Bah! Playback issues! Bah!

[limiter]

Nvidia MPEG2 and CyberLink PowerDVD: Recordings plays back choppy, not constantly, but every minute or two it seems like the image jumps. Live TV (not in timeshift mode) is much worse with choppiness every few seconds.

Intervideo WinDVD: Live TV and Recordings play smooth but the video quality is horrible. Recordings playback so dark that I can barely see anything in some scenes.

Elecard MPEG2 Codec: Live TV and Recordings are smooth and a little brighter then Intervideo WinDVD codec, but still too dark, and lots of lines through the video as if de-interlacing isn't working.

I would try the InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge if I knew where it was, but I'm guessing my 500MCE card doesn't come with a MPEG2 decoder since it's the MCE edition?

I've tried using VMR7 and Overlay Manager for each of those, and I also tried replacing the Quartz file which helped with choppiness, but did not eliminate it. I followed the steps on the Playback Wiki page, and yes Windows Media Player plays videos smooth and very nice with Nvidia MPEG2, but VMR7, Overlay in GBPVR make only a slight improvement to playback, still no where near WMP. FFDshow is not installed.

System: Sempron 64 3000+, 512MB ram, SATA Drive, PVR-500MCE card, WinXP Pro, Nvidia 4000 64MB vram.

Thanks for any help!

[djgietzen]

don't know about the 500, but my 150mce did'nt come with the codec pre loaded.
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support.html
I went over there and downloaded the latest decoder for my card.
nothing stands out as being a stand alone decoder in the 500's section, but thats your best bet for the codec.

[pwborders]

I can actually answer this one. Install the software and support for the 150. It will claim it is updating the drivers but doesn't since the 500mce drivers you have are already the same. After the install is finished you will have everything that a non-mce version would have including the wintv2000 if you want to play with it. At least this all worked on my 500mce install, YMMV.

Pete Borders

[limiter]

Bwaha! Success!

You guys rock! Thanks for the tip on the PVR-150 drivers for the PVR-500MCE, they "installed" which allowed me to install the MPEG decoder from Hauppauge which makes Live TV and Recordings play smooth and with decent quality as well.

Thanks again!