Help understanding video decoders

[clskier]

I'm trying to trouble shoot my SageTV playback of 1080i recordings, and I think it might have something to do with how Windows XP and SageTV handle the video decoders.

My System:
I'm running a duel core processor (I don't remember the specs, it's nothing extravagant, but not a bare bones unit either) with 4 Gb of RAM. Using three Hauppage 1600 tuner cards capturing clear QAM from my cable supplier. Video card is a Nvidia 8500GT. I have two 750 Gb SATA drives for recordings, both formatted at 64K. Using the Nvidia drivers with NVidia PureVideo decoder downloaded for DVD decoding.

The Symptoms:
Everything works great for 480 and 720 broadcast recordings. It's when I record something broadcast at 1080i that the playback gets jumpy and pixelated. Before I formatted the drives at 64K blocks, the recordings were unwatchable. After reformatting at 64K, the playback is watchable, but annoying.

Research on the internet suggests that my hardware is more than capable of displaying 1080i. However, I have seen posts implying that Windows XP does not always play nice with Nvidia hardware acceleration. I'm trying to learn more about codecs and such, but now I'm getting confused as to what even applies to my situation.

I've seen some posts suggesting editing the sage.properties file to specify PowerDVD8 as the H.264 decoder. I don't want to buy another decoder when I have already bought the Nvidia PureVideo decoder.

Any suggestions?

[MitchSchaft]

Hey, check out a few of these blogs and see if they shed any light:

http://www.geektonic.com/2009/09/und...ng-codecs.html

http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/arc...g-your-pc.aspx

http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/arc...g-ffdshow.aspx

[Spartan]

I have an Ati 4550 in my htpc client machine, and while I understand that it's not nvidia, no amount of codec magic would work for me.

I tried most combinations of:

Ati codecs
SageTV (MainConcept) codecs
Cyberlink codecs
ffshow codecs
etc

Overlay, VMR7, VMR9, DXVA, FSE, etc

On some combinations, 720 would be great, and 1080 sucked. Others would be vice-versa -- and on others both resolutions would be great, but LiveTV stuttered...

Finally, I said the heck with XP, and moved to Windows 7. I must say that EVR with the ATi avivo codec (and ac3filter for audio) has been like a dream. I just works -- and I think the picture quality is even better -- and certainly the HDMI audio is better (my avr acutally says Dolby Digital EX now!)

I only wish I wouldn't have farted around with XP for so long in my htpc....

[Islander]

Thanks a million for the links. Very good information.

I have been meaning to ask this as well because I just did a reinstall of Vista and SageTV and thus I am back to only having whatever codecs Vista Home Premium and SageTv include as basically that is all that is currently installed AV wise.

I am recording (Dish Network SD receiver) at the highest MPG2 setting 5gb per hour i believe but not entirely crazy about the playback quality on an Aquos 52 inch LCD. I guess the options are to install the pack described in one of the links after doing an Acronis backup in case I need to revert back (i have never really trusted a system point and restore from windows) and try something different like TME.

[Fuzzy]

I don't think chaging the decoder at this point is going to help you much. SD is just that limited, especially when stretched up to 52". The MPEG2 decoders shipped with sage are plenty decent for SD playback quality. At some point, you're just going to have to move up to an HD picture I think.

[Islander]

Thanks Fuzzy I have been mulling that as well.

I will have to look at DN HD offerings, but last I checked not every channel had an HD counterpart or was offered in HD, which I am guessing it means that the HD receiver will output SD on those and thus I will have the same issues, but I guess having some HD channels is better than the current setup.

If I understand the DN HD boxes correctly, TV2 on dual tuner boxes only outputs SD and thus to reduce the conflict on HD recordings I will at least need two individual HD boxes.

[blueroom]

Originally Posted by Spartan

I only wish I wouldn't have farted around with XP for so long in my htpc....

Ditto, XP just was not upto the task. Even Vista was better.

[Fuzzy]

Dish network's HD offering is actually quite complete (at least for my watching habits). I think the only non-HD channels That i ever see are G4, and BBC America (Though I think that went to HD last week sometime). Even my daughter's kids shows are pretty much all HD (Nick, Disney, etc). And yes, the dual-tuner boxes are one HD and one SD... If sage is your intention from teh get go, I'd recommend just running a couple single tuner HD boxes, and maybe an HDHomeRun or something for extra locals (though the Dish boxes can be used as ATSC tuners as well).