NZ DVB-T AAC audio problem

[lchiu7]

Just popped in a ATI 2600HD card in my gbpvr machine to see if I could play local HD broadcasts. (this is an AGP version also under XP SP2)

Surprisingly with hardly any fiddling I get hardware acceleration and gbpvr plays back TV3 with audio with no problem

However TV1/2 are a different story. I am getting intermittent audio (starts with audio and then cuts out) and/or hangs or crashes gbpvr

Attaching one of the logs to see if that provides any clues

Thanks

Larry

[sub]

I cant see anything obvious in the logs. Maybe make sure you have the latest Monogram AAC decoder. I'm using the 0.9.5.0 version.

What it crashes, what sort of error message do you get?

[lchiu7]

I cant see anything obvious in the logs. Maybe make sure you have the latest Monogram AAC decoder. I'm using the 0.9.5.0 version.

What it crashes, what sort of error message do you get?

OK - partial success. The video card was purchased in Dec 07(!) and I just got around to installing it using the packaged drivers. Upgraded to the latest Catalyst drivers and now PDVD8 works fine on the AAC files with smooth video with hardware acceleration and audio playback on my modest Sempron 3000

Still intermittent sound only in gbpvr though - starts off with audio and then goes silent. Monogram is 0.9.1.0.

Hardware acceleration appears to be working okay in gbpvr

[sub]

Monogram 0.9.1.0 was still buggy. Try upgrading to a later release.

[lchiu7]

Yes thanks. Upgraded to 0.9.5.0 and also upgraded to latest version of gbpvr and mostly successful but the problems I am now experiencing are not likely to be gbpvr ones, but the video drivers.

I will describe the situation in case others might experience this

My video card is an AGP Sapphire HD 2600XT (had to get the AGP version because of the motherboard). From reading various bits online it seems Sapphire had to hack the drivers to support this video chipset in AGP

With the latest gbpvr, the latest video drivers and the latest Monogram DS filter for TV1/2/3 I can record and playback fine with the CPU (a modest Sempron 3000) running at about 15%. I can also do live TV directly - not delayed playback. This is a huge leap over what I could do before which was basically nothing

PowerDVD8 plays back the TV1/2/3 content fine and with hardware acceleration enabled again the CPU load is minimal. Of course now we are not using Monogram since PDVD8 has its own AAC filters.

But this is the strange thing. Either in GBPVR or in PDVD8 if I try to playback non HD content (576p stuff from C4 TV6/7) the video is corrupted completely and both GBPVR and PDVD8 lock up eventually. Out of interest I turned off hardware acceleration in PDVD8 and it now plays the content fine but CPU is now up to about 80% but still smooth so it's not a huge issue.

I suspect it's a display driver issue. Is there a way to turn off HW acceleration in GBPVR to confirm this? Just wondering how well GBPVR would run playing back HD content without HW acceleration?

Of course I now do have ways around it. Play HD content in GBPVR and the non HD content in PDVD8 but it's a bit fiddly

Thanks

[sub]

But this is the strange thing. Either in GBPVR or in PDVD8 if I try to playback non HD content (576p stuff from C4 TV6/7) the video is corrupted completely and both GBPVR and PDVD8 lock up eventually. Out of interest I turned off hardware acceleration in PDVD8 and it now plays the content fine but CPU is now up to about 80% but still smooth so it's not a huge issue.

I suspect it's a display driver issue.

Yeah, this sounds like videocard or driver issues, rather than a GB-PVR problem.

From memory, I've seen comments saying ATI 8.11 drivers plus newer revisions of the PDVD8 decoder work well. I'm not sure if that applies to the AGP versions though.

Is there a way to turn off HW acceleration in GBPVR to confirm this? Just wondering how well GBPVR would run playing back HD content without HW acceleration?

For most versions of the Cyberlink decoder you can go into the Config app, and click the '...' button next to the Cyberlink H.264 decoder selection on the playback tab.

[lchiu7]

Yeah, this sounds like videocard or driver issues, rather than a GB-PVR problem.

From memory, I've seen comments saying ATI 8.11 drivers plus newer revisions of the PDVD8 decoder work well. I'm not sure if that applies to the AGP versions though.

Can't find AGP drivers on the ATI site - only on Sapphire's and I am using the latest (March 19 2009). Could go back to earlier ones I guess to try it out

For most versions of the Cyberlink decoder you can go into the Config app, and click the '...' button next to the Cyberlink H.264 decoder selection on the playback tab.

Went to the config screen, Playback and choose the ... against Cyberlink H.264 AVC decoder and turned off DXVA. Didn't make any difference. Acceleration still on and corrupted playback for 576p content.

Still not a biggie - hardly record/watch any 576p content and if I need to, can watch okay in PDVD8 with acceleration turned off