new htpc and blue-ray playback problem (1 Viewer)

[dsmaddox]

I just finished my htpc last weekend, equipment list below. I bought the new Stargate Continuum Blue-ray and tried to play it last night. Using PowerDvd 8 Ultra I get about one minute of good playback before it stutters, skips, freezes, and finally crashes to the fameous blue screen of death and the pc restarts.

equipment:
shuttle SG33G5B barebone micro system
P4 3.0 GHz cpu
4 Gb memory
Xfx nvidea 8600gt
lite-on DH-401S Blue Ray player
2 samsung 750 GB harddrives

I'm going to upgrade the firmware on the blue-ray player tonight and hope that fixes it. If that doesnt do it, then I think I need a faster cpu, the cpu is overheating, or I need more power.

Any thoughts from you guys?

By the way, I'm running windows xp pro sp3 and media portal is running great with my standard DVDs and mp3 collection.

 

[revs]

As you have a Nvidia 8600 Card, then the CPU isnt much os an issue. The graphics card should do the decoding of blu-ray.

A BSOD nowadays is generaly related to hardware, software shouldnt cause it. Try removing and re-seating the RAM. Or try taking out 2GB of RAM, and swapping them around and seeing if it makes a difference - you may have a bad RAM stick.

 

[Tullux]

As you have a Nvidia 8600 Card, then the CPU isnt much os an issue. The graphics card should do the decoding of blu-ray.

A BSOD nowadays is generaly related to hardware, software shouldnt cause it. Try removing and re-seating the RAM. Or try taking out 2GB of RAM, and swapping them around and seeing if it makes a difference - you may have a bad RAM stick.

If the hardware acceleration is enabled, it will greatly reduce the decoding load on the processor. At least for the video stream.
OP should probably check if that hardware acceleration is enabled at all.

Blu-Ray disks however still have that annoying decryption that requires the processor.
I wanted to build my HTPC on a cheap (price as well as power consumption wise) Athlon or Sempron LE (with 45W TPD), but on the Mainboard Manufacturer's Homepage they specifically recommended a Athlon x2 4400+ or better* for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD playback, so I got one of those (price isn't that much higher, but I guess the 45W single core are as energy efficient as it will get).

* and I can't really see why they recommend a dual core, seeing on my main system (intel c2d) how weak the multi core support with current applications is. I would have guessed a faster clocked single core would perform better - but I don't want to upgrade the processor in 6 month, because I find out myself that it's too slow, so I followed the recommendation.

 

[dsmaddox]

It was a problem with the region settings on the drive, power dvd 8, and anydvd hd.

Once I set the regions on the drive and put anydvd into safe mode it worked perfectly.

The processor is a P4 3.4 and was only under 30% load w/ Blue Ray playback last night. No skips, no jumps, it ran fine. Just a lot of trial and error getting it to work.

Now if I can just figure out why I have no voice sound when using the spdif output on powerdvd. I have regular sound effects, just no voices.

Any thoughts on that one?

 

[Tullux]

The processor is a P4 3.4 and was only under 30% load w/ Blue Ray playback last night. No skips, no jumps, it ran fine. Just a lot of trial and error getting it to work.

So much for manufacturer recommendations.

Now if I can just figure out why I have no voice sound when using the spdif output on powerdvd. I have regular sound effects, just no voices.

Any thoughts on that one?

Does your soundcard have a 'karaoke' setting?
Mine can filter either the 'center' track from 5.1 or the part of stereo that matches on both channels (usually the voice) .. deactivated it by accident once .. took forever to figure out.