New 780G HTPC live-hdtv issues

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dale77

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#31922 5-Apr-2009 08:05

Hi there,

Just put together a new HTPC. Vista-32 on Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-UD2H (780G) with an X2 4850e (2.5Ghz) and a Hauppage HVR 2200, connected via HDMI to a Samsung 720p (1366x768) LCD.

This is very fresh, so it is early days, but unfortunately it doesn't work perfectly out of the workshop for Freeview HD. Problem is occasional pauses in PowerCinema 5.1 live-tv (TV1 tested most), and occasional corruption of the display.

I wonder whether the issue is to do with lack of hardware acceleration, as the CPU is above 50% on both cores during playback. To lower CPU usage, I tried the enable_dxva_vista=True flag mentioned in the forums, and an install of the 9.3 catalyst drivers, but CPU is the same.

Does anyone have experience with successful freeview-hd on similar hardware? Any tips as I start trying to get this working without glitches?

Thanks!

Dale

Edit: The end of my 780G story can be found here.

HTPC: Antec Fusion 430, Intel i3, Gigabyte 1050, Corsair 4x1Gb, Hauppauge WinTv, Logitech z-5500, Logitech Harmony 525, Yamaha Rx-v6a, Samsung KS8000 4k, Windows 10, Mediaportal 1.30, BLU-RAY: Panasonic UB820

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#205368 5-Apr-2009 09:13

Have you read any of the posts on here regarding issues with H.264 video on ATI GFX cards and also the issues with hardware acceleratrion being broken on recent ATI Catalyst drivers?

dale77

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#205416 5-Apr-2009 16:33

sbiddle: Have you read any of the posts on here regarding issues with H.264 video on ATI GFX cards and also the issues with hardware acceleratrion being broken on recent ATI Catalyst drivers?

Sure have.

I thought some people had it working. Does noone have a working 780G, HD3200, vista, freeview-HD system?

Anyone?

elkano

160 posts

Master Geek

#205536 6-Apr-2009 13:23

I have a similiar setup but using XP. To use XP hardware accel I can't use any version above 8.12 for the ATI catalyst drivers. I know 9.1 was working for hardware accel with Vista, not sure about later drivers though.

It should be using EVR rather than VMR too.

dale77

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#205642 6-Apr-2009 20:43

So, 9.1 catalysts worked for HW accel on vista? I have installed 9.3. I guess I would have to downgrade to try those out.

I played the start of the Wall-E bluray last night in PowerDVD without any glitches at around 10% cpu. So it seems that bluray play is not taxing to my hardware. Yes, from a one disk sample.

Cyberlink bluray advisor shows "unknown" compatability for my cpu (4850e 2.5Ghz dual core) and also "unknown" for "CPU hardware acceleration - ATI Radeon HD3200". Strange.

If hw acceleration was working, what sort of CPU usage should I expect given my 2.5Ghz dual core?

Tonight I watched all of closeup on TV1 with virtually no glitches, then in the later programming occasionally the video would pause briefly before continuing. Pauses seem to come and go a bit. Could this be signal issues?

Thanks for any help, the hidef tv certainly looks great when it is playing smooth...

P.S. I have also discovered that windows media centre cannot detect freeview-hd stations. sigh.

sbiddle

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#205655 6-Apr-2009 21:34

You need Windows 7 to be able to use H.264 with Media Center.

Is there any reason why you're using Power Cinema? GB-PVR, Media Portal or DVBViewer are all significantly superior and the first two are free apps (which both accept donations).

dale77

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#205676 7-Apr-2009 07:21

There are a few reasons why Powercinema is what I'm currently using:

- It came with the HVR2200 and purports to support HD
- I have a Cyberlink remote that may drive it
- It seems to work well enough (apart from these stutter issues)
- I run media portal 1.0 with an analog tuner on my main desktop, it runs well now but I had to overcome some significant UI bugs to get it to a good state.
- I only installed the software on this system on Saturday

So, I assume that freeview-hd HW acceleration is not working on my system because:

1. I get occasional pauses in live tv 1
2. During live tv CPU is running @ ~50% (a bit higher for tv3) which I guess is too high (were hw acc effective)
3. Powerdvd information screen says dxva not in use
4. cyberlink bd advisor doesn't seem to know about my "CPU hardware acceleration"

Sigh, this is a tricky business.

dale77

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#205677 7-Apr-2009 07:25

@elkano

Can you please describe a bit more your system characteristics? You are running XP and catalyst 8.12, what player do you use and how hard is the CPU working for smooth freeview-hd?

Thanks!

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elkano

160 posts

Master Geek

#205858 7-Apr-2009 20:28

Hi Dale,

I'm running a 3800+ X2 so a bit less CPU grunt than yourself.
I'm using media portal 1.0 , which I have managed to setup so its nearly working as I would like. I hope the mediaportal update due out soon will help as it is meant to include updates to channel changing that will speed it up.

