Trouble Watching ATSC HD Shows on Non-Sage PC

[bznotins]

Hi There,

I'm the proud new owner of a Hauppage HVR-1600 and getting my first taste of HDTV.

I have a problem I haven't encountered before. On the PC that has SageTV installed, I can record/watch HD shows off the ATSC tuner issue-free. The .mpg files are HUGE (seem to be about 5GB+/hr) but they play normally nonetheless.

The problem is that when I transfer these .mpeg files over my home network to my "main" PC (the one with the 30" Dell LCD Monitor) for viewing, I can't play the shows at normal speed. They play, but VERY slowly. My guess is about 10% speed. Almost like the computer is playing the .mpg file as though it were encoded at 1GB/hr and not 5GB+/hr.

I'm assuming that my SageTV PC has some codec installed that my "main" PC doesn't. I tried installing NVDVD onto the main PC, as well as various other codecs, but I can't seem to hit the target with my carpet-bombing.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks!

[bcjenkins]

What are you using for playback?

NVDVD is old, you should try purevideo decoder.

[bznotins]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

What are you using for playback?

NVDVD is old, you should try purevideo decoder.

I tried WMP, NVDVD, and Purevideo. All with the same (slow) result.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by bznotins

I tried WMP, NVDVD, and Purevideo. All with the same (slow) result.

Try using VLC or MPlayer for playback. When you playback in WMP, do you see the purevideo icon show up in the taskbar? Is WMP set up for HW acceleration in the DVD properties?

[bznotins]

Nope, still slow. And hardware acceleration is turned on. Hmph.

[AngelofDeth]

What sort of specs/video card does the playback PC have?

[bznotins]

I don't think it's a hardware problem. C2D @ 3.0ghz, nVidia 8800GTS. The CPU is barely processing at all when I'm watching the show. It's like I just need to speed it up. Really strange...

[bznotins]

OK I checked what decoder WMP is using when I play the file (successfully) on my Sage box. It's "HCW Mpeg-2 Decoder".

I assume that this decoder gets installed with the HVR-1600 and the WinTV software. I think if I can get this decoder installed on my other box I get get the file to play properly, but I went fishing through the Hauppauge driver disk and nothing jumped out at me. It also won't let me install the software/drivers without installing the card.

Any thoughts?