NVIDIA 6200 Settings (running slow/choppy)

[Atrus]

Hey everyone...I'm back again and hoping you all can help me.

I have the following specs:

Athlon T-Bird 1400
768mb RAM
Hauppauge 1600
NVIDIA GeForce 6200 (AGP, 256mb)
Windows XP Professional
GB PVR 1.4.7

I originally had an ATI Sapphire Radeon 9000. I couldn't get it to output to my archiac CRT 32" TV. I'd just get gibberish. Other than it not working with the TV and it getting REALLY jumpy when the guide popped up, it was pretty good. I tried a bunch of different settings and decoders to no avail.

I just installed the NVIDIA tonight...the great news is that it displays on my TV! The bad news is that playback is pretty choppy, plus for whatever reason even selecting "Live TV" takes a good minute to navigate away from the GVPVR homescreen. It just seems like it's chewing up a lot of CPU.

Can someone please guide me in a good decoder and the settings? I installed the NVIDIA drivers (file name was 196.21_desktop_winxp_32bit_english_whql) I am currently running it in EVR renderer and the decoder is a MainConcept (HCW) MPEG-2. This combo seems to run the best out of what I have installed. Other decoders I can currently choose from are:

ffdshow
nanocosmos MPEG-2
MainConcept (HCW) MPEG-2
Intervideo NonCSS

Any guidance would be really appreciated! I'm pumped to finally see it working (although very choppy) on my TV!

[Atrus]

Update: Left EVR/Mainconcept running...put on the "mini guide" and it seems to run pretty smoothly.

It gets slightly choppy when the mini guide is up, and it does kind of "tear" when there's a reasonable amount of movement. I'm not watching anything action-packed (currently watching "The Office".

Any tips/tricks to optimize it more would be appreciated. I feel like I am 99% of the way there!

[Snooze]

Those specs you provided look very marginal but you may be able to get most things to work. What content are you trying to watch? Analog, digital clearQAM, or HD video? I just replaced a GEforce 6600 PCIe. I had pretty good results with it, just not good enough for my taste. That AGP you got may limit digital satisfaction but for analog cable it should work just fine.

Using EVR in XP SP3 (you need service pack 3 which you must have) does not provide hardware acceleration. I dont think the card you have will do it anyway. And you will get frustrated with DVD control trying to use EVR.

I would suggest using VMR9 FSE if you do not use external apps in PVRX2, VMR9 Custom if you do use external apps so the apps can take over the screen. Take a look at MPC-HC video decoder. Lots of people have a lot of luck with that decoder. I know I did.

Oh! and try and check "use minimal OSD on the Misc Tab".

[liteswap]

@OP: You're also very short on RAM and CPU power.

When I started this GB-PVR malarkey, I thought I could get away with a minimal rig, and the one I chose was more powerful than yours in all departments yet, after two years of fiddling and faffing, an upgrade to a faster CPU and more powerful PCI-E graphics card resolved all my playback issues.

Maybe you should save yourself the time and grief, and go for a new machine...

[Atrus]

Thanks for the replies. Sorry, I left the content out....watching analog cable. No desire to run DVD from it as the box will make it's way into the basement under the entertainment center (no fan noise that way). I'll keep my dedicated DVD player.

Snooze - VMR9 FSE and "minimal OSD" seemed to do the trick. It doesn't hang up any more at all. Thanks!

Liteswap - I agree, I was on the fence if I could get away with this setup. Most of this equipment was already in my possession, so I figured I'd try this first and see if I could even get it running, and if it comes wife-approved. I basically just purchased the Hauppauge card and video card (and got them cheap on ebay). It's looking pretty good right now, so I'll fiddle a little more. I am sure at some point I'll upgrade to something better, but I just couldn't justify the $300-$400 for a new box not knowing if I'd even get this functional.

Thanks for the advice - I am sure I'll have other questions down the road.

[Snooze]

Good!

[mikeh49]

+1 for using older drivers, worked better for me back in the day. I think 94.xx is a good choice, believe it was what I used.

Also, if your feeding an analog SD TV over composite or S-video, you should get the best results by setting your resolution in the video driver to 720X480 (assuming you're on NTSC - US, Canade, etc). The windows desktop will be almost unuseable, but PVRX2 and video will be fine. I used a little batch file utility to switch the resolution to 1024X768 when I needed to do maintenance from the desktop.

[Zeno110]

hi I too have your problem
whenever i start watching Live TV, GBPVR will load for a min or so before i get the control to do anything(i think it was the EPG reloading), but this only happens once per boot so it is not really a big deal.

My real problem is choppiness in my analog live TV. it isnt unwatchable but it is not ideal. you said "Left EVR/Mainconcept running...put on the "mini guide" and it seems to run pretty smoothly. "

what is EVR/mainconcept? i would like to try this method too could you explain.