idiots guide to HW video acceleration on Win7?

[drewg]

I'm mostly a linux guy, and as an experiment, I did a test install of Windows 7 x64 Home Premium onto a Nvidia ION box mainly to see how the other half lives, and possibly to use as a Sage client. I first want to try the XBMC sage script though. I'm looking at switching the box over from Linux..

My problem is that I cannot for the life of me get 3rd party programs (media player classic, XBMC, haven't even tried Sage Client yet) to play MPEG2 TS back decently. I get about 10 frames/sec for 1080i, and about 50 frames/sec for 720p with both cores maxed out. Those programs will play some 720p H.264 MKV files I have just fine (at about 15% CPU as well, so I know hardware decode is possible). Out of the box, 7MC plays back OTA MPEG2 TS recorded via an HDHR flawlessly, both 1080i and 720p with very low CPU utilization, so I know Win7 can support Mpeg2 HW accelerated playback on my box.

Is there some secret to enabling HW accelerated MPEG2 on Win7 for 3rd party apps? I have a copy of Nvidia Pure Video from years ago that I bought when first messing with HTPCs (before I went linux), would using that help somehow? I thought you didn't need this stuff anymore on Win7.

Thanks,

Drew

[jerryt]

I recently built two windows 7 computers and ended up with MPEG2 hardware acceleration broke. H.264 was fine.

The solution turned out to be reinstalling windows 7 and turning off UAC before upgrading the video card drivers.

Once I had broken the HA, by turning UAC off after video card drivers installation. There was nothing I could do to get HA back except a OS reinstall.

YMMV

[drewg]

Originally Posted by jerryt

I recently built two windows 7 computers and ended up with MPEG2 hardware acceleration broke. H.264 was fine.

The solution turned out to be reinstalling windows 7 and turning off UAC before upgrading the video card drivers.

Once I had broken the HA, by turning UAC off after video card drivers installation. There was nothing I could do to get HA back except a OS reinstall.

YMMV

Was it just broke for 3rd party stuff, or was it also broke for 7MC?

Thanks,

Drew

[Oats]

Win7 has built in 32 and 64 bit decoders with HA, which is what WMP and 7MC use. MPC and XMBC aren't using them. There is probably a way to have them use the MS decoder, but I don't know how. I know you can get Sage to use the MS decoder and get HA though.

[Rico66]

For Sage you need to look into the Native Recording Patch. That allows you to use the Win7 inbox decoders.
For MPC-HC you simply need to disable the internal decoders (e.g. for mpeg2) and it will use dshow instead. If you've nothing else installed then that falls back again to Win7 inbox. Otherwise it's whatever decoder has the highest merit.
XBMC and dshow is currently work in progress (don't know how good it works...)

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by drewg

Was it just broke for 3rd party stuff, or was it also broke for 7MC?

Thanks,

Drew

MPEG2 was broken with win 7 decoders for that video card, until reinstall. Never installed or tried third party decoders. I considered this problem a bug in how win 7 enables HA in the registry with and without UAC.

If you never turned off UAC after installing video card drivers then you have a different problem.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by jerryt

MPEG2 was broken with win 7 decoders for that video card, until reinstall. Never installed or tried third party decoders. I considered this problem a bug in how win 7 enables HA in the registry with and without UAC.

If you never turned off UAC after installing video card drivers then you have a different problem.

Funny, I've never even touch the UAC settings and I have zero problems with hardware acceleration in my Windows 7 install.

[LehighBri]

drewg - have you had any luck with this? I just got an Ion-based PC and am having jerky playback issues as well and can't figure out how to fix it for the life of me.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by LehighBri

drewg - have you had any luck with this? I just got an Ion-based PC and am having jerky playback issues as well and can't figure out how to fix it for the life of me.

I was having decent luck with SageTV V7 client using the MS decoders for everything, but it is not perfect 100% of the time, and I could never figure out why. I'd never realized how painful setting up Windows for HD playback was. Lately, I've just gone back to playing with Linux on this box. Linux audio is nearly as painful as Windows video

BTW, I think we have nearly the same TV, but mines a "v" 46" rather than your w 40".

Drew