Paul wrote:
root wrote:


There seems to be practically ziltch tech documentation for edid and
vista. It appears it enforces edid much more than XP ever did, and its
not the nvidia driver doing this. Now, moving on to the next screw
job, I believe I am finding that my video card, dvd drive, and crt
monitor are not acceptable to vista's media player for playing dvds. I
get the 'can't play due to drm blah blah blah' error. I found one
powerpoint that says edid is 'required' on vista. Perhaps by cutting
off edid I will not be able to play dvds with media player. My first
test with VLC (which I use all the time on XP) was a bit disappointing
since the HDTV image seemed degraded with small distortions that I do
not see on XP. I have to run more tests. Honestly, they did a poor job
with vista, and I think I entered into this with an open mind 2 weeks
ago. At least if something won't work they should have technical
support docs that really say something, rather than the few extremely
dumbed down support pages they bothered to write.


If that is the case, another possibility is -

Investigate reprogramming the EDID. This article is a good jumping off
point, even if it doesn't have every possible answer.

http://www.geocities.com/jgeneedid/

Gefen has a box, that can store a copy of an EDID, then play it back
to the computer. The Gefen box, would be used like this.

Video_card ---- Gefen ---- Monitor

The EDID comes from the Gefen, the video signal goes to the monitor.
To program the Gefen, you connect it to some monitor, say a
cheap_monitor that has a programmable EDID chip on it. Then
push the button on the Gefen, to get it to copy the monitor
info, to the EDID chip inside the Gefen. The cheap_monitor is
only necessary on the assumption that not all expensive_monitors
will support writing the EDID, and the cheap_monitor is an
intermediate step to give a degree of programmability. Too
bad the Gefen didn't have a local interface that allowed
tinkering. (Besides pulling out the EEPROM inside, and
replacing it with something.)

http://www.gefen.com/pdf/EXT-DVI-EDIDN.pdf

http://www.geocities.com/jgeneedid/Inside320.jpg (previous generation
picture)

I just found this product, and apparently this device
has an RS-232 interface for programming. So you can
stuff a table of your own making, into this box, and
have it played back when the computer attempts to read the
EDID. It is a little bit pricey, but considering how many
of these they'd sell, I suppose it is worth it. I haven't
found a manual for this.

http://www.avenview.com/edid-reader-writer-p-560.html

At this point, I don't know what I'd write in the EDID, to make
Vista like it more. I mean, as soon as Vista realizes a high resolution
(higher than the movie industry likes) is "escaping from the
computer", then anything could happen.

I have confirmed that media player won't play a dvd because of the
unidentified analog monitor. Using only the hdtv, it plays ok. So I fix
one thing and another thing breaks. Instead of disabling EDID I could
spoof it in some way by reprogramming the monitor (?) or using one of
these gadgets. I wish the video driver could do this but I think they
are contractually obligated to disallow this sort of tinkering. They
have to protect the content pathway, but for a dvd it's sort of silly
since there are several software programs that can copy a dvd. Even if I
could reprogram the EDID to give me more resolution, the presence of an
analog VGA pathway may still force overall degradation by their drm
software. I don't know until I try it, and VLC is way easier instead.