Worrying behaviour from Elecard Drivers

[bigaluk]

Ok - it might just be me making a mountain out of a mole hill, but....

 

I had some difficulty removing the ELECARD video and audio drivers today. It appears they are time limited Russian drivers that start putting persistent messages in a scroll at the bottom of the screen – never wanted the darned things anyway! They were introduced by the DVBViewer installation. – Watch out next DVBViewer update!

 

The problem is – lack of care in their removal can seriously screw up the video and sound driver selection. At one point I ended up with low quality mono and had to do a system restore to tackle their removal differently: and even then I had unexpected problems removing them.

 

First of all I ran the DirectX Filter Manager and set their priority to zero – but rather surprisingly, this did not stop the marquee “buy me!” prompt on all video output (whichever application I used). Really - It should be enough that I tell DirectX not to load them, there's no need for Elecard to then persist (somehow -God knows how) in presenting their little marquee message - foul play, I say!

 

So then I removed the drivers with the same tool. Incidentally, did I mention that since the Elecard drivers installed themselves, I couldn’t use my NVidia Pure Video and audio drivers? I’d thought something else was causing that! And my video output had been slower and more jumpy of late: those NVidia drivers were much better. Well, in eventually turns out it was the Elecard stuff that stopped the NVidia ones from being loaded – even though they were selected as preferred in the XP Decoder Checkup utility. Is this some other nasty little viral thing Elecard do? Deliberately target NVidia? Or am I reading too much into this after finding this other strange behaviour I mentioned above?

 

So then on with the uninstall story: After having removed the drivers using the DirectX Filter Manager, I discovered that Windows Media Player could no-longer play files it had only just been playing (and used to play long before these ELecrad drivers had been installed with DVBViewer). Media Player said that it “could not acquire the codec the file was generated with” or words to that effect - it was just a plain vanilla MPG file! I wasn’t having that! So I ran the Codec Tweak Tool that came with the K-Lite Codec Pack to clear any driver faults, but nothing changed just yet. But then I followed this with a second execution of the XP Decoder Checkup tool to again deselect and then reinstate the NVidia drivers, and finally, Bingo, everything was working again.

 

Problem (hopefully) solved!

 

I guess I was lucky ( a ) to be in possession of all of these tools and ( b ) to know how to use them. I do wonder whether this “viral” appearance of the Elecard drivers, even if not exactly planned as “viral marketing”, is a sign that they employ some less than acceptable standards in their codec’s behaviour.

 

All of this is just my opinion, of course – but it would be interesting if anyone else has had problems…

[Lars_MQ]

the DVBViewer DOES NOT install any codecs.

[Griga]

AFAIK ProgDVB installs the Elecard stuff. Seems you (and your PC) got confused by trying different DVB software

[bigaluk]

the DVBViewer DOES NOT install any codecs.

 

Interesting - I did a search and found a file called "Use Elecard.GRF" in the .\DVBViewer\Graphs\VideoGraphs folder.

 

But I think you are right: a further search found the even more Elecard files were in a ..\ProgDVB\FilterGraphs folder. So it mat well be that that is where they originated from. (Yes I do try other TV software out - I'm promiscous like that!)

 

Whatever the source - it was an unexpected and unasked for install (unless like so many such things it was only subliminally asked).

[bigaluk]

AFAIK ProgDVB installs the Elecard stuff. Seems you (and your PC) got confused by trying different DVB software

 

Again - you are probably right.

 

However, my comment still stands - whatever the source, watch out for this (IMHO) slightly dubious behaviour of this driver.

[Griga]

slightly dubious behaviour of this driver

No driver - DirectShow components resp. filters (demultiplexer, decoders...). That's a big difference. The Elecard filters are known to work reliably and well, and I use them frequently (got them with the Elecard Player, without any associated ads). Maybe they are installed in a dubious way when shipped with ProgDVB - dunno. I've never used it.

[CX23882-19]

The reason you see the message is because they are a trial version of the Elecard decoders. The ProgDVB download page states:

Both Standard and Professional versions of ProgDVB include MPEG-2 shareware codec by Elecard. You have to register it after 21 days (Start->ProgDVB->Elecard Registrator) or use some alternative codecs. For AVC and H.264 support you should register Elecard AVC H.264 plugin for ProgDVB. The registration is done with the Serial Number provided in your purchase confirmation email.

The behaviour could be far, far worse. At least the Elecard decoders still decode video even after the trial has finished - they could just decide to give you a blank screen.

Edited November 8, 2008 by CX23882-19

[dvbrewer]

The reason you see the message is because they are a trial version of the Elecard decoders. The ProgDVB download page states:

 

The behaviour could be far, far worse. At least the Elecard decoders still decode video even after the trial has finished - they could just decide to give you a blank screen.

I got the Elecard scrolling message and tracked it down to some MainConcept MPEG2 codecs that had been installed with some Applian software- I never got any sort of message regarding registering or anything like that so it appears it can sometimes be a "bug".

Edited November 8, 2008 by dvbrewer