DTT with Windows 7?

mrbongo

I'm trying to get DTT working with Windows 7 Media Center (7048 version) and a Pinnacle 7010ix tuner card.

The tuner is working fine for Satellite (even gets BBC HD mp4 broadcasts) but with Irish DTT I get sound and a scrambled picture that every so often is perfect (Ï'm presuming this is the full sync frame that is broadcast every few seconds) but in between is all messed up.

I am guessing it is a software problem (my signal quality is around 70db from Three Rock), presumably due to not having the right mp4 decoder for Irish DTT.

Anyone have suggestions/ideas or have a Windows 7 setup working?

Thanks,
Mike

mullingar

I read somewhere that the h264 decoder in win7's MC is fairly basic and locked in until the final release. This could be the source of your problem.

What spec PC are you running?

I have ordered over the weekend everything to build a htpc including the pinnacle 7010ix card. I was planning to test it with win7 and mediaportal to start.

slegs

I had it working last night on Windows 7 RC. I upgraded my PC which already had a working DVBViewer setup with CoreAVC H.264 drive so maybe Media Centre is picking up that.

Media Centre works quite well in Windows 7 compared to previous versions and even makes a solid attempt at an organised EPG for Ireland when you tell it that you have a DVB-T tuner and DVB-S tuner. It scans all the channels and organises them and downloads a 14 day program guide.

MHEG-5 teletext also works well for RTE.

mrbongo

I use a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard (http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=346010) - supposed to be an excellent HTPC mobo, along with an Athlon 64 X2 6000 CPU. The spec is plenty good enough.

Yes, I guess it could be the H264 decoder. I was hoping since it handled BBC HD it would be fine for Irish DTT. Maybe not.

I couldn't get MediaPortal to install on Windows 7 (it checks the OS version) but maybe the latest version installs (although a note on their website say they don't support Windows 7 - http://www.team-mediaportal.com/news/global/mediaportal_1.0.2_released.html)

From what I've seen Windows Media Center is much superior though (when it works), with excellent EPG, music and video player modes, easily controlled via remote control.

I tried Irish DTT with DVB Viewer but couldn't get anything out of it.

mullingar

@OP

70dB could be a little low. What is your analogue signal like?

Also, what way is your TV distributed around the house? Via an active splitter or a passive?

mrbongo

slegs, sounds like you have it sorted!

So, installing the Core AVC H264 driver could be the ticket. I'm going to do a fresh Windows 7 RC install today and will try the Core AVC driver.

mullingar, my analog signal is very good. The aerial installer guy said the 70db was pretty good. The roof aerial is connected to the Pinnacle card via a passive splitter ... the 70db was measured on the output of the passive splitter.

watty

Please note as MS does not pay us there is no support for MS OS here. Especially ones not out yet.

Unless you like fiddling with MS OS as a hobby or are paid to do so, I recommend you only use released versions of MS OS.

All versions of windows currently need an added suitable MPEG4 H.264 codec. Core AVC is one option known to work.

The RC version Win7 will periodically shut down some months before expiry and is only recommended for a separate Test PC. Also the MS apps on release version might be tied to MS approved codecs only.

All versions of MS Win MCE are seriously poor for TV in Europe, designed around Analogue NTSC originally with later support for US digital and US cable card. They are poor quality Expensive power hungry things compared to dedicated Set boxes.

Do make sure your graphics card properly supports PAL 576i for SD (rgb, composite & S-video) and Euro 1080i for HD on HDMI

Very very few PC screens, especially LCD work properly at European TV refresh rates. The MC PC is essentially designed for North American/ Japan markets. Many European makers stopped doing because of problems and cost.

mrbongo

watty, your impression of Windows MCE is incorrect I think.

I've been using MCE for around 3 years and it has great support for Irish/UK channels (14 days EPG with lots of descriptive detail). Picture is rock solid on my monitors, never had a problem with monitor display.

Correction on H264: Windows 7 has H264 with hardware acceleration built-in.

I use MCE because I haven't seen any TV software out there to beat it. Yes, it needs more power than a set-top box but for a 70 euro upgrade (the Pinnacle card) it gives digital TV on the cheap. Have recently de-installed a Sky HD box, doesn't really match up to MCE features (except for number of channels).

