Graphics Cards and HD

[doc]

The 6.3 beta's are working great for receiving the BBC-HD channel and I like the 21 day trial, it gives me a lot more time to experiment on my test system

The problem I have is with the playback. Sometimes it plays back flawlessly, sometimes it has micro-stuttering. The audio is fine though.

I'm running Vista on an Athlon x2 5600 with 2GB RAM, but only have a poor 7300LE video card. (I wish I'd know how UAC works when I installed it, a rebuild is definately coming up).

I know I should probably upgrade the video card, but what I don't understand is why it works perfectly half of the time, and not the other half.

I'm tried using the sage/intervideo and cyberlink decoders, and changing hardware acceleration on/off. No matter which options I chose, sometimes it works fine and sometimes not. I've tried overlay and VMR9. I'm using nvidia drivers version 163.75

I won't be home until the weekend so can't do any checking until I go back.

Before I go out and spend money on an 8600GT or similar, I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts.

I'm a bit loathed to spend more money just to watch the 1 HD channel as I'm saving for my next New Zealand holiday.

[neokn]

I've got the same card and have exactly the same problem.

The SD channels are fine, but the HDs are un-watchable. I have some 1080p demo clips from MS and it works okay. Please do post if the new video card resolves the issue.

[autoboy]

I had to put a slight overclock on my card. Also, later I found that I had my bios frame buffer set to only 32MB. Setting it higher gave me smoother playback.

[Djc208]

You may also want to look at older video drivers. I had issues with my 6200 and tech support ended up sending me back to 84.something and it did fix just about all of my problems. Every time I went to a newer driver playback got worse. You may not have as much flexability running Vista though.

[doc]

I have a few things to check then when I get back.

I'll let you know how I get on when I get back on Friday.

[doc]

I just read a post from m1abrams on a different thread that mentions turning cool&quiet off.

Thats another thing I hadn't thought of.

[doc]

well.....

turning off cool and quiet helped a little, definately no micro-stuttering, but any movement in the picture and its not very good.

I've tried old drivers, different decoders including the purevideo ones, but I can't get it any better.

I'm going to give up now as its not worth spending money just to try to get the one channel better. Maybe later in the year if we get a few more HD channels coming our way.