HDTV performance issue

[Axeman]

I did a lot of reading of the forums when I put my new computer together. I felt confident that a 6600GT video card and a 3000+ Athlon64 processor would give me good HD performance. However, when I run in 1080i I see a slight hesitation in the playback. I would guess I am seeing maybe 20fps instead of 30fps. It's just enough to notice it and to realize something is not right. If I back off to 720p the issue largely dissappears. Only an occational hesitation maybe once or twice an hour.

My first thought was that my computer is just not quite powerful for 1080i dispite others being successful with a similar setup.

Another possibility is that I am not getting a good enough signal from my antenna. I'm not sure what kind of problems I would see if the signal was too weak.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Axeman

[stanger89]

Have you tried running Fullscreen Exclusive VMR9? nVidia cards often have trouble with high, interlaced resolutions (1080i).

[Commodore 64]

What is the rest of you system?

What HD card? What Decoders?

[paulbeers]

I have tested smooth playback with a sempron 2800 and a geforce 6600 and also an Athlon64 3000+ with a geforce 6600 no problems at 1080i. I am using cyberlink codecs. There is no reason why you shouldn't have smooth playback as long as you are using a decent set of codecs, have a decent hard drive you are reading from (dma enable etc), and decent signal strength.

[Axeman]

I have an A180 HD card, 512mb ram and a WD 250Gb hard drive. The drive is working properly in DMA mode. I have tried the Nvidia Pure Video codec, the Sonic codec and the Hauppauge decoders (I use a PVR250 for standard TV). The Nvidia codec seems to work the best. I am using VMR9 instead of overlay and Sage is in full screen. The computer is a dedicated PVR so nothing else is running.

[Crazedz]

Originally Posted by Axeman

I did a lot of reading of the forums when I put my new computer together. I felt confident that a 6600GT video card and a 3000+ Athlon64 processor would give me good HD performance. However, when I run in 1080i I see a slight hesitation in the playback. I would guess I am seeing maybe 20fps instead of 30fps. It's just enough to notice it and to realize something is not right. If I back off to 720p the issue largely dissappears. Only an occational hesitation maybe once or twice an hour.

My first thought was that my computer is just not quite powerful for 1080i dispite others being successful with a similar setup.

Another possibility is that I am not getting a good enough signal from my antenna. I'm not sure what kind of problems I would see if the signal was too weak.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Axeman

If your signal is weak you'll get dropped frames, freeze frames or no signal depending on how weak the signal is.

Generally i don't have a problem if the signal is over 68% but since i have a nice dedicated antenna on the roof im getting 98 to 100% on all but one channel and that one is comming in at around 76% give or take as the signal goes up and down. I don't think this is your problem but you should check to make sure your getting a good enough signal anyway. You're tuner should have come with signal tester if not you could always use the one in sage under tuner setup for tuning avalible channels it's not great but it works.

Other than that I can't sugjest much though as i do recall on an older system board i had to adjust an agp setting in the bios for my Nvidia board before it would perform properly otherwise it just didn't seem to have the power to play bink videos that just have to come on the newer games. I didn't notice much of any problems on the system with video other than that though some games dragged. I don't recall the setting it may have been the AGP Fastwrites but it could have been something else as it was an old via board and i have changed out my board and cpu a few times since then.

Anyway it's about the only things i can come up with.

BTW i use the intervideo codec and no fullscreen exclusive mode and i don't have any issues on my Geforce 5900 in 1080i