@slegs, I installed the Core AVC trial, no difference. I wonder if Windows 7 is still using the default H264 decoder? How to tell??

Do you have an ATI video card by any chance? I've had big trouble getting hardware accelerated H.264 working on ATI cards, usually stuttery video or just a green screen.

watty

No I'm right.

What are you comparing and how much did your hardware cost? MCE is a commercial failure for MS in the European Living Room. It's a well healed Geek product.

If Win 7 has WORKING H.264 built in, then MS players will not use Core AVC. This is NOT a released, supported product. See is there a version of GraphEdit for Vista/Win7. It was always good for debugging Codec issues. THE RC may not let you use 3rd party codecs even with 3rd party viewers, there are conflicting reports.


Nor is it a cheap solution. It doesn't actually work yet for you, though I'm sure it can be made to work. If you want to experiment with Win7 keep trying. If you want to watch TV, install XP or Vista instead.

€70 will add DTT to ANY suitable PC that can do 576i 25 fps properly. Or indeed to PS3. By ther time there is a commercial service a decent PVR will be 1/4 price of MCE and basic setbox 1/2 price of Pinnacle card.

Unless you monitor does 576i 25fps your picture is poorer than an €100 CRT. I've done considerable research on de-interlacing and standards conversion and I know the kind of substandard Broadcast and DVD that people watch on PC monitors.

Even with HD set 1920x 1080i and HDMI most computers, even if they support HDMI need 3rd party SW to do 25i 50p FPS rather than USA 30i 60p FPS.

The situation is only improving recently for better graphics cards with HDMI and composite/S-Video for SD video. Cards with RGB suitable for European SCART rather than US format component out for SD are like Hens Teeth.

TBH XP with all 3rd party SW works better than MS's concept of XP MCE. Vista & Win7 simply need more expensive HW to do the same thing.

mrbongo

@Karsini:

By some chance I do .... "Integrated ATI Radeon HD3200-based graphics (DX10)".

Green screen is generally what I'm getting, a good full screen frame interspersed with green or scrambled boxes during display of the differences.

Is it possible to disable this acceleration easily?

slegs

mrbongo wrote: »

@slegs, I installed the Core AVC trial, no difference. I wonder if Windows 7 is still using the default H264 decoder? How to tell??

If you have DVBViewer installed check if you can get that working with CoreAVC.

fat-tony

mrbongo wrote: »

I installed the Core AVC trial, no difference. I wonder if Windows 7 is still using the default H264 decoder? How to tell??

I'm using the same mobo as you and a similar spec Athlon, but with Windows XP SP3 and DVBviewer. With any of the software-only decoders including CoreAVC I was getting 70% - 80% CPU utilisation on HD material and around 40% on DTT SD material from RTE encoded with H264.
The only decoder which enabled the H264 hardware decoding on the mobo which worked for me was the Cyberlink Power DVD 08 trial. This reduced my CPU utilisation to below 10% on HD material. The Gigabyte mobo is excellent for an on-board graphics card, ideal for video handling.
Vista (and I assume Win 7) support DirectX10, rather than DirectX9 which is used in XP, so your experience with H264 decoders may differ, but it's worth downloading the Cyberlink trial to try to enable the hardware decoding of your on-board ATI. The latest ATI drivers definitely support all the relevant European HD modes through the HDMI port.

mrbongo

@slegs, fat-tony:
Thanks for the suggestions, will try. Am installing the new Windows 7 RC at the moment, will see what that gives me first.

@watty
You're right, MCE is pretty much geek-only. But, once it is setup, it's well ahead of all competition (software-wise), that's why I use it (I would be interested in seeing something better).

Windows 7 works happily on XP hardware so I don't see the (extra) expense. A PVR at a 1/4 price of a PC ... that would make it 4 tuner SAT/DVB-T combo with 1TB storage for around 100 euro ... hmmmm.

No doubt you are correct on the picture quality but probably it's not enough of a difference to make me change.

watty

I've found CPU utilisation ignored, that the ATI HW assisted decoder in Cyberlink very poor compared with CoreAVC for quality. Especially noticable on scrolling captions/ tickers.

