Which Windows??

[LewE]

I can't go into detail on your issues but when I built a new PC I decided on Windows 7 because XP is near the end of its active support by Microsoft and I didn't want Vista. I didn't want to end up with a machine's Operating System (XP) that Microsoft stopped trying to fix its security holes.

[BigMoose]

I've installed win7 pro64 and it is working nicely. It behaves better than vista for my ATI hardware H264 playback but isn't 100% perfect (I cant remember if I have 9.11 or 9.12 installed, probably 9.11. I've seen comments about crappy drivers for the HD4xxx cards, does anyone have a view which is the best for an HD4650??). The HD playback niggles are less noticable than under vista and it seems to sort itself out much quicker. If watching football on an 1080i H264 channel, using PDVD9 and DXVA accel for the ATI HD4650, the pans across the pitch are silky smooth but sometimes it looks like the interlacing has gone crap for a second or so. On vista it would take ages (if ever) to correct itself. On win7 it does it for a second or so at most then is fine again. I can live with that. Not sure the wife would even notice and it's only on things like sports panning you can notice anyway. So I'm happy the upgrade was worth it but think there's still some scope for ATI to sort themselves out.

The only annoying problem I have now is that sometimes when watching recordings it will loose sound and skip between frames - like it holds a frame for a half a second, then skips to another one for the same time etc... But the moment I press pause then play it resumes fine. I wonder if it's poor signal related (as discussed elsewhere) or if this is another problem. I've not had the TV/PVR to myself for days to be able to check though. Doesn't do this often and assuming the remote is handy is easy to fix so I can live with it but will try and spend some time looking at the logs if I can ever predictably reproduce.