Playback issues with xvid files

[Tim M]

Hi all. I'm having some playback issues and the more I search, the more confused I get. I suspect these are basic questions, but any help would be appreciated. Sorry for being a little long-winded.

After a long week of tinkering, I have my tuner situation working: HDHomerun (qam from my digital cable provider) and an ATI 550 (from STB via s-video) and things seem to be working great. Playback of recorded content is fine.

Prior to getting the tuners set up, I used the Sage machine only for playback of xvid files, and it worked great. Now, however, my xvid playback is having problems. Dark scenes in the shows are very washed-out.

I'm running a 7600GS and I've tried various combinations of Overlay, VMR9, 3d, FSE, ffdshow, purevideo. I've installed and uninstalled Divx and xvid codes.

The files back back fine in WMP, but the problem persists in Sage. It's frustrating because it was working so great just a couple of weeks ago.

It seems like this is a codec issue, but I can't get it sorted out. Incidentally, when I choose PureVideo in Sage, I do not seem to get an icon in the system tray. For that matter, I can't find any way to access Purevideo to see if I have hardware acceleration enabled or anything like that.

As a side issue, should my 7600GS be able to handle acceleration? In WMP, my xvid files are washed out unless I turn off acceleration in the performance tab of the settings.

Any suggestions on how to get my xvid files looking as good as my recorded videos?

Thanks,
Tim