CoreAVC v1.9.5: What's new in this release
======================================================
CoreAVC H.264 Video Codec - Version 1.9.5.0 (20090316)
- Add: NVIDIA CUDA accelerated decoding for interlaced streams (MBAFF and PAFF)
- Add: Input stream colorspace override options
- Fix: CUDA matrix handling and DPB management improvements
- Fix: SEI messages were sometimes discarded
- Fix: Seeking problems with Canon HF100 streams
- Fix: Use faster asynchronous memory transfers between CPU<->GPU for CUDA


Full Version history
======================================================
CoreAVC H.264 Video Codec - Version 1.9.0.0 (20090210)
- Add: NVIDIA CUDA accelerated video decoding (Thanks NVIDIA!!!)
- Add: NVIDIA CUDA detection to installer
- Add: Tray icon showing NVIDIA CUDA state (green=in use, blue=not in use)
- Add: Tray icon mouse over shows 32bit/64bit states
- Add: Initial installer changes for 32/64bit
- Add: Updated Haali Media Splitter
- Fix: Focus bug related to MCE
- Fix: Focus prevention when the tray icon is off
- Fix: Improve seeking on frames with one IDR frame
- Fix: Various small bugs

Seems it now has Nvidia HW support. But it worked well on with less than 40% CPU on BBC HD MPEG4 on ATI card.

Any XP hardware has XP already, and Win7 costs more than a setbox to upgrade to aand only adds DX10. Not whit else. The Beta & RC do expire, with the RC shutting down frequently about 2 months before end of RC date.

This is a Terrestrial TV forum, not for promoting a lack-luster OS from a Company that can afford its own Marketing.

€400 does not buy MS OS, 1T drive decent Graphics with S-Video & HDMI and quad tuners and Decent PC. In reality a decent 4 tuner MCE is closer to €1500. €150 buys a netbook, €400 to €600 a decent PC /Laptop and SW.

Unless you want to go Linux route. For Web, Email, Office amps, media player, Linux has finally got there. But a fully fledged Media Centre based on Linux is Product Development. Cheap on SW, expensive on time and very clunky. maybe if Canonical do a MCE next year ?

mrbongo

All I did was start a thread to get support for getting Terrestrial TV to work on my setup, I think that's okay, no?

You chose to make some points about Windows, and I chose to correct some of your points, I think that's fair also. I'm not on here to promote Windows. Me stating that it's the best TV software feature-wise is a pretty valid opinion, not an attempt to help out MS.

By the way, Windows 7 does add much improved multi-tuner support over XP and numerous other enhancements to MCE, not just DX10 support.

Psygnosis

mrbongo wrote: »

All I did was start a thread to get support for getting Terrestrial TV to work on my setup, I think that's okay, no?

You chose to make some points about Windows, and I chose to correct some of your points, I think that's fair also. I'm not on here to promote Windows. Me stating that it's the best TV software feature-wise is a pretty valid opinion, not an attempt to help out MS.

By the way, Windows 7 does add much improved multi-tuner support over XP and numerous other enhancements to MCE, not just DX10 support.

Hi Mrbongo.

Dont mind our Mr Watcha makcall it here, he probably has vested intrests in the regards of this. Anyway lets stay on topic
I have been using Media Centre since the xp days right up till now with Windows 7 rc1 which is excellent.

I have the same card as you and Windows 7 picks it up automatically. I have 2 sat connections and 2 dvb-t working. The best way to set it up is get your install completley done basic rc1 use avg turn of the on access scanning. Download Community Codec pack. This is the only codec packs you will need if you plan on useing the cpu as the main decoder for the x264 channels. Set it up as Ireland Dublin. Let it scan through the dvb-t then tell it when this part is done that you have other tuners and select the sat tuners let it run through.
Also take a look at Mymovies and MYTV(paid app but excelent)

I have mine setup in antec fusion case. The pc hibernates when not in use and wakes up to do the recording which are set through guide and series link excellent application.

Its all controlled through a harmony remote and WAF is A+ any problems just ask. I am what you would call an expert with Media Centre.

watty

mrbongo wrote: »

All I did was start a thread to get support for getting Terrestrial TV to work on my setup, I think that's okay, no?

