ATSC Guide - HDTV with less horsepower

[TornadoTJ]

I'll say that my ATI Theater Pro 650 works, but not perfectly. There are new drivers out that supposedly fix my issues, but I'm reluctant to update them. I need to ghost the drive first, because in 2 instances I've had to reload the OS from scratch after upgrading the drivers. ATI's support has really gone downhill since being aquired by AMD.

The issue I'm left with is occasional jerking and pausing in the video. The computer is not having a problem with being maxed out in any way, but that's kind of what it looks like. The sound keeps right on going. I know I have a good, strong signal, and I have a fast video card, so I'm left with the problem being something in the HD encoding/recording. If I try to watch live HDTV, it's even worse.

[flyswatta]

After reading this post and being encouraged that HD playback is possible on mid-to-older hardware, I thought I'd bite the bullet and get a HDTV Card. For playback, I use an AMD 2100+ with a ATI Radeo 9700 Pro.

At first playback was terrible, but found out that ATI offers "ATI DVD Decoder" for the "Owners of Radeon® 9000/9200/9500/9600/9700/9800 series graphics adapters"

The tricky thing is that you have to have the ORIGINAL install CD to download/install it from their website. Also, the card has to have been made BY ATI, not a 3rd party, like Saphire.

Anyway, it cut my CPU utilization down from 100% and choppy to 50-70% and smooth on a 1080i recording.

I had similar results using the Fusion HDTV WxVD decoder with my card. From what I can gather, any MPEG WxVD decoder will utilize the hardware decoder (at least on my card).

[carpeVideo]

This forum has a good explanation as to how to install the DVD drivers you are discussing - YMMV

http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/in...23574.html

[flyswatta]

Lol - that's what I ended up doing yesterday

[carpeVideo]

After installing this - I compared with the Nvidia decoders (set with hardware accelleration and film for de-interlace) and the Nvidia has the best performance even on the ATI card (a 9550 for me)

[flyswatta]

Really? Interesting. How much better? If it's not much difference, then I'm not going to cough up $$ for the PureVideo decoders...

[carpeVideo]

Also - TigerJosh if you are still there - this may work with your non-BDA card

http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/GraphRecorder

As long as you can get a graph to write a file it should work - although I don't know of anyone who has tried tuning on a digital card with it yet, the code may need a tweak.

CV

[dinki]

I stumbled upon this thread and decided to give the ATI decoder a try. Well what do you know, it worked! I was able to play a 720p recorded program (the first .ts file from an episode of Lost that was posted on usenet). I was overjoyed ... until ...

I tried replaying the short file that I had downloaded and found that it was back to the jerk-jerk-jerk video that I had suffered with before. I rebooted the machine and the video played fine the first time, but every time I try it again it is jerky.

I'm using the ATI Decoder with Overlay manager on the system listed in my sig. I'm playing via the Video plugin.

Anyone have any ideas on what's causing this problem?

[flyswatta]

How does it playback in Media Player Classic? I found that by setting the output filters to the ati decoder (and setting overlay) that playback runs about 60-70% on my AMD 2100+. My GBPVR server has a crappy video card and I use it for recording only (not playback) - Apparently GBPVR Client can't play back .ts or ms-dvr files for some reason (Sub mentioned it in a post).

If it seems to work okay in MPC (multiple times) then there's something in the way the video is being played back that's causing the jerk-jerk-jerk thing (ie: not a hardware issue)

(I'm assuming that you selected the ATI Decoder from the playback screen)?

[dinki]

How does it playback in Media Player Classic? I found that by setting the output filters to the ati decoder (and setting overlay) that playback runs about 60-70% on my AMD 2100+. My GBPVR server has a crappy video card and I use it for recording only (not playback) - Apparently GBPVR Client can't play back .ts or ms-dvr files for some reason (Sub mentioned it in a post).

Ah, didn't see that post. Maybe that's the problem.

If it seems to work okay in MPC (multiple times) then there's something in the way the video is being played back that's causing the jerk-jerk-jerk thing (ie: not a hardware issue)

(I'm assuming that you selected the ATI Decoder from the playback screen)?

I'll give this a try tonight. So if it does playback fine in MPC, is there a way that I can use that to watch the HD recordings while still using the GPVR gui for launching?

Thanks for the tips.