ATI HD2400 Pro VMR9... Should it be this bad?

[derpderpy]

Here are my system specs:

P4 2.8ghz
1GB Ram
3 80GB 7200RPM Standard IDE Drives
ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro 256mb AGP
Outputting to an LCD projector that doesn't do its own deinterlacing.

I used to have an ATI Radeon VE AGP, extremely old card...worked fine in Overlay mode, with the Cyberlink drivers from PowerDVD 7.2, but SD quality was mediocre on video (sports/etc) and pretty good on film (movies) where it could do 3:2 pulldown. It was a very defined difference. High def stuff looks great as-is, couldn't imagine it looking better.

I decided that it was time to upgrade the card, and take advantage of hardware deinterlacing. This was mostly to make standard def mpeg2 files look better. Time to step into the world of VMR9... Best Buy had a sale on the HD2400 Pro, so after researching the specs of the card, it seemed to be exactly what an HTPC needs. Evidently I was wrong. I could make SD stuff look pretty good, but anything 1080i completely chokes the system. Come to find out, the card seems to do all MPEG2 decoding in shaders rather than utilizing its dedicated decoder chip. Wonderful.

I'm $110 lighter, and I'm back in overlay mode...but to make things worse? Overlay, with all of the same settings/drivers/etc is now choppier than with the 7 year old card.

I've tried everything I can think of... I've tried using the ATI Mpeg Decoder, I've tried the Cyberlink decoder, I've tried changing every setting I can in the Cyberlink decoder...but it just doesn't seem to help much. Something else I've noticed is that, when in 3d mode in SageTV, all of the menus are horribly, horribly slow. The whole "fade to transparent" feature of the 3d menus is a slideshow.

What am I doing wrong? Is VMR9 just completely worthless for HD, or is this card just a piece of junk?

[fyodor]

FWIW, I'd recommend returning the card and waiting a month for the HD extender. Software mpeg2 playback is one of those things that should work reliably but seldom does. Your card is actually much more powerful than is necessary for VMR9.

Hardware decoders are much smoother and more reliable. Unfortunately it's taken a crazily long time to get a device released that has both a good UI and decent hardware playback.

[UFGrayMatter]

I believe your problem is that it's an AGP card. You're not going to get enough bandwidth for the best picture.

[derpderpy]

Originally Posted by UFGrayMatter

I believe your problem is that it's an AGP card. You're not going to get enough bandwidth for the best picture.

I don't buy that for a minute, as I can play the recorded HD mpg in other programs (Media Player Classic, and VLC) without any problems. This is only a problem in SageTV. Also, I didn't have any problems with HD with a 7 year old AGP card...and I'd be willing to bet it wasn't using AGP 8x, like this one can and does.

Fyodor: Not a good option. I use my PC for playback, and my projector doesn't have a DVI or component input, only VGA/RGB.

Does anyone have this card and get smooth MPEG2 1080i playback?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by UFGrayMatter

I believe your problem is that it's an AGP card. You're not going to get enough bandwidth for the best picture.

My AGP 6800 does HD just fine, there's nothing limiting about AGP. From what I've gathered, the 2400, while offering excellent decoding offload (UVD) doesn't have the umph to do post processing (ie deinterlacing) of HD well. The 2600 Pro is the AGP card to get on the ATI side for HD.

[kevine]

Originally Posted by derpderpy

I don't buy that for a minute, as I can play the recorded HD mpg in other programs (Media Player Classic, and VLC) without any problems. This is only a problem in SageTV. Also, I didn't have any problems with HD with a 7 year old AGP card...and I'd be willing to bet it wasn't using AGP 8x, like this one can and does.

Fyodor: Not a good option. I use my PC for playback, and my projector doesn't have a DVI or component input, only VGA/RGB.

Does anyone have this card and get smooth MPEG2 1080i playback?

Yes, I do. Here are my settings and things I did:
1) SageTV Decoder, I also have PowerDVD (latest) however, when autocomskip happens during playback the video freezes until I hit rew button then back to normal. I do not have this problem with Sage Decoder. If anyone can help me with this, I'd appreciate it because I do not believe I am using hardware assist with the Sage decoder. No?
2) FSE=TRUE, 3d Acc=TRUE, VMR9
3) Latest ATI drivers from the website. I just installed 7.10.
4) ATI card Tweaks here: http://home.comcast.net/~exdeus/ati-hd2x00/
There is a lot of information on the AVS Forum. Link in the link above on this line of cards.
5) optimize_local_client_playback=true in SageClient prop file

I believe the above are the most important but I also:
6) encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream=true (make sure you get all of them) Not sure this will help you but I had to do this to have the MVPs playback HD files.
7) This registry setting may also help stuttering issues as well (but this gets reset whenever you upgrade):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Frey Technologies\Common\DSFilters\MpegDeMux\NumBuffers=128 (80 in hex)
The default for that is 64 (40 in hex)

Good luck. Let me know how it works out or if you can get the PowerDVD decorder working with comskip.

[fyodor]

Sorry-can't help you. There are tweaks and whatnot, but I've never been able to get one to work reliably, no matter how much time I spend on the problem. You could try getting a DVI-to-VGA converter and using the extender. If you have $300 to throw at the problem, that's probably what I'd recommend.

Originally Posted by derpderpy

I don't buy that for a minute, as I can play the recorded HD mpg in other programs (Media Player Classic, and VLC) without any problems. This is only a problem in SageTV. Also, I didn't have any problems with HD with a 7 year old AGP card...and I'd be willing to bet it wasn't using AGP 8x, like this one can and does.

Fyodor: Not a good option. I use my PC for playback, and my projector doesn't have a DVI or component input, only VGA/RGB.

Does anyone have this card and get smooth MPEG2 1080i playback?