Is there any hardware that works reliably for 1080i mpeg2 playback?

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by bialio

I get flawless 1080i playback on both of the video cards in my setup - 8500GT and 8400GS. Both running Vista in AERO mode.

I don't know why it works so well for some and so poorly for others......

btl.

What codecs are you using? How is your SD picture in terms of quality?

thx
mike

[bialio]

I'm using the Microsoft MPEG-2 Video Decoder on one machine, and the nVidia Purevideo (old DVD-BRONZE package) on the second. SD looks fine, although honestly I don't watch that much programming that's in SD.

btl.

[GTwannabe]

Originally Posted by fyodor

Well, a lot of things "should" be better. My CPU and Videocard setup "should" be able to playback 1080i content better than a $150 media streaming device, but here we are.

I haven't tried enabling Aero, but it was my understanding that it drained resources. Maybe I'll give it a spin.

Regarding what you've said below, I'm not sure how accurate it it. It's my understanding that video decoding in windows VMR9 is basically a function that uses the 3d portion of the GPU. It's also my understanding that the purevideo mpeg2 decoder didn't support hardware acceleration in vista-Nvidia has basically just exposed the hardware interfaces to third party decoders and has not updated the decoder to work with vista.

VMR9 doesn't do any decoding, it's a rendering mode. The old PureVideo decoders work perfectly on Vista (although I haven't tried installing them with that UAC crap turned on)

[fyodor]

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

VMR9 doesn't do any decoding, it's a rendering mode. The old PureVideo decoders work perfectly on Vista (although I haven't tried installing them with that UAC crap turned on)

I should have been more precise. It is my understanding that the actual 2D decoding assistance (motion compensation and IVTC) performed by the GPU tasks are not particularly intensive. The real work comes from trying to render the image in a 3d environment. I was also not aware that the GPU had discrete 2d and 3d parts such that you could free up 2d processing by doing more 3d processing.

Regarding purevideo, I am aware that they work, but it's my understanding that they do not utilize the card's hardware decoding assistance.

Anyway, I'll give your idea a shot and try enabling Aero.

[stroths]

Originally Posted by fyodor

I should have been more precise. It is my understanding that the actual 2D decoding assistance (motion compensation and IVTC) performed by the GPU tasks are not particularly intensive. The real work comes from trying to render the image in a 3d environment. I was also not aware that the GPU had discrete 2d and 3d parts such that you could free up 2d processing by doing more 3d processing.

Regarding purevideo, I am aware that they work, but it's my understanding that they do not utilize the card's hardware decoding assistance.

Anyway, I'll give your idea a shot and try enabling Aero.

I am getting hardware decoding in purevideo. I have verified this by opening the purevideo control panel while watching a show in Sagetv. If I remember correctly, if I ran the same show in WMP, it ran in software mode. For some reason, it uses hardware accel mode in SageTV. In addition, the CPU usage dropped dramatically using it vs any other software based codec.

I also tried the PowerDVD codec, but preferred using the older purevideo as I have more control over it. Plus it looks better IMO...the PowerDVD looked too bright and washed out.