You are looking for support for an OS that is not yet released. You don't like some reality about the Emperors clothes (how many pvrs never mind ordinary set boxes used compared with 6 year old MCE concept in European living rooms?). OK.

This is Terrestrial TV forum.

This is the windows forum:
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=105

This is the Win7 thread, mostly full of uncritical un-knowledgeable fans
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055450241

Here is the Totally gadget OS uncritical site here http://www.gizmodo.com

This forum is Not a pre-release OS forum nor a MCE forum
That is HERE http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=643

Since you are more interested in justifying spending time on an unreleased MCE than in Irish Terrestrial Digital which works fine on released OS, DTT Set box with MPEG4 etc. I move the thread.

watty

Moved From Terrestrial TV as this is MCE/HTPC Win7 Codec issue, not a specific Terrrestrial TV issue.

mrbongo

@watty

I asked for help on the Terrestrial TV forum with the unreleased and unsupported Irish DTT and you move my post because I'm using it with an unreleased and unsupported OS?? Nice one. Sounds like it's a "I don't like Windows users" thing ... and yes, I'm still waiting for you to point me to some TV software better than MCE on Windows 7.

Also you need to do some research on computer component prices these days, you seem a bit out of touch. My mobo with HDMI o/p is 70 euro, 1TB drive 92 euro, CPU 80 euro, quad tuner 70 euro, PSU 30 euro, case 65 euro ... that's the guts of a HTPC, 400 euro.

Luckily there were plenty of helpful subscribers on that forum that gave some good advice before the move.

@others

Just upgraded to Windows 7 RC1 (7100) and no difference. Installed shark007.net codec pack (not Community Codecs) as he has a set specifically for Windows 7 that has worked well for me in the past (includes ffdshow etc). Analog signal is working good though, so that's something until I can get DTT working.

watty

XP works, Vista works, your unlicenced, unreleased Win7 doesn't work yet with DTT. You'll get more support here or the Windows forum.

I didn't lock or close your thread, The Terrestrial Forum is NOT for supporting any kind of PC, Linux, Windows, Mac OS X or Win7

I've been Building NT Media solutions since 1994 (Win7 is NT 6.2 or so).

Your €400 includes no warranty, no bought sw, no OS licence and is not a comparable solution to and off the shelf system. It's a hobby box. So yes, by time SP1 for Win7 is out and long before Analogue Switch Off a PVR will be cheaper than your PC. And a lot less hassle.

I have 2 laptops with various Windows, 2x XP based Media centre, a server with 2x sat tuner cards DVB-s running Win2K advanced Server. I'm just not a sucker for the latest hype, not anti Windows.

3 x Satellite Set-box.
I've had Reelbox linux PVR multituner/DVD writer HDD on test. ANY version of windows is better.

I've also tested Lyngbox combo tuner HDD PVR and Motorola Hybrid DVB / VOD/IPTV PVR.

I spent some years in Broadcast & Video Studio Industry too. So I'm not making stuff up.

Anyway this forum is the Media Centre/HTPC club, so you will get lots of support from like enthusiasts. I don't make life any easier for the Dreambox Linux Fanbois that claim it's a viable box for watching satellite with a Sky card.

mrbongo

And your point is? (if it worked I wouldn't be asking for help)

watty

You are more likely to get help from HTPC/Media Centre people than Setbox/Tv Aerial / Dish people.

The Mod here will be at me quick enough and move this to Windows if I have moved it to the wrong place.

mrbongo

I think the contributions of slegs, mullingar, Karsini, fat-tony and Psygnosis attest to the fact that it was a pretty good forum to ask in.

There might not be many DTT users using Windows 7 ... equally there's not many Windows 7 users using DTT ... I think I picked the right one. Not one reply yet from a HTPC forum reader.

bazwaldo

I believe there is an issue with ATI hardware acceleration for h.264 (for RTEs encoding). You can either force MC to use a different decoder see http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055557620, or turn off DXVA in the register. Don't know the key though but it can be done.

Pity "slegs, mullingar, Karsini, fat-tony and Psygnosis" don't post to this forum often as there have been many questions about DTT and not many can answer (yet).

mrbongo

Yep bazwaldo, that's the conclusion I've come to.

