NPVR not yet worth a try

[peter_h]

Tips on decoders would be appreciated, but I'll be looking at the forum and my own WinXP SP3 system for options to try.

I'm on XP too, Hauppauge cards, and GeForce 8600GT and have tried out decoders on MediaPortal 1.1 too. I have had major headaches trying to find a good decoder that handles channel changes, 1080p HD, hardware acceleration, and does so without stuttering.

For video, I've ruled out:
- MPC Decoder
- coreAVC with CUDA acceleration
- CyberLink decoder (PowerDVD8)
- DivX 7 HD decoder

Not perfect, but best success is with:
- ArcSoft decoder (you'll need to find yourself a copy of ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 2)(Sub also uses ArcSoft apparently, so may be some coincidence there)

CoreAVC 2.0 was the best non-accelerated codec, but crashed too often when I turned on the CUDA acceleration.

I haven't put my finger on the exact causes yet, but I also seemed to have improved a lot of the worst of the stuttering by:
- closing down other apps (and a fresh reboot may have helped too, so may be memory-sensitive) (Also not sure yet if any one app is more responsible than another).
- making sure that the folders used for video and timeshifting are included in the exceptions with my on-access anti-virus scanner.

[ShiningDragon]

@peter_h

For my opinion, Power DVD 7.3 Ultra codec is "the way it meant to be played" (hi nvidia... XD). It`s hardwareacceleration is reliable, the directshowfilter can be used in other programs, it can playback BluRay and HD-DVD media.

As an advise: Never use codecpacks and don't try to mix too many codecs. Just install as much as you (really) need. Should you have a nero 6.6 installation on your system, unregister the NeVideo.ax and NeDVD.ax filters in your system. They are really buggy (com surrogates error within explorer) and don`t respect the filtermerits.
If you have any game from Blizzard Entertainment on your pc (WoW, Diablo etc.) then you have to look for a hidden DivX Installation within the gamefolders. They place themselves even before a full bought Pro Version from DivX.