Hi Def Hardware Question

[wscrivens]

I've been using GBPVR for a while on my home-brew PC (see sig). I decided to add high-def capability so I bought a HVR1600. I can tune the 3 or 4 clear qam channels, but the video is very choppy, kind of like a very fast slide show. I also tried a homemade antenna with over-the-air hi-def, and got signals well into the green on Hauppauge's signal strength meter, but the picture was the same.

I'm tempted to upgrade the video card since the picture on analog channels is nowhere near as good as the built-in tuner in my TV/Monitor but I don't want to waste the money if the CPU isn't up to the job - or maybe I bought the wrong tuner :-(

I'm running GBPVR 1.1.5 and I think I've researched all the patches I need. I know the NVIDIA card is a headache, but I don't know if other brands would be better; It also looks like both NVIDIA and ATI sell their chips to OEMs who make the actual video cards. Does anyone have advice about specific brands?

Walt

[flyswatta]

An initial guess would be the video play plack - either you need a better card or play with your decoders. Check out this thread to see how your system handles HD playback.

[pBS]

i would say the video card is the weak link there...i'm playing hd fine on an 1800mhz p4 celeron... i had a 6200 and i gave it back cuz it just barely,with lots of tweaking, can do hd...but had lots of tiny skips even then on high bitrate stuff.. core and mem freq. are just too slow...same with ati 9550..
an ati 9600 or better, and nvidia 6800 are my minimums for hd...
but i'd recommend a ati x1550 or nv7000+ for smoothness and better color..

i run hd on a x1550 + 1.8p4 with agp 4x and pc133 ram..
just got a HD2400 and it looks great... [48$ low profile fanless]

[TornadoTJ]

So is the x1550 a higher power card than the 9600XT? I was unable to create a comparison on ATI's website.