Bad picture with GBPVR

[sonoma03]

I have found that while some channels seem to play back just fine (either in live TV or recorded mode), I am having problems with certain channels. For the problem channels, what I see is a picture that has been compressed into the left portion of the screen, leaving the right 1/4 or so of the window black. Using F7 to change the displayed aspect ratio will change the rest of the picture but the right 1/4 portion remains black. The best result I can get is to use letterbox which results in a small window that has the correct aspect ratio, but it only occupies part of the window with lots of black all around it. I see this both with live TV and recordings on those channels.

The other problem is with HD channels. Either the screen is just black, or else I only see a portion of the picture, as though I am viewing it in full resolution instead of it fitting into the GBPVR window.

I tried using different video decoders, and that does seem to make some difference. Here is what I got with the available choices on my system:

Cyberlink Video/SP Decoder: Compressed picture on problem channels, only a portion of HD picture shown in window

InterVideo Non-CSS Decoder: Pictures are not compressed but playback freezes periodically and quality is poor; no HD picture at all

MainConcept MPEG Video Decoder: no picture on either the problem channels or HD channels (I do get picture on other SD channels)

HCW MPEG2 Video Decoder: Compressed picture on problem channels, only a portion of HD picture shown

System Default: Coompressed picture on problem channels, only a portion of HD picture shown

The video renderer was set to VMR9 in all cases.

Does anyone have any suggestions for getting better playback? I am running Windows XP Home with an older ATI Rage 128 Ultra video card (AGP).

Thanks!

[pBS]

i\m betting that video card doesn't have the grunt necessary to do full 1080...
the ones that work are probably 720p or less and i'm surprised it even plays anything smoothly if i remember the speed of those cards correctly..

either that or there isn't enough memory, i can't remember any less than 256m on any cards that could do HD reliably..1920x1080x60fps is a lot of data to hold in the buffer...

what resolution are you using on that monitor?
try Dscaler decoder...or ati one available with avivo codecs...[worth a shot, it is ati, tho a bit outdated] play with the colorspaces in dscaler for diff results..

usually only Radeon+ are capable of hd..even then a pretty fast one...
Rage is pretty old....
agp4x+ is ok...so not that..

[sonoma03]

Here's an update on the situation. I installed the VLC Media Player software, and it was able to play back recordings of both the problem SD channel that shows a compressed picture in GBPVR, as well as a recording of an HD channel perfectly fine. So evidently, somewhere on my computer, I have the right decoders and whatever else to play back those channels correctly, but GBPVR is not using them for some reason. I need to figure out what VLC Media Player is using for playback and see if there is any way to get GBPVR to use the same settings.

[sub]

VLC doesnt use directshow decoders installed on your machine. Instead it uses a builtin set, which arent available for external apps like GB-PVR.

GB-PVR and other most other media players use Directshow decoders. VLC does not.