Support for VIA EPIA SP?

[martijnvdl]

Thanks. Menus and tv guide display surprisingly well. There is only the slightest picture lag/stutter when I change channel and the on-screen guide momentarily overlays on top of the live tv feed. Once the guide disappears, the tv picture displays perfectly. Apart from that, I have no issues with menus or tv guide.

Where did you get the case? As a barebone? Do you have a fan on your SP13000?

[Alun_B]

I bought the case on Ebay. It is a fanless case that uses a large heatsink to cool the processor and northbridge. There are also included heatsinks for holding the harddrive(s). There is no need for a fan at all in this case. Tranquil, the manufacturer, did a great job on constructing this case and were a pleasure to deal with on Ebay.

[stefan]

I installed Power DVD version 5.0 (cyberlink codec) and activated the "hardware acceleration" tag in the Power DVD video settings.

I have the same codec. When I activate that tag, my cpu goes from about 50% to about 90% (during playback), and starts stuttering... so much for "acceleration"... it makes my cpu accelerate, but that's not what I thought it should do ;-)

In GBPVR "playback" config, I selected the cyberlink codec for both video and audio decoding. I selected Vinyl AC'97 as the audio renderer (I had sound quality problems when I used the cyberlink audio renderer)...

When I tried using cyberlink as audio renderer with the cyberlink as video renderer, gbpvr hangs on every file... So I use the intervideo audio renderer =)

I sometimes find the audio/video losing sync. Not sure what the problem is with this, but am looking into it. Anyone got any ideas??

I get that too, not too often, though. There have been numerous suggestions here on the board. Try a search for "sync" "synch" or "synchronization". That should give you a few to start with. The thing that I have found helps me the most is to keep the drive defragmented at all times.

[Alun_B]

I have the same codec. When I activate that tag, my cpu goes from about 50% to about 90% (during playback), and starts stuttering... so much for "acceleration"... it makes my cpu accelerate, but that's not what I thought it should do ;-)

Really?? That's weird. I had read of other people having problems with hardware acceleration on Via boards, but I've never heard of it making things worse!!! Have you tried getting your hands on an older version of the codec?? I have a vague memory of reading where someone tried it and it worked for them. Might be worth a try.

When I tried using cyberlink as audio renderer with the cyberlink as video renderer, gbpvr hangs on every file... So I use the intervideo audio renderer =)

My PVR never hung completely, it would stutter and the cpu usage would shoot up to 100% (which I guess caused the stuttering upon playback).

I get that too, not too often, though. There have been numerous suggestions here on the board. Try a search for "sync" "synch" or "synchronization". That should give you a few to start with. The thing that I have found helps me the most is to keep the drive defragmented at all times.

Thanks. I'll search around a little and see what I can come up with.

I have to say, I've never encountered as many strange quirks with computers as I have while trying to set up a PVR. It should be an easy task, but it has been a constant fight to get the drivers, hardware components, the operating system and other software to work together. I'm 90% finished, I think, at the moment. Still a few relatively minor problems to fix before I can unleash it on my family though!!

So far, it's been interesting!!

[homer]

I have a VIA EPIA M1000 and I finally got the Cyberlink decoder with Hardware Acceleration running. The CPU performance is great. It went down from 60-80% to 25-45%
But I got another problem. Using Cyberlink the video asoect ratio changes to 16:9, I mean the height becomes about 70% of the real height, and I get black stripes up and down.

What can I do to solve this? I am using cyberlink from PowerDVD5.
I can see the video perfect using Intervideo, but the CPU usage is much higher.

Thanks

[sub]

Overlay and VMR9 should work in Win2k. I'd read that VMR7 was WinXP only, and VMR9 support was added for all platforms with DirectX9. I've never tried VMR7 on Win2K myself, so I couldnt confirm it though.

[Chris.Day]

For me, the Nero 6.6 decoder settings don't actually appear to work, i.e. you can set them, close whatever program you're using, go back in and they've forgotten what you selected. So, DXVA may not be enabled (since it requires the filters to be restarted to be enabled).

I really don't like the decoders that come with Nero; I spent days trying to find out why Windows Media Player 10 wouldn't use the decoders I was selecting in the Video Decoder Checkup Utility, or setting to the higher merit values. On a hunch I unregistered every one of the Nero decoders and lo and behold everything started working.

Give the PowerDVD 6.0 trial a shot. You can uninstall it if it doesn't work (the uninstaller seems to clean everything up OK).

As for VMR7 vs VMR9 vs Overlay. VMR9 does work on Windows 2000 but unlike VMR7 which will sometimes use overlay, it relies soley on the 3D performance of the graphics card. The Unichrome Pro probably doesn't have much in the way of DX9 features (but it may possibly emulate them for VMR9) so I'd expect VMR9 to not perform that well anyway. However, there are MCE2005 systems based around that chipset so it might work (VMR9 is a requirement for MCE2005). It's possible that as soon as DXVA is enabled VMR9 will work fine.

[homer]

With the intervideo decoder I use Overlay Manager mode and it works well.
Both VMR7 and VMR9 are slower and more CPU consumer.
My operating system is WindowsXP