I've tried replacing the MCE decoder with both Core AVC and Power DVD decoders, but they only give me black screen with sound.

I was looking this morning for ways of disabling hardware acceleration. Can't find it in ATI Catalyst Center and the only reference in the registry (DXVA_WMV) is set to 0, looking like it's disabled.

bazwaldo

Taken from http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=84&topicid=31873

If you are confident with editing the registry you can turn off HW accel in WMC by adding these reg keys

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SCrunch\CodecPack\MSDVD]
"DXVA2"=dword:00000000
"DXVA"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SCrunch\CodecPack\MSDVD]
"DXVA2"=dword:00000000
"DXVA"=dword:00000000

I haven't put up an aerial yet so can't say much about my experience with DTT. I just have read up to see if it wil work. But "elyod" got it working with CoreAVC according to the thread I linked before.

mullingar

I installed Win7 on an older system (2ghz, 1gbram, 40gb IDE HD) and tried it with an USB Hauppauge HVR-900 (both analogue & dtt USB stick).

It WORKS with Irish DTT, Full EPG!!:D:D

(But picture kept stuttering due to low speed of system and built-in video card)

fat-tony

mrbongo wrote: »

Yep bazwaldo, that's the conclusion I've come to.

I've tried replacing the MCE decoder with both Core AVC and Power DVD decoders, but they only give me black screen with sound.

I was looking this morning for ways of disabling hardware acceleration. Can't find it in ATI Catalyst Center and the only reference in the registry (DXVA_WMV) is set to 0, looking like it's disabled.

I've followed the thread over from Terrestrial (only fair seeing as I posted there:D).
I can't help thinking that you are wasting a great facility to handle H.264 decoding in the hardware. Why buy an HW-accelerated video card (on the mobo) and then turn off the feature Until I found the PowerDVD trial (the H.264 decoder part still works two months after install!) I drove myself nuts trying to get the hardware acceleration working. Eventually I discovered that the feature in ATI is only enabled in some commercial decoder packs like Cyberlink because the interface is licensed. This is not clear when you buy an ATI (or nVidia) card or mobo with accelerated video. You would think that you can just plug and play!
I was given a full install set of CD's for the XP version of Windows MCE, but having done a bit of research I found that it had serious deficiencies in HD support. I figured that as I was trying to implement HD, then it would be not worth my while playing around with this, so I just installed XP. I had bought a Skystar HD card (satellite DVB-S2) which came with DVBviewer and a remote control, so I installed that. The DVBviewer software was just about ok, but not very flexible as regards channel setup and EPG. So i spent €15 and bought the Pro version. This works a treat, supports the remote(with the Skystar card) and also a separate Pinnacle DVB-T/S combo card. I have access to a raft of analysis tools from the DVBviewer site and the software allows you to use any combination of filters, decoders, renderers. There are several viewer software programs which will allow you to watch TV from satellite or terrestrial cards or USB-stick receivers. MPEG-2 is easy and will run well on almost anything. H.264 is more demanding and especially if you want HD, so you need CPU horsepower or (as you have) the capability to offload the decoding to the GPU.

What does MCE actually give you in terms of usability over that with a standard OS and a good quality free or paid-for TV viewer software? I'm genuinely interested as the biggest issue I have found with going down the PC route is the limited support for remote control and I find myself having to use the mouse or keyboard for various functions. If I'm using DVBviewer to watch TV, then I can sit back and watch the screen, change channels, look at the EPG etc. But if I have to tweak anything or run a scan or whatever, then I either have to use a keyboard and sit about 6 inches from the screen! Ok, I could use a wireless keyboard, but you get the idea;)
Watty is right when he says you can get better video/sound quality for less money with a dedicated set-top box (I have several:eek:), but the geek in us likes to experiment, so rock on:)

bazwaldo

Fat Tony, if you are using the PowerDVD decoder which can use DXVA, is your GFX card nvidia? As the RTE h.264 problem seems to exist in ATI cards only. Hence having to turn off DXVA if the selected decoder tries to make use of the gfx card.

