HDTV Problems

[limiter]

I have been struggling with HDTV cards in my PVR for a while. I have both a FusionHDTV Lite and a VBox DTA 151 (not ever installed at the same time). I also have a PVR500 always installed in my system for analog cable TV.

I guess I am wondering if anyone else has managed to get a setup to work acceptably with either of these cards, or really any HD card and an analog capture card. The best playback results I have achieved is having GBPVR launch the FusionHDTV or WatchHDTV application and when it closes I go back to GBPVR which is not the most elegant solution, plus I have found the FusionHDTV and WatchHDTV app unstable.

When I watch HDTV (with either card) from within GBPVR I am seeing hiccups in playback (not seen in WatchHDTV or Fusion apps), especially if the analog card is recording. I have messed with a variety of decoders, (including the Zulu decoder that comes with Fusion), and some improve quality, but not near enough to make it usable on a regular basis. I have changed between VMR9, 7, and Overlay (btw overlay makes on-screen fonts look like crap at 1280x720, native resolution of my TV.) I am using the DVR-MS. No FFDShow. In case it matters I have: NForce3 chipset mobo, AMD Sempron64 3000+, 1GB ram, SATA drive, AGP Nvidia 6200 out to HDTV.

Should I put the two cards in a pile and burn them and pretend HDTV doesn't look better than analog? Should I pray to the HDTV Gods for a miracle? Gouge my eyes out with the Vbox PCI card and never need HDTV again?

[-stattik-]

Make sure you're using the zulu drivers that support hardware acceleration (dxva). I'm not sure if you have to manually add those drivers to the config file or not. The Sempron should be enough CPU. What is the CPU utilization while watching hdtv in gbpvr? Does it ever spike up to 100?

[limiter]

Currently I am using the Vbox card, so no Zulu drivers are installed right now. When I did have the Zulu drivers I couldn't even check the box for hardware acceleration in the FusionHDTV app (grayed out), so I don't think I was using it.

With HD playing with no other recordings the cpu is anywhere form 60% to 90% with it typically being around 86%-90%.

With just SD recording (no HD playing) the cpu is usually 0%-2%

With SD recording and HD playing the cpu is 79%-96% typically around 90%.

With both HD playing scenarios the video is somewhat choppy. BTW This isn't a signal strength issue because I have decent performance with the Fusion app or WatchHDTV, and the channels I am testing typically have good signal strength.