[druucifer]

hello all,
i have a laptop with a busted monitor inverter, so i've decided to turn it into a lo-fi htpc. i came across mediaportal, and i love the interface, but i'm having some trouble with video playback.

basically, when i have previously watched movies on my tv through vlc media player, it looks sharp, and close to tv quality. but when i watch them in mediaportal, it looks dull, and the image seems kind of jerky. i have tried several different codecs and messed around with some mediaportal settings, but it hasn't fixed the problem.

also, there seems to be a problem with how the videos are stretched. i'm watching on a normal, old-school non-hdtv tv. so when i'm watching videos ripped from hdtv in vlc media player, it doesn't take up the whole screen--there are black bars on the top and bottom. but in mediaportal, it is either stretched to the full screen (which looks kind of weird), or its very stretched--the image is extremely "short" and there is tons of black on the top and bottom. when i set it to "original," it just looks like a normal tv image with a big black border on all sides--top and bottom, left and right. is there any way i can set mediaportal so the video will look like it does in vlc?

i have a compaq presario v2335us notebook. i'm running out from the built-in s-video out. specs and manuals for the computer are here.

thanks much for the help!

[Paranoid Delusion]

Cannot find anything in that pdf manual about the graphics capabilities of this laptop.

Most laptops will not run MP, simply because if needs full DX9 compliance and usually at least 128mb graphics memory.

Try Simple MP skin, it is the least demanding graphically wise.