The default MS decoder in Vista and Win7 uses DXVA. On XP, there isn't an MS decoder.

watty

When BBC HD moves to an HD dedicated Transponder you will lose it. That card is obsolete for satellite as all the transponders that are 100% HD channels use DVB-S2, not DVB-s.

The suggestion is on Win7 that if there *IS* an MS codec, it is the only one Win7 will use. However the reviewer may be wrong and the final version of Win7 should be out in October. Though when not bundled with a new PC, it won't be cheap.

slegs

mullingar wrote: »

I installed Win7 on an older system (2ghz, 1gbram, 40gb IDE HD) and tried it with an USB Hauppauge HVR-900 (both analogue & dtt USB stick).

It WORKS with Irish DTT, Full EPG!!:D:D

(But picture kept stuttering due to low speed of system and built-in video card)

Same stick I am using for DTT (Hauppauge HVR-900) along with a TechnoTrend Budget 1500 PCI card for DVB-S. My PC is a relatively new Core2Duo CPU with a good spec ATI card.

Will do a little more playing tonight and report back on stability as I only played with it for 30mins after setting up before.

fat-tony

bazwaldo wrote: »

Fat Tony, if you are using the PowerDVD decoder which can use DXVA, is your GFX card nvidia? As the RTE h.264 problem seems to exist in ATI cards only. Hence having to turn off DXVA if the selected decoder tries to make use of the gfx card.

The default MS decoder in Vista and Win7 uses DXVA. On XP, there isn't an MS decoder.

I don't have a separate graphics card. It's the same mobo as mrbongo's, which has ATI graphics on-board with H.264 decoding. DXVA is enabled in the PowerDVD decoder which offloads to the on-chip decoding. I'm aware that XP has no MPEG4 decoder supplied by MS. You have to have a third-party solution - either one which uses CPU (like CoreAVC or similar) or one which can offload to the GPU, like Cyberlink. It works perfectly for me with DVBviewer with less than 10% CPU utilisation on RTE/TG4 and 1% on the TV3 testcard:)
Watty's point with regard to Win7 is valid. It's in beta and you are going to have issues with video when the software is oriented typically to a U.S. user who is not going to be experimenting with DVB-T and MPEG4/H.264
Win XP is rock solid with appropriate viewers and codecs.

bazwaldo

fat-tony wrote: »

I don't have a separate graphics card. It's the same mobo as mrbongo's, which has ATI graphics on-board with H.264 decoding. DXVA is enabled in the PowerDVD decoder which offloads to the on-chip decoding. I'm aware that XP has no MPEG4 decoder supplied by MS. You have to have a third-party solution - either one which uses CPU (like CoreAVC or similar) or one which can offload to the GPU, like Cyberlink. It works perfectly for me with DVBviewer with less than 10% CPU utilisation on RTE/TG4 and 1% on the TV3 testcard:)
Watty's point with regard to Win7 is valid. It's in beta and you are going to have issues with video when the software is oriented typically to a U.S. user who is not going to be experimenting with DVB-T and MPEG4/H.264
Win XP is rock solid with appropriate viewers and codecs.

Interesting.... Maybe the problem is not with the ATI dxva after all. I'm happy enough to plug away with Win7 and will switch back to Vista when RC expires. Whenever I get my aerial and hook it up, I can report back. It'll be a while though.

I had Cyperlinks decoder way back before Vista came out. I doubt that one would work with h.264. I assume its been updated in the past 4 years for this and whatever else.

Karsini

Karsini wrote: »

Do you have an ATI video card by any chance? I've had big trouble getting hardware accelerated H.264 working on ATI cards, usually stuttery video or just a green screen.

Make sure if You are using Vista that Aero interface is turned on.For some reason when this is turned off,hardware acceleration doesnt work properly.

bazwaldo

bazwaldo wrote: »

Interesting.... Maybe the problem is not with the ATI dxva after all. I'm happy enough to plug away with Win7 and will switch back to Vista when RC expires. Whenever I get my aerial and hook it up, I can report back. It'll be a while though.

I noticed with the Cyberlink codecs that I needed to use V9 on ATI in order to get hardware acceleration working. I was previously using 7.3's codecs and had the same green screen problem. This is under XP so it's not specifically an OS issue.

