Disappointing MPEG2 decoding

[sub]

Nope, no idea.

[Markg]

OK, well, I tried the trial version of PowerDVD7 and although it fixed the OSD problem when using EVR, it was back to stuttering with HD content...

I'm assuming that the ATI Radeon 9550SE just can't handle the load of VMR9 or EVR - is there a minimum card recommended for VMR9/EVR for playing HD content?

It's a shame that GBPVR can't just use the same renderer as Windows Media Player uses - I know that you've said in the past that GBPVR should perform the same as Windows Media Player when using the same codecs, etc, but it just doesn't - at least for me...

Oh well... I guess I'll just have to wait until I do a full system upgrade before I can change over to using GBPVR - apart from this problem with not being able to properly play HD content, it seems pretty close to the perfect PVR software...

[sub]

I'm assuming that the ATI Radeon 9550SE just can't handle the load of VMR9 or EVR - is there a minimum card recommended for VMR9/EVR for playing HD content?

I'm not sure with ATI cards, but for highdef MPEG2 most people say a nvidia 6600 is a recommended minimum.

I'm guessing a 9550SE isnt up to highdef.

[muskgrave]

yep a sempron 3000+ and a radeon 9550 are on the skimpy side for HD playback. The ATI 8500/8600 cards will do full Hardware HD decoding, and they can be had for aroune $75 I beleive.

Get hardware that is up to the task and I'm sure you'll have no problem with your HD content in gbpvr.

[BigMoose]

OK, the wife is away for a few days so it seemed a good time to have another go at my stuttering problems. Basically I have been running in 720p50 with VMR9 Custom (PVRX2) and I suffer from the every few seconds frame drop issue as reported earlier by BerkA. For most things it's fine and not too noticable but for sport and news tickers it is very annoying. Trying it in 1080i25 was worse - the HD channel went very stuttery and was unwatchable. I assumed this was down to ATI and AGP issues (I've got an HD2600XT AGP and in the AVS forums people go on about how crap AGP is for HD) so I've not tried to solve this issue recently. However after rereading this thread and the availability of the Overlay manager in PVRX2 I've had another go.

Overlay manager produces perfectly smooth playback even at 1080i25 with HD content (I believe the BBCHD is broadcast at 1080i) - both HD and SD is perfect. However channel change is unusably slow. Esp between HD and SD channels, it's unusable as it takes over a minute. All playback is also awful while the OSD is up, but it's perfect when it goes. Anything that can be done about the channel change speed? Under VMR it's near instant, even between SD and HD channels.

I have also tried VMR9 FSE. Again it's silky smooth in 1080i but I get horrible horizontal lines. I assume these are deinterlacing issues, but I cant find any solution. Not so good in 720p, the HD channel stutters horribly again.

EVR doesn't work at all well on my setup (XP, with 2.53Ghz Celeron, 1G DDR, 750G SATA disk). So that leaves VMR9 custom as the most usable, but it's really frustrating that the machine is capable of playing the content perfectly, I just cant get GBPVR to do it in a usable way. I am thinking of spending some money on a decent setup so I want to be sure it wont suffer from stuttering before I spend the money! Any advice welcome!!

[muskgrave]

just like the sempron, the celeron is a processor for lightweight tasks. I'm assuming your HD card is decoding the HD signal in it's hardware so that is why you are able to get somewhat reasonable performance at some resolutions. The problem is that the CPU still needs to do some of the work and when you start talking about the OSD of gbpvr I think we're leaning more heavily on the CPU to perform some of those tasks and the celly turns to jelly (i just made that up, please excuse the cheesy celeron reference).

If you are wanting hardware for HTPC then the 780g boards are where it's at right now, relatively inexpensive for all that you are getting. It will probably be somewhat of an investment though since you'd have to get a new processor and memory as well. However you might be able to re-use the case, power supply, and hard drive..and have the upgrade for about $200-$300 (depending on how much of a processor/how much memory you want).

Here's a quick quote for the "core" of a new HTPC from NewEgg:
GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H Motherboard - $99
AMD x64 Dual Core 4000+ Processor - $64
2GB A-Data DDR2 800 Ram - $34

All that for a little under $200 & Shipping. If you want/need a slick new case/ps then add about $40 to it. Slap in your tuner cards (there are 3 pci slots on this board) and your mega hard drive(s) and load the OS and you'll be ready to go.

Usually when I go to upgrade my computer I try to sell my old one to offset the costs. If you have a smaller hard drive you can leave in the old PC and want to pursue a new case then you could sell your old PC (minus big hard drive/capture cards) and maybe almost make enough money to buy the new.

[BigMoose]

Thanks for the above. I've been looking at the 780g and it seems the way to go alright. I'm guessing the 45w dual core 2.5Gh AMD will be sufficient for an HTPC? The 45W CPUs sound appealing to help with as quiet a setup as possible as since I've change from linux/myth to windows/gbpvr the box has sounded like a hoover. I realise I'll need new mb, cpu, mem but the 780g at least means I dont need another graphics card and I've got a HD. Might even splash out for a Bluray drive. I do have a spare 200G disk I can stick in the celeron and leave that as a working machine which I'm sure I can find a use for (or maybe sell).

To stay on topic, I just want to be sure that the above wont suffer from stuttering / poor playback as while I can justify spending the money, only if it works!!

[SUPERMAN40]

Sorry to jump in here but I also have this problem. See my system below.

I have the Nvidia 8500gt card.

Perfect playback of HD in Media Center and Power DVD 7 but studder with GBPVR

Not sure an upgrade will solve your problem.

I can not find a combination of video decoder, audio decoder and audio renderer that will give me a good result. The picture and audio are great for about 5 seconds and then video and audio studder problems occur. I have used the PC Magazine Utility called 'Top Stats' that shows disk, CPU, memory and network usage - none of these are even about 30% when the studder occurs.

Wish I also could have a solution

[carpeVideo]

I have also had stutter and seek issues as well. It miraculously went away once when I had graphedt open on the last graph.

What happened was the mpeg-2 splitter was in the graph so it wasn't available to GB-PVR and GB-PVR used its internal GB-PVR parser instead.

So I went into config.xml and changed the default demuxer/splitter to the GB-PVR parser (with the gabest MPV decoder) and it seems to work very well even with HD content.

I have an AMDx2 2000+ on an ABIT AN-M2HD AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 7050 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard using on-board HDMI

[BigMoose]

Once in a while I have the problem with HD content where it goes very stuttery after 5 seconds or so. Exiting pvrx2 then restarting the app solves the problem and it plays HD back fine (subject to my minor problems mentioned previously). This is at 720p mind you, I cant get it not to stutter after 5 secs on 1080i/p using VMR9 Custom. New hardware in the post so should have the upgrade bulid over the weekend so will interesting to see if I can get it actually perfect.

Thanks carpeVideo for you comments, I have seen differences in the graphs that I've not know how to change in GB-PVR so will have a look again at the demuxer/splitter.