In pursuit of the perfect picture

[phunqe]

Being somewhat of a videophile I'm researching various options to get my picture as perfect as possible when playing h264 material.

Can anyone please correct me if I'm wrong, but is Cyberlink's codec (latest PowerDVD 7.3) the one codec yielding the best picture quality at the moment?
Does it work to specify the Cyberlink codec under video player setting in MP, to use this codec during playback?
I've read about it being used for TV broadcasts, but what about video? Most of my h/x264 material is in mkv format (I would assume that doesn't matter however is haali splits it up and then passes it on to the codec in any case).

If this isn't the best option, are there any other recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

EDIT: I'm wiling to actually buy the PowerDVD package, but I would really like to know if I can use the codec in MP first

Reading up on Nvidia's PureVideo (I have a card that supports it)...
I'm reading reports on this forum about HD material being washed out (colour wise), because of the VMR9 renderer. Will the PureVideo codec also be affected by this (i.e will I have to do that hack if I want to use the internal MP player)?

[smokedribs]

your best bet with mkv files is coreavc 1.5 Powerdvd will cause mkv files to stutter if you use hardware decoding in powerdvd, there is a bug with haali and powerdvd hardware decoding.

Hopefully you have an x2 or core2 duo chip so you can run your hi def mkv's without any stutter.

Quality of the picture is all about the renderer. What video card are you using? Are you watching the movies on a TV or a monitor. Coreavc lets you choose your output color format so you can avoid wash out.

Anyway good luck!

[phunqe]

I fiddled around a bit with different codecs and I'm currectly using the latest Cyberlink codec (both for h264 and mpeg2). The picture looks slightly better than CoreAVC (to me) and I don't have performance or stuttering issues even with hardware decoding (I do have a c2d though). I use a nVidia 8600 card connected to a Sony KDS-55A2000 through DVI-HDMI.

Haali hasn't been updated for a while now, I hope it gets solved.

[floepie]

Last I heard, Cyberlink's mpeg2 decoder is very good, among the best. The same wasn't said regarding its AVC decoder, as most found it very buggy. That may have changed. Most would recommend either CoreAVC, or if you have a fast, recent CPU, then ffdshow. The colors you see are not a function of the decoder. If done properly, all decoders will output just about the same thing. What you see on the screen however is affected by the chosen colorspace and renderer.

I don't know much about renderers though, so hopefully someone will chime in?

[kkendall]

The only codec that can play the h264 mp4 files of all the torrent NBA basketballgames is the ffdshow codec. Cyberlinks codec doesn't work. Unfortunately, MP slows down the playspeed to half the original speed! So everything moves twice as slow and sound is pitched twice as low and slow... Haven't got a clue how to fix this :s