Windows Media Player in Windows 7 is currently locked to use its own codecs only, however I've heard that this is only for testing and the final release will be unlocked like previous versions.

Zyaire Fat Salesman wrote: »

Make sure if You are using Vista that Aero interface is turned on.For some reason when this is turned off,hardware acceleration doesnt work properly.

I don't use Vista, only XP on my end.

fat-tony

Its PowerDVD9 I'm using - there's no way a four-year old version of PowerDVD could be supporting hardware H.264 - it's only out on the ATI cards since about 2006.

fat-tony

fat-tony wrote: »

Its PowerDVD9 I'm using - there's no way a four-year old version of PowerDVD could be supporting hardware H.264 - it's only out on the ATI cards since about 2006.

7.3 works on the 8800GT in my desktop.

mrbongo

@watty: part of the advantage of a PC setup is that as things change, you can easily add a new (hopefully cheap) dedicated tuner card, e.g. DVB-S2, and begin using that along with all other tuners. Windows 7 MCE has much better support for this over XP.

The decoder can be easily changed from MS's on Windows 7 using MCDU.

@bazwaldo: tried the registry settings for switching off hardware acceleration, didn't help me. In fact, even reversing my changes, I've now buggered BBC HD, so that isn't displaying any more, sheesh! Hmmm, maybe one of my other changes messed up H264 coding and if I get BBC HD back, I'll get Irish DTT too ... who knows.

@fat-tony: re advantages of MCE
- It has the best and most detailed EPG with 'series linking' that I have seen (14 days, lots of program detail) and ability to, e.g., record from analog RTE if digital RTE signal is not found
- Full 10 foot interface for doing everything via remote, tuning, scanning, organising EPG, configuring etc.
- Handles DVD playing, AVI, MKV etc video
- Music centre
- Photo centre
- Very reliable programmed recording
There's no need for a keyboard and there's no tweaking of MCE to be done outside of MCE (except for initial setup of course). I have used DVBViewer and MediaPortal, plus various set-top box UIs, and MCE is more feature rich and easier to use I find.

On sound/video quality my sound output is digital from PC to digital amp, can't get much better. Video output is better than my NTL box and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference from my Sky HD box.

mrbongo

Success!

A system restore got me back to BBC HD working (maybe the Core AVC install messed something up here).

Then I disabled DXVA as per Bazwaldo's suggestion and Irish DTT is coming in solid. Hopefully the ATI hardware acceleration problem will be fixed in the coming months, but for now this fix is looking decent for me.

TG4 is strangely blank when I tune to it, then after a minute it appears all of a sudden, rock solid.

Here's the DXVA disable registry settings again:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SCrunch\CodecPack\MSDVD]
"DXVA2"=dword:00000000
"DXVA"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\SCrunch\CodecPack\MSDVD]
"DXVA2"=dword:00000000
"DXVA"=dword:00000000

Thanks for all the help people,
Cheers,
Mike

bazwaldo

Phew!!!! :) What decoder are you using now then?

mrbongo

It's the default MS decoder. The registry settings above are the only tweak needed. Performance is fine on Irish DTT, and on BBC HD.

Checked TG4 this morning, still the same. When I switch to it, screen is black for around a minute, then it comes on all of a sudden, and stays on, rock solid. Very odd.

bazwaldo

Cool. I wonder what the difference between DXVA and DXVA2 are. As turning it off will mean that the mpeg2 decoding will also be done my the MS decoder. It would be nice if it were possible to turn off DXVA just for h.264.

Hopefully its only temporary anyway and whatever bug it is gets fixed before release of Win7.

EDIT: info on dxva1 and dxva2 here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc307941(VS.85).aspx

mrbongo

Now that digital is working, I've a tuning problem with MCE.

I want to tune in both analog and digital Irish channels, so that I get TV3 and the analog is there as backup if digital transmission is interrupted.

But although in TV Setup I can choose to setup both analog and digital tuners on the Pinnacle card, it only actually tunes in the digital channels at the tuning stage and there's only 1 entry per Irish channel in the guide.