Basically I'm getting good performance ranging between ~10%-20% for CPU usage when running TV1-TV2 etc
For TV 3 that jumps up to about 40% off memory.

I also have PowerDVD and use that codec for decoding TV in mediaportal. I have to go into the PowerDVD application and make sure I have the hardware acceleration option ticked there.

I also recently tried WinTV 7 but it seems a little unstable for me. Maybe its my settings though as I haven't played with it too much.

Sorry I can't help with Vista and I don't have PowerCinema...

dale77

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#205878 7-Apr-2009 22:20

Ok, so if I'm getting ~50% on TV1 with a 2.5Ghz cpu versus your 10-20% on your 2GHz cpu, it looks like not a lot of CPU acceleration is happening.

Thanks

dale77

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#205935 8-Apr-2009 08:06

So I have verified that dxva hw decoding is active during bluray mpeg4 playback in powerdvd (cpu around 10%), so the lack of hw decoding only applies to PowerCinema. It is not an ATI Catalyst issue.

I wonder whether I need to turn off aero. Is dxva a one-app-at-a-time thing? I noticed that Powerdvd flipped aero off before it began to play the bluray.

sbiddle

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#205938 8-Apr-2009 08:30

What version of PowerDVD are you using? have you had PowerDVD installed since the start?

There are potentially issues with the PowerDVD registry if Power Cinema is accessing this codec rather than the Cyberlink one installed by Power Cinema. If this is the case a registry hack is required to enable DXVA creating a DXVA profile for the app name.

This has been an occasional issue for both GB-PVR and Media Portal where the config programs for both create DXVA and interlace settings for the config app which has a different window name than the actual TV app - in the case of GB-PVR a profile is created with the name of the Config app rather than PVRX2.

I can't be of any help with Power Cinema as I don't use it and you may not find many other helpful people as very few people use this program due to it's limitations.

As for it being 'tricky business" you're dead right. Setting up Freeview|HD isn't necessarily a simple process and does have a steep learning curve depending on what you want to do.

dale77

294 posts

Ultimate Geek

#205999 8-Apr-2009 13:13

PowerDVD is the PowerDVD 7 Ultra that came with the LG bluray drive hidef suite, plus the patch it made me install when I tried to play the bluray. Can't look at the exact version right now.

I took the system back to Vista via the uninstall route, got PowerDVD working well with bluray, then reinstalled PowerCinema (amongst other permutations) with no change in the live-tv behaviour. I had hoped that Powercinema would just use the PowerDVD codecs...

amanzi

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#206098 8-Apr-2009 22:07

I've been batting with an issue I've had over the last few days with certain Freeview channels getting scambled (mixture of green screen and/or blocky images.) I've been running with Windows 7 on my Gigabyte 780G motherboard with an Nvidia 8500 GT graphics card, and everything has been working well. But last week I purchased an LCD TV so have started using the onboard HDMI port which is powered by the ATI HD3200 graphics chip. Since then, I've only be able to get TV1, TV2, TV3, and the Freeview Demo channel - all other channels get scrambled. I'm using the new Windows 7 drivers from ATI for the HD3200.

After reading this thread, I'm thinking that the prolem must be coming from the onboard HDMI port with the ATI drivers. Has anyone got recommendations to fixing the issue? I don't really want to put the Nvidia graphics card back in the HTPC as I'd prefer to use the onboard HDMI port.

amanzi

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#206106 8-Apr-2009 22:35

After searching the forums, I realise that I'm a bit of an idiot as the green screen problem is widely reported as being directly related to sh1tty ATI drivers. So now I'm looking for a M-ATX motherboard with an AM2 socket, with onboard HDMI, that works with Freeview (i.e. uses an Nvidia chip.)

Can anyone recommend a motherboard to suit those requirements? I don't want to buy another dud, but this seems to fit the specs: http://ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=374259

smbunn

107 posts

Master Geek

#206173 9-Apr-2009 12:41

I have an Asus M3A78-EM board which is almost identical to the Gigabyte GA-MA78 boards. I had hoped the HD3200 running on board would work. I had an AGP motherboard with a HD2600 with all the issues that involved (green screen, blocks, only runing 1,2,3 and HD preview). However my Acer Aspire has the HD2600 PCI-e card and works perfectly with Media Portal. So ATI can make a driver work.

I assumed that the AGP was the problem and getting an on baord graphic would be suimilar of not better than PCI-e. How come the PCI-e works and the HD3200 doesn't?

Lots of discussion on multiple threads about the ATI drivers, is there a way of getting an email campaign going to AMD/ATI to get them to sort this out? Must be lots of Kiwis, Brazilians and Scandanavians using H.264 with this problem as we share DVB-T using H.264 with those countries.

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