machines: Samsung SH-S182 (mine is version "D" - no Lightscribe - while the other is "M") and the player is also the same (GOMplayer).

[Offler]

iy the media player classic. i dont know the gom player, but the MPC is just the simpliest solution for me. No glitter on it at all.

the chopiness can be reason of your bios settings. if you wish try the MMX version of FFDshow. i just cant recall the number of mmx build that works with win9x... your machine has to be able run videos with ffdshow without trouble, and if am i right your cpu has MMX...

Current search for software:
- something that can play Digital CD Audio, except Windows Media Player9. Really no other software worked for me. at all the WMP9 is needed more even for WMV files which are choppy when WMP9 is not present.

[Drugwash]

MMX is built into CPUs since P I; I have a couple of 200MHz MMX and actually that's been my primary CPU until a couple years ago (on another mobo). I've tried the MMX version of ffdshow at the time, with no luck. Not gonna touch it again.

Dunno what I could modify in the BIOS to make video run smoother; I believe everything's just as it should, but if you have any specific settings I should look into, I'll try and post the results.

Regarding digital audio, do you mean DTS by chance? If so, an older version of PowerDVD (v4, I think) was able to play DTS correctly in Win9x. It's not freeware though.

[sp193]

Features that cannot be added without heavily rewriting the windows 9x kernel(Meaning that it isn't really feastible):
- support for hyperthreading (p4 with HT)
- support for multithreading (dual core and higher)
-large ram (partially fixed by commercial product) <- No, the problem wasn't fixed like that. You can use >2GB by editing something about your vcache, without using a commercial product, but your milliage may vary. I can't remember the solution clearly, so could someone please point him in the right direction here?

hi cpu speeds (what about test with low speed dualcore? has anybody tried this and measured core performance?) <- You CAN run win98 on a fast CPU(32-bit or 64-bit), but it would only use 1 core on any system(regardless it is a dual core or not)

files larger than 4gb (NTFS can be applied but window stil cannot write more than 4gb) <- Can't remember clearly, but I thought that there was a unofficial patch for this somewhere on this forum for kernel32.dll?

Oh, since USB3.0 is already finalized, what do all of you think are the odds of a driver for Win9x appearing?

This post has been edited by sp193: 24 December 2008 - 06:39 AM

[dencorso]

sp193, on Dec 24 2008, 10:37 AM, said:

[snip]
-large ram (partially fixed by commercial product) <- No, the problem wasn't fixed like that. You can use >2GB by editing something about your vcache, without using a commercial product, but your milliage may vary. I can't remember the solution clearly, so could someone please point him in the right direction here? [snip]

Read Day-to-day running Win 9x/ME with more than 1 GiB RAM

Merry X-mas to you and all our fellow members here at MSFN!

[Offler]

Digital television:

At all solved for my machine with great sucess, but with some things that will probably never be solved.

What you will need:
Digital TV tuner (DVB - T in my case) with driver compatible with Win98SE (for me Pinnacle 300i)
Kernel EX
ProgDVB Version 4.85.3 (located at http://www.progdvb.c...d_progdvb.html)
Any MPEG-2 decoder (in my case it is PowerDVD Mpeg2 decoder able to use my ATI x850 card for video decompression)

Features:
Hardware accelerated Digital Tv viewing

Bugs:
Software is russian so it can produce some trouble for central european localizations.
If the signal is lost the program can crash.

using of VMR-9 is possible in windows 98 but its a bit buggy - image is not correctly alligned.

Setbacks:
it is hard to find Win98se compatible hardware. for example Pinnacle 310 which was released one year later has different one chip and may not be compatible with windows driver.

i didnt found any support for radio software for this piece of hardware (its hybrid tuner, so it can tune in digi TV, analog TV and analog radio). a bit shame

Windows 98 is no longer supported by the author of ProgDVB.

Mpeg4 is not supported by that version.

[Offler]

Codecs and Media tools:

Media Player Classic:
The one i can mostly reccomend. Has some internal filters, usable to play audio and video files, DVDs and can connect to Video Devices such as TV tuner, VIVO or Digital camera. Also can play videos using Overlay mixer, Video Mixing renderer 9 and Haali renderer. Shader effect...

