User experience with AMD 780G and MediaPortal (3 Viewers)

[huckster2]

I'm 99.9% sure that everything is h.264 encoded over DVB-T here in NZ. That's what I've read on many websites. If I can get to use the HTPC I'll try a different MPEG2 codec coupled with PowerDVD for the h.264 stuff. I've tried so many combinations that I can't remember whether I've done this before!

 

[globaldonkey]

Double check it with graphedit while you are running TV. I thought the same too, until I saw the graphs

As jo16v said, 576i shouldn't be h.264.

 

[huckster2]

Will do, buit I'm not hopeful. Am at work at the moment, but this is what the "official" site says.... Freeview NZ will use MPEG-4. Wikipedia says "Terrestrial Freeview|HD is broadcast in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC" even though the channels I have trouble with are SD and not HD.

 

[jo16v]

Will do, buit I'm not hopeful. Am at work at the moment, but this is what the "official" site says.... Freeview NZ will use MPEG-4. Wikipedia says "Terrestrial Freeview|HD is broadcast in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC" even though the channels I have trouble with are SD and not HD.

Maybe I'm wrong- I suppose there is no reason why it wouldn't be possible to encode PAL with h.264/AVC for either better picture at the same bitrate as MPEG2 or to use a low bit rate and fit in more channels. It would be the same story as us British being early adopters who are then left with outdated technology (i.e. we use MP2 audio for Digital radio when France and Germany now use mp4).

 

[5Hundred]

huckster2 i had problems with PDVD8 until i downloaded about a 90mb update for it from their website, coupled with the latest catalyst drivers this was the step that got rid of that weird green blockiness issue. hth

 

[huckster2]

5Hundred: Are you Vista or XP? I see you have a Skystar. Do you also do DVB-T? DVB-S is MPEG2 not 4 from what I've read. I'll do some playing tonight and confirm what I find and versions used.

 

[5Hundred]

Hi Huckster, oops my profile is hopelessly out of date!

I have a pinnacle 7010ix which is dual DVB-T, Dual DVB-S and Dual analogue, using 780G mboard and Vista 32 bit, tend to use the DVB-T more than anything else.

 

[globaldonkey]

Well, this is a little off topic, but thought I would share that I had originally settled on an ASUS-P5E-HDMI-VM, which is a G35 chipset board. Now there is a bad choice for HD through HDMI, and hence why I have been interested in this discussion. Worked ok as 1280 x 768 through VGA, but HDMI was horrible. Could not get 1920 x 1080 without massive overscan that could not be corrected by the driver or Powerstrip, the resolution would reset to 800 x 600 every time the display was switched off (although I did manage to fix this by disabling some crappy persistence thing that the Intel driver was loading at startup), and there was this judder in live TV that I could not get rid of.

So yesterday I went and bought a $50 ATI 3450 card to replace the G35 for graphics. I figured it was of roughly the same vintage as the 780G chipset. I wasn't expecting great things from this card, and I have not gone into getting DXTA working but the results are simply amazing so far. Full 1920 x 1080 without overscan, no resolution resets and no more judder. Just brilliant TV that rivals my HD Setup box, and perfect HD movies. And all that with a cheap entry level card. The ATI drivers are just so much more configurable than the Intel rubbish, and it has certainly has made me think that the ATI GPU's are superior to Intel.

I don't know if this is a story about integrated chipsets in general, or just the Intel ones, but I certainly agree that some of the early HDMI mobo's leave a lot to be desired.

 

[zanlation]

I agree, my 3450 card and 780G board has delivered great image quality and full HA for HDTV. My CPU runs at about 15% using PowerDVD 8 Ultra as a codec. I haven't had any problems with HA and the 8.10 drivers seem to be stable. I am using the HD radeon reg tweaks.

The thought of PIP with the new 4x00 series sounds nice... just need MP to support it.

Just as a side point, has anyone tried MythTV using the 780G boards? I love MP, but windows is starting to frustrate me!

 

[zeebee]

I inserted a Gerforce 7900 to my 780G and with this card I had less problems with videos, but it didnt work flawlessly. So I think it is a Driver <--> MediaPortal issue, since other videoplayers work perfect with my videos.