Improving HD playback - help appreciated!

[Freakitchen]

Hi guys, have put this in GD because it has nothing to do with GB-PVR, I just need some advice from those who know more about media playback than me!

Basically, I'm trying to playback HD video on one of my machines that I have hooked up to a TV - at the moment I have audio that plays fine, but video that consistently freezes for seconds at a time, having to catch up. This is a fresh install of Vista on the following hardware:

P4 3.0Ghz single core
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7600GS video card

The only codecs I have installed is the CCCP (combined community codec pack?) which is using FFDshow to playback the .mkv file I'm using to test. Performance is no better in VLC player using built-in codecs (whatever they are!) In VLC, I tried disabling Overlay mode, but that made things worse.

I'm guessing that the hardware is struggling to cope here, though am struggling to work out which bit! CPU usage is around the 50% mark with just 30MB of RAM being used when trying to play the file. Is it the video card that's struggling? Is there a more efficient codec I can use to watch HD on this machine?

Any advice appreciated.

[Daniel-mx]

nvidia pure video codec

it might give you better results btu i couldnt say for sure since i get no HD channels here so i havent tested em

[sgilani]

Hardware looks like it would be ok; probably more of a codec issue. Is HD in MPEG-4 over in the UK?

What resolution are you spitting out to your TV?

[vanderstok]

Try the nvidia purevideo codec if your card supports it. I have a barebone PC with onboard nvidia card (6100 I believe) and with purevideo I can play 1080p h264 coded videos without hickups!

[sub]

I'm guessing your hardware isnt up to it, or at least doesnt have enough head room to do it comfortably. Highdef H.264 broadcasts (using PAFF/MBAFF encoding options) can be very hard on PCs. My previous AMD X2 4400+ dual core machine with Nvidia 7600GS didnt use to have enought grunt to play our H.264 broadcasts.

Newer video cards like the nvidia 8500/8500 cards have H.264 hardware acceleration, which can greatly reduce the hit on your machine.

[sgilani]

oh.. you have a 7600GS.. sorry I misread and thought you had a 7600GT.. sub is right then, hardware probably isn't up to it.

[sub]

oh.. you have a 7600GS.. sorry I misread and thought you had a 7600GT.. sub is right then, hardware probably isn't up to it.

To be honest, I dont think a 7600GT would have made much difference to this. In our part of the world where they use H.264 based HD channels with these MBAFF/PAFF encoding options, pretty much the minimum card people found they could uses with the ATI2400/2600 series or the nvidia 8500/8600 series. These the lowest cards in the respective ranges that have usable H.264 acceleration.

The MPEG2 based HD used in north america is much easier on the system and video card.