Windows Media player 9
Few months ago i was solving problem with WMV files - they were always choppy when using any player. The only way how to fix it was to install WMP9... Also this is only player able to play Digital Audio CD input through SPDIF which is connected directly from CD/DVD drive directly to SoundCard. The support of this feature is bit buggy but it is the best way how to play CDs. I dont recommend this software, but from my point of view it may cause trouble to work without it.

ATV2000 (latest)
Best software for Analog TV tuner viewing. Bit hard to control it but it has better image quality as many other software. Widely localized. Allows realtime capturing and encoding software and for some cards hardware MPEG.

ProgDVB 4.85.3
Best software for Digital TV tuner. Look at previous post for details. Allows recording in MPEG2 Stream format. When you fix the codecs it is very usable without any bad errors.

Power DVD 6
It is commonly bundled with DVD drives and graphic cards and in some cases with a legal CD-Key. Player itself is not interesting, but it contains a lot of usable codecs which are one of the best for Mpeg2 decoding. CLVSD.AX can decode mpeg using hardware acceleration which makec CPU load lower. Version 6 works correcly witn ProgDVB and MPC.

AC3 Filter 1.63a (latest)
The newest version of this sound decoder also contain very usable Equalizer which can really improve sound quality from DVDs, Digital television or other sound sources. This build is localized in many languages. Not so User friendly, but offers many possibilities in setting good sound quality. (ac3, dts, mpeg, pcm, ... and others)

Note: When using AC3 filter with equalizer in MPC and 5.1 sound, if video is choppy set in MPC "Default sound device". I had some trouble when it was set to "Direct sound device:SoundBlaster LIVE". Correct setting for me was "Soundblaster LIVE" althougt it seemed same for many other videos it is not.

Direct VobSub 2.23
Not the newest. Newer versions caused trouble with YUY2 colorspace while playing Xvid videos. I have to check if there are other versions. If you try to play video in VMR9 with subtitles YUY2 and YU12 formats are impossible to set, default colorspace is always RGB32. That setting is quite CPU consuming, but it may be connected with the video which was used to test. Newer versions were able to use YUV2, but the image was crippled and "Mod32 fix" didnt worked.

Xvid - Koepis Build (Latest)
Officially not supporting Win9x but it works great. Still under development. I recommend it for all Xvid and DivX videos.

FFDShow
Support for windows 9x was dropped. have to find last stable release for them. Usage: good for decompressing of formats you dont use commonly.

H264 VFW
Quite good h264 decoder, have to find its details

Virtual DUB
freeware. good working. i have to find some details about it.

this page will be edited within day or two. i want to add here all links and re-test some things. I dont reccomend to use any of Codec packs available on web. Most of them are not correctly set.

Beware of Nero - might screw up all codec settings.

This post has been edited by Offler: 02 September 2009 - 02:26 AM

[patchworks]

Offler, on Sep 2 2009, 09:52 AM, said:

Codecs and Media tools:

Media Player Classic:
The one i can mostly reccomend. Has some internal filters, usable to play audio and video files, DVDs and can connect to Video Devices such as TV tuner, VIVO or Digital camera. Also can play videos using Overlay mixer, Video Mixing renderer 9 and Haali renderer. Shader effect...

Windows Media player 9
Few months ago i was solving problem with WMV files - they were always choppy when using any player. The only way how to fix it was to install WMP9... Also this is only player able to play Digital Audio CD input through SPDIF which is connected directly from CD/DVD drive directly to SoundCard. The support of this feature is bit buggy but it is the best way how to play CDs. I dont recommend this software, but from my point of view it may cause trouble to work without it.

ATV2000 (latest)
Best software for Analog TV tuner viewing. Bit hard to control it but it has better image quality as many other software. Widely localized. Allows realtime capturing and encoding software and for some cards hardware MPEG.

ProgDVB 4.85.3
Best software for Digital TV tuner. Look at previous post for details. Allows recording in MPEG2 Stream format. When you fix the codecs it is very usable without any bad errors.

Power DVD 6
It is commonly bundled with DVD drives and graphic cards and in some cases with a legal CD-Key. Player itself is not interesting, but it contains a lot of usable codecs which are one of the best for Mpeg2 decoding. CLVSD.AX can decode mpeg using hardware acceleration which makec CPU load lower. Version 6 works correcly witn ProgDVB and MPC.

