Lightweight Media player (software) for 1080p

M5

Hi all,

I have a Acer Aspire Revo R3610 (Nettop) as my HTPC. I have recently moved from a HD ready to a Full HD TV and the revo is struggling with the 1080p video files. It wont run in VLC, and there are artifacts/judder in Media player classic and WMP using the K-Lite Codec Pack.

I have previously removed all the crapware from the PC and have tried running just the video with no improvement.

Any suggestions on a lightweight media player that will run more efficiently than MPC/VLC/WMP or perhaps a tweak of the OS that will help me avoid upgrading?

Processor Class Intel Atom 330
Processor Speed 1.6 GHz
Cache Size 512 KB
Bus Speed 533 MHz
Number of installed processors 1
Memory
Installed memory 2048 MB
Nvidia Ion graphics

mickc

xbmc live is a lightweight ubuntu OS with media player software integrated into it.

highly recommended

http://xbmc.org/download/

Voodu Child

When you play something in MPC-HC, is DXVA decoder being used? (it sould say it in the status bar)

BionicRasher

How about Boxee? http://www.boxee.tv/
I had this installed on an old laptop (6 yrs old) with 128mb Graphics and 512MB RAM and it worked a dream for any avi, mkv, XviD, MPEG, etc etc that I could throw at it. No gitter and I could run the picture to an attached 19 inch monitor without issue

M5

Thanks all for the replies

mickc wrote: »

xbmc live is a lightweight ubuntu OS with media player software integrated into it.

highly recommended

http://xbmc.org/download/

Need to stay in windows for a few features, tired Ubuntu previously

Voodu Child wrote: »

When you play something in MPC-HC, is DXVA decoder being used? (it sould say it in the status bar)

ffdshow for video and audio.... which would you recommend?

tui0hcg wrote: »

How about Boxee? http://www.boxee.tv/
I had this installed on an old laptop (6 yrs old) with 128mb Graphics and 512MB RAM and it worked a dream for any avi, mkv, XviD, MPEG, etc etc that I could throw at it. No gitter and I could run the picture to an attached 19 inch monitor without issue

Will give it a go

mickc

xbmc also has a windows installer.

M5

mickc wrote: »

xbmc also has a windows installer.

think i tried that too, might give it another go

Boxee almost plays a wall e 1080p mkv, just a little juddery in fast moving parts

Voodu Child

M5 wrote: »

ffdshow for video and audio.... which would you recommend?

You need to use GPU decoding on the Revo. That's the whole point of Ion HTPCs. You can't play 1080p H264 using software decoders, the Atom just isn't powerful enough.

In MPC-HC that means you need to enable DXVA (Options > Internal Filters).

In XBMC there is an option in the settings to enable hardware assisted decoding. It might be enabled by default. Boxee is based off XBMC so the same applies.

VLC also has an option for it, though im not sure how well it works.

The other thing to check is how much memory the GPU is allocated. You can adjust this in the bios. Too much or too little might affect performance, so try going up or down one step to see if it makes a difference. Mine is on 256MB.

M5

Voodu Child wrote: »

You need to use GPU decoding on the Revo. That's the whole point of Ion HTPCs. You can't play 1080p H264 using software decoders, the Atom just isn't powerful enough.

In MPC-HC that means you need to enable DXVA (Options > Internal Filters).

In XBMC there is an option in the settings to enable hardware assisted decoding. It might be enabled by default. Boxee is based off XBMC so the same applies.

VLC also has an option for it, though im not sure how well it works.

The other thing to check is how much memory the GPU is allocated. You can adjust this in the bios. Too much or too little might affect performance, so try going up or down one step to see if it makes a difference. Mine is on 256MB.

Thats it, switched to hardware, works in XBMC and on MPC, thanks!

Figured i must be missing something

slave1

In XBMC there is an option in the settings to enable hardware assisted decoding. It might be enabled by default.

Unfortunately it's not enabled by default and helped my jutter problems, highly recommend this simple tweak to any XBMC setup

Voodu Child

The other tweak I recommend for XBMC on a Acer Revo (or similar Ion system) is to make a tweak so that the cached images (fanart etc) are stored in .dds format rather than jpeg. Its a format that can be decoded by the GPU, whereas jpeg has to be decompressed by the CPU.

On a system with a weak CPU but decent GPU, I find that it makes browsing through movies much smoother.

A search should turn up the instructions.