Problems with Various MPEG-2 Codecs (1 Viewer)

[hellmelt]

I'll continue here, maybe someone else might comment with some tips and tricks.

In order to get TV picture in MP in my MCE installation, I had to use Overlay rather than VMR. Don't understand why.

But the result is good! The combination MediaPortal - Nvidia decoder - XP MCE system - ATI MCE Drivers gives the best quality I've ever had in my TV. Very little de-interlacing effects (much less than in MCE, eventhough everthing below the frontend is same - can anyone explain that?), nice deep color scale and a general sharpness that I did not beleive was possible since I still use S-video.

In some situations I have problems with the Nvidia decoder, though. I see no NVidia logo in the task bar, and the picture quality is clearly degraded. When I check things with GraphEdit, even by connecting to the graph running in MP, it seems like the Nvidia decoder should be used. Can there be situations where DirectShow actually not uses the filter specified in the graph?

I really like the feature in MP to select decoders. However, some or several components in the system seems to be able to override this setting - its very difficult to get a grip on what is actually happening.

Since many people report on problems making the Nvidia decoder kick in, there is a need for some kind of "cookbook". Especially since this decoder is something you pay for. So the responsibílty should be Nvidias.

A lot of distracted thoughts - but we guys who don't like to by off-the-shelf boxes need to share ideas, thought, tips and tricks.

/hellmelt

 

[jackelectronics]

Continuing from the topic I started a while ago, I gave my system a little boost by performing some minor upgrades.

Altough I loved Matrox, I had to give up my Matrox P650 (a cut down version of the Parhelia) for an NVIDIA 6800GT mainly due to the lack of DirectX 9 support, a bug in TV-OUT and also just wanted a general upgrade.

A while ago, I sucessfully configured my CyberLink codec to operate in the best de-interlacing mode in 3rd party applications such as Media Portal and Windows Media Player thanks to a previous poster in this topic.

When I had the Matrox P650, I had all sorts of symptoms such as poor performance, choppy playback with OSD on screen in overlay mode, poor compatability, lack of VMR9, aspect ratio bugs and many other symptoms.

Having upgraded my aging Matrox P650 64MB to an NVIDIA 6800GT 256MB with a Zalman CF-900-CU, the NVIDIA made a real difference in overall! MediaPortal now runs smoothly in VMR9 mode with many other issues fixed.

Note that I use my computer, which I have MediaPortal installed for both desktop use and a HTPC. I have a standard TV set hooked up to the S-Video output of the NVIDIA as well as a computer monitor on the VGA output.