After a bit more hunting around, mainly in Europe, it does seem like 720p broadcasts are the root of all jitter evils. I just can't imagine why.
Logic tells me that a 1080i broadcast requires more effort to process than one in 720p yet programmes from TV3 are smooth as the baby's posterior. TV 1 & 2 are more like mine.
I tried enabling the EVR in Media Portal but it threw the machine into a 100% CPU spiral of death so switched back.
Oh the pain and trauma.
@seasport do let us know if a Vista install resolved the problem. Much as I hate the idea of paying for another MS license.
BarneyC: After a bit more hunting around, mainly in Europe, it does seem like 720p broadcasts are the root of all jitter evils. I just can't imagine why.
Logic tells me that a 1080i broadcast requires more effort to process than one in 720p yet programmes from TV3 are smooth as the baby's posterior. TV 1 & 2 are more like mine.
I tried enabling the EVR in Media Portal but it threw the machine into a 100% CPU spiral of death so switched back.
Oh the pain and trauma.
@seasport do let us know if a Vista install resolved the problem. Much as I hate the idea of paying for another MS license.
I assume you tried EVR under XP? If so it's not officially supported and does have some issues.
It's my understanding that you also won't get any hardware acceleration using EVR under XP. DXVA2 isn't supported and the existing Cyberlink method of enabling hardware acceleration won't work either.
IMHO if you do want decent video then Vista is almost a requirement. EVR delivers a far superior picture quality than VMR.
BarneyC: After a bit more hunting around, mainly in Europe, it does seem like 720p broadcasts are the root of all jitter evils. I just can't imagine why.
Logic tells me that a 1080i broadcast requires more effort to process than one in 720p yet programmes from TV3 are smooth as the baby's posterior. TV 1 & 2 are more like mine.
I tried enabling the EVR in Media Portal but it threw the machine into a 100% CPU spiral of death so switched back.
Oh the pain and trauma.
@seasport do let us know if a Vista install resolved the problem. Much as I hate the idea of paying for another MS license.
I assume you tried EVR under XP? If so it's not officially supported and does have some issues.
It's my understanding that you also won't get any hardware acceleration using EVR under XP. DXVA2 isn't supported and the existing Cyberlink method of enabling hardware acceleration won't work either.
IMHO if you do want decent video then Vista is almost a requirement. EVR delivers a far superior picture quality than VMR.
There are two versions of DXVA: DXVA & DXVA2. You can get h/w acceleration with XP using DXVA. DVBviewer supports this. You need Vista for DXVA2 though. I believe the way the two operating systems handle DXVA is quite different. XP is a bit more of a hack.
I haven't been able to get completely smooth video rendering using XP and DXVA. So I'm gonna try Vista shortly
DVBviewer allows you to select EVR for the renderer but I don't think it actually implements EVR as you still get VMR9 when you go into the view filters menu.
I'll let you know how I get on with Vista.
This will be relevant for anyone who wants to upgrade a bit older PC for HDTV.
OK guys - so I have installed Vista and enabled EVR. Voila, I'm now getting rock solid 50 fps on both 720p and 1080i! No jitter or frames dropped. CPU is still at 20% or less. So that's good news. It seems that the Vista/EVR/DXVA2 combination is a lot better than XP/VMR9/DXVA.
720p now looks very smooth but 1080i still looks a bit jumpy. I think this may be related to the 60Hz screen refresh rate vs 50Hz TV frame rate. Could also be the interlacing vs progressive maybe. I'll look into this a bit more.
So now I have spent a fair few $ upgrading my media PC (new DVB-T tuner card, 8500GT graphics card, PowerDVD Ultra, DVBviewer, & now Vista - not to mention a 4:1 HDMI switch). Probably could have bought a very nice hard disk PVR STB for the same price (assuming one was available) but then I would have denied myself hours of tinkering!
The good news though is that a 3Ghz P4 will easily handle HDTV as long as you use H.264 acceleration on the GPU.
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