Tuning analog on its own works, tuning digital on its own works, tuning both only gives digital.

bazwaldo

If Win7 (Or Vista with TVPack) recognises that the channel is the same from 2 sources, it merges them into one guide entry. Hit "Info" on the channel within the guide and select edit channel source (or something like that). From there you can either split the channels to separate the sources, or change the priority (digital first if available, then analogue if not for instance).

This option is also available from the Guide settings. Edit Channels.

mrbongo

That is an excellent feature. Have that setup now. Disabled digital for TV3 and the other three digital channels are automatically backed up with the analog version, if there's ever a transmission problem, slick.

Many thanks Bazwaldo.

Karsini

Karsini wrote: »

I noticed with the Cyberlink codecs that I needed to use V9 on ATI in order to get hardware acceleration working. I was previously using 7.3's codecs and had the same green screen problem. This is under XP so it's not specifically an OS issue.

Windows Media Player in Windows 7 is currently locked to use its own codecs only, however I've heard that this is only for testing and the final release will be unlocked like previous versions.


I don't use Vista, only XP on my end.

There is your problem.The ATI H.264 hardware acceleration only works properly with windows vista EVR.
(Enhanced Video Renderer) .

Zyaire Fat Salesman

Zyaire Fat Salesman wrote: »

There is your problem.The ATI H.264 hardware acceleration only works properly with windows vista EVR.
(Enhanced Video Renderer) .

Not true, it works with PowerDVD 9's codecs on XP, it just didn't work with 7.3's. (in my case 3% CPU with DxVA enabled on SD material, 12% without). Still, I find ATI to be inferior to NVIDIA in every way except reliability - the H.264 acceleration is a pain and anti-aliasing doesn't work as well. I only got an ATI-based laptop due to the risk of an NVIDIA card failing because of the bad bumps issue.

fat-tony

Karsini wrote: »

7.3 works on the 8800GT in my desktop.

Yes - but I don't think 7.3 has been around for four years - or has it - that's what I thought was mentioned The Purevideo HD acceleration is only around since 2006 or early 2007 or am I mixing it up with some other go-faster technology?:)

fat-tony

mrbongo wrote: »

@fat-tony: re advantages of MCE
- It has the best and most detailed EPG with 'series linking' that I have seen (14 days, lots of program detail) and ability to, e.g., record from analog RTE if digital RTE signal is not found
- Full 10 foot interface for doing everything via remote, tuning, scanning, organising EPG, configuring etc.
- Handles DVD playing, AVI, MKV etc video
- Music centre
- Photo centre
- Very reliable programmed recording
There's no need for a keyboard and there's no tweaking of MCE to be done outside of MCE (except for initial setup of course). I have used DVBViewer and MediaPortal, plus various set-top box UIs, and MCE is more feature rich and easier to use I find.

Cheers - thanks for that mrbongo. I'm happy enough with DVBviewer for the mo' as it has the Freesat EPG and supports the Irish DTT 7 day EPG. The "lean back" (or 10 foot) interface leaves a lot to be desired as I couldn't find anyway to use a standard IR remote with the Technisat card, just the limited one (in terms of the number of buttons) supplied. I couldn't get the Technisat IR receiver dongle to work at all with the standard drivers for the Pinnacle card and I wasn't prepared to download and install the Pinnacle viewer application.
Maybe I might try MCE on XP - how do you connect the IR dongle on your setup?

mullingar

slegs wrote: »

Same stick I am using for DTT (Hauppauge HVR-900) along with a TechnoTrend Budget 1500 PCI card for DVB-S. My PC is a relatively new Core2Duo CPU with a good spec ATI card.

Will do a little more playing tonight and report back on stability as I only played with it for 30mins after setting up before.

@ Slegs,

I am still building my HTPC:
- ASUS P5Q-EM
- E5200 (2x2.5ghz) Intel dual core
- ATI RADEON HD 4670 1024MB
- 2GB Ram/ 1TB HDD

Anyway, I am still waining for delivery of a Pinnacle 7010ix, but for the moment I am testing the DTT with the Hauppage PVR-900.

Have you played back any of your recorded DTT shows? I am getting sound but no picture. Its work perfect on analogue playback.
The recorded TV shows play back perfect in MS Media Player, maybe codec problem?

Can you check you setup slegs?

Thanks