I just got a Plextor CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive and I would like to hook it up to my receiver so I can watch movies on my TV. I have an ATI Radeon 7500 card and a Yamaha receiver with many open outputs and inputs.

How would I go about doing this? And what software would I need to watch the movies?

Is there a svideo socket or composite video socket on the back of your Radeon? If so then wire that to your TV or AV amp. Then then run the line out from your soundcard to the amp.

Not sure about the default drivers that comes with Windows but if you download the ATI drivers then you should be able to tell it to output to the TV. You may need to set the TV output as the primary display and the monitor as the secondary display.

Any PC DVD player software should be fine.

- Trevor

Trevor is right. As for DVD player software, I'm sure that your ATI card came with some.
If not, Cyberlink's PowerDVD is still one of the best.

Yeah. PowerDVD or WinDVD are the two I'd recommend. I've had the misfortune to use a few of the other ones and it's just painful.

- Trevor

Both the video card and receiver have both the svideo and composite. Is one better to use than the other?

The player comes with PowerDVD software.

Without getting too much into the details, S-Video is almost never going to be worse, and will usually be better. I'd go with that.

Thanks Bitt. I found cables lying around for both types of connections so S-Video it will be. I'll spend this evening on it and see if I can get everything working happily. I have to move the computer closer to the receiver again and install the drive first.

Svideo vs. Composite
of course then there is component...

Turns out the video card only has a S-Video socket, the other socket that I thought was for composite video turned out to be for a flat panel monitor (I found and read the manual). I have the drive installed now and working but haven't hooked it up to my receiver yet.

Which player did you decide to go with? I haven't used WinDVD much, but PowerDVD has always worked well for me.

I just installed PowerDVD, looks easy enough to figure out. Now I can go out and rent some DVD's and play the Incubus DVD Rob sent me a while back