Replace nVidia PureVideo with Arcsoft TotalMedia Theater?

[AWS]

If I uninstall TheaterTek with the nVidia PureVideo decoder and replace with Arcsoft's TotalMedia Theater, would I be missing anything that nVidia's codec does that Arcsoft's decoder does not?

Thx

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by AWS

If I uninstall TheaterTek with the nVidia PureVideo decoder and replace with Arcsoft's TotalMedia Theater, would I be missing anything that nVidia's codec does that Arcsoft's decoder does not?

Thx

No. You'd actually get more because TMT supports h.264 and also Blue-Ray. It also takes advantage of hardware accelration for mpeg2 and h.264.

Gerry

[elaw]

For what it's worth...

I actually use both. As Gerry says, Arcsoft works with many more formats than nVidia. But at least on SD MPEG2 material (DVDs in particular), the picture quality with the nVidia decoders is light years ahead of Arcsoft.

On my workstation (separate from my HTPC) I have Arcsoft installed. The first time I popped a DVD into that machine and tried to watch it, the PQ was horrendous. I figured it was the particular DVD so I tried several others with the same result. Popped in the HQV test disc and it failed almost all the tests. I installed the nVidia decoders and all the problems went away!

That got me curious so I tried switching between those decoders on my HTPC with exactly the same results. I've got a lot of codecs on that machine and for DVDs, nVidia was the best and Arcsoft the worst.

[AWS]

Ok, good to know. Thanks for your input! I really appreciate it. When it comes to codecs I cringe. Just never really been able to wrap my head around what codec does what and how well.

I know that for the ArcSoft codecs to playback H.264/*.MKV material I go into my Sage.properties file and add the lines:
videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Video Decoder and
videoframe/aac_audio_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Audio Decoder HD (not needed but I did anyway)
and then the rest of making sure SD material is done via nVidia I just add merit to the nVidia codecs?

How do I go about making sure *.AVI files are handled with the appropriate codec?

AC-3...? Is AC3filter the schniznick of all audio decoders because I keep hearing everyone loving it. Should I be using that whenever possible or stick with an nVidia or ArcSoft codec?

thx.

AWS

[Polypro]

AC3 Filter allows you to set speaker delay (among many other things) if you are using analog out to your receiver. This is a big plus, as most receivers will not allow any modification to analog pass-through. For the next gen formats, you just have to rely on ArcSoft or Cyberlink and your soundcard drivers...but my Xonar doesn't even allow delay adjustments. It's a good decoder.

Or just use HDMI and let the receiver do everything with any audio decoder.

P

[phelme]

Speaking of ArcSoft, I've noticed for a while that there's been an update available for TotalMedia since December, '08. Is that a safe update? Anyone know what it addresses?

I'd like to use CyberLink for all H.264, but there are some MPEG4 conversions out there that hang the decoder. Could be a problem with the audio muxing, not sure.

[elaw]

The latest version of TMT is .129, there's a thread about it here.

I'm running it and have no problems, however it sounds like there are some nasty issues using it with the latest (v9.1?) version of the ATI Radeon drivers.

[rwc]

I'm running windows7 (x64) and I'm trying to get sage to use either the windows h.264 decoder, or the arcsoft one...but the only thing I see listed in the detailed settings are 'default' and 'ffdshow'

Do I still need to add the following to make it work?

videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Video Decoder and
videoframe/aac_audio_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Audio Decoder HD (not needed but I did anyway)

or is there a 'better' way?

Thanks!

rwc

[Taddeusz]

What version of SageTV are you running?

[rwc]

6.6

[Taddeusz]

That is probably your issue. For the Microsoft decoder to work on 6.6 you need to install the native recording patch which should be available from the beta section. Otherwise I would HIGHLY recommend upgrading to v7 even though it is still in beta. It officially supports running on Windows 7 and has many more new features that are above and beyond the capability of 6.6.