User experience with AMD 780G and MediaPortal (2 Viewers)

[kiwijunglist]

I dont think it is cpu related, cpu are only utilised around 20% when watching 1080i DVB-T. And i sometimes get the problem when watching lower res interlaced live HDTV (C4 TV) i think it is 576i or something. Every now and again i get a a glitch where it continuously replays about 5 frames of video in an endless loop that can only be aborted by timeshifting forward. I only get this glitch if i set PDVD8 hardware acceleration to ON, if i have h.a. off i dont get the glitch. The glitch only occurs in XP not vista. Catalyst 8.9 makes the glitch less frequent.

 

[Spooky]

1. The flickering GUI problem was scheduled to be fixed for RC2, however it has been moved back to RC3, and it seems the devs are at a dead end trying to fix it. (this is not limited to 780g though, just listing the problems I'm experiencing with this mobo)

As has been said before, this is a MP issue under Vista/EVR and not specific to the Radeon HD 3200. So there is no reason not to recommend a 780G mobo because of this.

2. CCC only gives 2 deinterlace option, weave or bob. It seems the only way to get more options is to use a phenom cpu with HT 3.0. Since this board was supposed to handle HD with ease even on a sempron cpu I opted for one of those new 45w dualcore cpu's - bad choice as it doesn't have HT3.0.

I have a 4850e on my Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H and I have Weave, Bob, Adaptive and Motion Adaptive. Well, it still can handle HD with ease on a Sempron CPU, just not interlaced material, hence only 720p and 1080p.

3. At first I was unable to get HD working with MP at all (works fine with other software) Trying to playback HD with a HA codec in MP would result in only sound playback, and both the MP gui and windows gui would become corrupted. Currently I'm able to playback HD within MP, I'm using PowerDVD8 codec, I have the latest bios, cat 8.7 and the a fresh svn of MP. This for the first time give me the option to watch live HDTV, however it's dropping frames like crazy, anywhere from 10-15 frames pr second!! Both cores on the cpu are at about 50%, so it must be gpu limited ! (this is @ 1360x768!!)

I had no problems to get HA working with PowerDVD 8 in MediaPortal. 720p channels just worked fine, but the performance wasn't enough for 1080i channels.


Even though there are a few requirements to get stable HA for interlaced material, 780G motherboards are not a bad choice overall. I chose mine so I can experiment with HA again, but also have the option to decode HD material in Software with no problems. Right now I let CoreAVC do the work .

 

[kszabo]

I have a 4850e on my Gigabyte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H and I have Weave, Bob, Adaptive and Motion Adaptive. Well, it still can handle HD with ease on a Sempron CPU, just not interlaced material, hence only 720p and 1080p.

You may have this options not greyed out with your HT2 CPU with some (probably older) Catalyst versions (or due to registry tweaks). But this does not mean that you really have it. I doubt that 1080i will be adaptive deinterlaced even if you set it in CCC. Maybe SD MPG2 though. Best setting is auto because of this, I guess.

You can check this with DXVAchecker (just google, but don´t ask, I don´t know how to use).

EDIT:
with Phenom I have none-bob-adaptive-motion adaptive-vector adaptive deinterlacing options.
If I set it to tha last (vector adaptive), 1080i is not deinterlaced. motion adaptive gives good results. I guess motion adaptive is the most complex deinterlacing a HD3200 with Phenom HT3 can handle.

 

[Spooky]

You may have this options not greyed out with your HT2 CPU with some (probably older) Catalyst versions (or due to registry tweaks).

Neither is the case. I am using Catalyst 8.9 on a fresh Windows Installation and I don't use any registry tweaks.

I doubt that 1080i will be adaptive deinterlaced even if you set it in CCC.

I don't know that either. All I know is, that I get bad performance on 1080i channels with HA turned on (about 11 FPS).

You can check this with DXVAchecker (just google, but don´t ask, I don´t know how to use).

Unfortunately I haven't quite figured out how to use or interpret the information of DXVAChecker either . When I set the option to Motion Adaptive in the CCC, a "MotionAdaptiveDevice" is listed under "Processors" for YUY2 and NV12. However, in the Video acceleration settings of those devices, only DXVA_WMV is checked, nothing else.


//after applying the ATi HD registry tweaks, HA works like a charm now (without them I didn't even have HA on MPEG2 stuff, as DXVAChecker indicated). My findings with 1080i now: Motion Adaptive doesn't work at all (as expected), Adapative Deinterlacing works fine at 50 FPS . Setting it to Auto doesn't work for 1080i channels though (it seems the driver still wants to use Motion Adaptive Deinterlacing then. I only get a green still screen on 1080i channels, wehn Motion Adaptive Deinterlacing is on). However, I still have this issue on 720p50 channels . Framerate drops to 33 FPS and stays there (most of the time) for yet unknown reasons.

 

[kiwijunglist]

The general consensus from geekzone.co.nz htpc users is that it is ok but has problems with interlaced dvb-t h264 h.a. a lot of the 780g users on geekzone have added a 8500gt for h.a. I think the 780g mobo is a good one, just make sure you get a faster enough cpu for situations when h.a. doesn't work. i have a AMD X2 4200+ CPU, but if i built again i would choose a cpu that was at least 20% more powerful.

 

[davitzen]

Hello!

Here's the DXVAchecker, I hope it's ok. It's heavy to find this prog.

link for DXVAchecker

David

 

[Spooky]

The author's website is actually Bluesky‚̃z[ƒ€ƒy[ƒW

 

[kszabo]

780G - very good motherboard for MP

1. Flickering GUI - MP code issue, nothing to do with motherboard / chipset / onboard GFX
2. Deinterlacing - CPU issue (you need HT3 capable CPU), nothing to do with motherboard / chipset / onboard GFX, it can HT3
3. DXVA Hardware Acceleration - driver and codec issue, nothing to do with motherboard / chipset / onboard GFX
4. I cannot reproduce this wierd problem, maybe Windows config issue

my experience is:
to 2. after Upgrade to Phenom picture quality of 1080i like a dream
to 3. works superb with pdvd7.3 codec+update, CCC 8.9, EVR Vista (Phenom X3 CPU usage ca. 5-15 %, automatically downclocked to 1000 MHz with vCore 1.05 V through cool&quiet)

so forget the title of the tread!

 

[mironicus]

1. Flickering Gui - I tried Vista Meda Center with TV Pack 2008 - (works with DVB-S). The gui is much smoother than Mediaportal with Hardware acceleration active and there is no flicker at all. So this is really an issue within Mediaportal which can/should be solved through software.

 

[WideView]

1. Flickering Gui - I tried Vista Meda Center with TV Pack 2008 - (works with DVB-S). The gui is much smoother than Mediaportal with Hardware acceleration active and there is no flicker at all. So this is really an issue within Mediaportal which can/should be solved through software.

It is already a known issue: 0001192: Flickering Tv-guide and other overlays with EVR enabled - MediaPortal Bugtracker. I hope that someone is able to fix it in 1.01.