AC3 Filter 1.63a (latest)
The newest version of this sound decoder also contain very usable Equalizer which can really improve sound quality from DVDs, Digital television or other sound sources. This build is localized in many languages. Not so User friendly, but offers many possibilities in setting good sound quality. (ac3, dts, mpeg, pcm, ... and others)

Note: When using AC3 filter with equalizer in MPC and 5.1 sound, if video is choppy set in MPC "Default sound device". I had some trouble when it was set to "Direct sound device:SoundBlaster LIVE". Correct setting for me was "Soundblaster LIVE" althougt it seemed same for many other videos it is not.

Direct VobSub 2.23
Not the newest. Newer versions caused trouble with YUY2 colorspace while playing Xvid videos. I have to check if there are other versions. If you try to play video in VMR9 with subtitles YUY2 and YU12 formats are impossible to set, default colorspace is always RGB32. That setting is quite CPU consuming, but it may be connected with the video which was used to test. Newer versions were able to use YUV2, but the image was crippled and "Mod32 fix" didnt worked.

Xvid - Koepis Build (Latest)
Officially not supporting Win9x but it works great. Still under development. I recommend it for all Xvid and DivX videos.

FFDShow
Support for windows 9x was dropped. have to find last stable release for them. Usage: good for decompressing of formats you dont use commonly.

H264 VFW
Quite good h264 decoder, have to find its details

Virtual DUB
freeware. good working. i have to find some details about it.

this page will be edited within day or two. i want to add here all links and re-test some things. I dont reccomend to use any of Codec packs available on web. Most of them are not correctly set.

Beware of Nero - might screw up all codec settings.

...if you need to kill your Windows 9X/ME performances.

If not, choose VideoLAN instead.

This post has been edited by patchworks: 02 September 2009 - 02:57 AM

[Offler]

Well i disagree with you.

Also Mpeg2 decompression with cyberlink is very fast and i seems to be almost cpu independent when hardware acceleration is enabled.

I prefer to use decoders which were used to encode the file. For better quality. FFDShow does the same, but i know that image quality might be worse than with proper codec.

Also do VLC play digital tv?

edit: it does.. will see... I had some trouble with it lately. (no win9x support at that time)

This post has been edited by Offler: 02 September 2009 - 03:08 AM

[patchworks]

Offler, on Sep 2 2009, 11:03 AM, said:

Also Mpeg2 decompression with cyberlink is very fast and i seems to be almost cpu independent when hardware acceleration is enabled.

True, VLC don't have mutch hardware optimizations integrated, but is still better 'cause don't install anything that overhead the system.

Offler, on Sep 2 2009, 11:03 AM, said:

I prefer to use decoders which were used to encode the file. For better quality.

You don't obtain better quality using the same codec but with a better one !

And note that FFDShow is FFMpeg based too...

[Offler]

VLC 0.8.6 is the latest release with support for this operating system.

Please note that these versions of Windows are not officially supported. No VideoLAN developer uses any of these systems, which makes them hard to support. VLC should mostly work with them, but some incompatibilities might appear. You might need to download The Microsoft Layer for Unicode on Windows 95/98/Me Systems. The two MSLU files need to be put in the C:\Windows\System\ folder.

Warning: The following package is not up-to-date with the latest official version of the software. When using an out-of-date version, you may encounter important bugs or security holes.



I am quite disappointed... I tried it some months ago. All i received was crash screen.

FFDShow is in my system only for solving of compatibility issues. Surely it is not a good decompressor. I tried it with Progdvb for Mpeg2 decoding of digital TV. IT IS TERRIBLE.

FFDShow is mainly a reason why i maintain special Mpeg2, Xvid and sound codec for quality purposes such as dvds... I got one old CRT monitor by IBM. Its image is crystal clear

[patclash]

Hi ,

you don't use KernelEX v4.0 ?
see : http://www.msfn.org/board/kernelex-4-0-fin...tml#entry872324
(my post #207)

and I can say the last version VLC 1.0.1 work better than the prévious 1.00 with KernelEX v4.0 final 2