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

[hoborg]

I can confirm, that 780g working perfectly as HTPC for me.
But if you are XP users, stay away from catalyst 8.6 - 8.9. These drivers are non working correctly, 8.9 have broken VC-1 DXVA playback.
Last 100% working drivers are 8.5.

 

[jo16v]

Catalyst 8.8 & 8.9 works JUST FINE for my install with XP SP3. The only time I don't get HW ACC is when I use VobSub to add subtitles to MKV-files. But stay away from drivers 8.6 & 8.7

Did you have to do any registry tweaks for that? What motherboard are you using?

No reg. tweaks and using a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H (rev 1.0) with vanilla drivers. As mentioned before I have no MPEG4 TV in my area so can't test that.

Thanks that is very interesting as you have the exact same motherboard and XP SP3 but I can't seem to get it working. I just get a blank screen with Cyberlink codecs with DXVA turned on and MPC-HC whether DXVA turned on or off in MediaPortal. I have DXVA working in the MPC-HC standalone player and in DVBviewer using Cyberlink codecs.

When you say vanilla drivers - can you elaborate- are you using 8.8 or 8.9? Have you tried the new 8.10 release (from here)?

OK, the MPV decoder is also giving me a blank screen (with sound) in MediaPortal but it seems to be working in DVBviewer- can anyone work out what could be wrong with my setup that is causing this?

 

[5Hundred]

I think the title of this thread is a little unfair, i have one of these motherboards and it is excellent for MP, particulaly HD. I only require 1 TV card (dual DVB-s and DVB-t) and the motherboard takes care of everything else. Ideal really.

 

[KRA]

OK, the MPV decoder is also giving me a blank screen (with sound) in MediaPortal but it seems to be working in DVBviewer- can anyone work out what could be wrong with my setup that is causing this?

This is nothing special with you or your setup, I've experienced the exact same thing many times. Not trying to be an a-hole or anything but I believe many of the people who reply in this thread don't know what they are talking about.

I believe many people are A) not using GPU assisted HA B) Use old fashion mpg2 based HDTV C) Use a low res output. D) have a phenom cpu

no offence, but I think it's just plain stupid to say this board is excellent for MP, when you can look @ the buglist for MP, and find a pretty anoying flickering bug in the GUI. It's like saying this board is rock solid, works great, plays everything I throw at it - I only use it to play mp3 in MP though, connected to my 800x600 CRT TV.


EDIT, I just like to point out. I may sound a bit harsh, I'm not trying to put anyone down. When you say your setup works perfect I'm not saying you are lying, I'm sure everything is fine at your end. But the fact is, there are problems with this board, I'm far from alone having them. I've already made my point in making this thread. I try to make people aware that this board is not as excellent as many try to point out. If you still buy it and run into problems, your loss I just like to warn people that consider this board, you may run into problems.

 

[jo16v]

OK, the MPV decoder is also giving me a blank screen (with sound) in MediaPortal but it seems to be working in DVBviewer- can anyone work out what could be wrong with my setup that is causing this?

This is nothing special with you or your setup, I've experienced the exact same thing many times. Not trying to be an a-hole or anything but I believe many of the people who reply in this thread don't know what they are talking about.

I believe many people are A) not using GPU assisted HA B) Use old fashion mpg2 based HDTV C) Use a low res output. D) have a phenom cpu

Well I am using low res 19" 1280x768 monitor and it still doesn't work for me. I also think pilehave seems to know what they are talking about- whether anyone is getting hardware acceleration or not should be completely obvious as playing an HD file without acceleration will give 60-100% CPU usage, whereas if DXVA is working you should get less than 30% (I get 5-15% on 1080p with MPC-HC standalone player). I think what we need to do is make a list of all the motherboards and motherboard revisions and get a definitive list of what people have got working and how they did it (i.e. what drivers, tips on what to install and what not to install that might f*** things up etc.).

It seems that whatever is going wrong in my case is pretty much confined to MP so I am wondering if it is not just my mediaportal installation that is f**ed up.

 

[5Hundred]

KRA

If your using yours for mp3 on a CRT TV then i can advise you of the following in my case

A) GPU assisted HA working
B) CPU around 20% on H264 HDTV
C) Use both 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080
D) Dual Core Athlon X64 2.7GHZ so no HT3.0 being used (able to use motion adaptive deinterlacing for 1080i)

The flickering GUI is annoying but it only happens when you are watching TV and minimise to the small picture whilst looking at the guide for example, and i'm sure in time it will be fixed, hardly a deal breaker.

I commented only because it works for me, and to balance your thoughts. I believe looking at your issues from your first post that most of your problems lie with your setup, not the board, as alluded to by jo16v above in his own case.

The old saying that a bad workman blames his tools might well describe your own situation.

 

[jo16v]

@KRA
I commented only because it works for me, and to balance your thoughts. I believe looking at your issues from your first post that most of your problems lie with your setup, not the board, as alluded to by jo16v above in his own case.

Can you clarify what motherboard you are using (and revision), what OS, what drivers, and version of mediaportal?

 

[KRA]

@KRA
If your using yours for mp3 on a CRT TV then i can advise you of the following in my case

Out of context, I was trying to make a point. English is not my native toungue, I guess my point didn't come through.
My point is, in a forum like this there are always people commenting on things they believe to be correct but isn't. And there a people who reply thinking they see the whole picture, when they clearly isn't. If I remember correctly there was someone in this thread who had HA working great with CoreAVC.... Deinterlacing was working fine @ 1080p.... catch my drift ??

As for my points in the first post
1. This is undisputed, but affect all ATi cards, however I believe the problem is less on my 4650
2. This is a problem unless you A) have a phenom cpu B) Run low resolution, where HD isn't much point anyway C) you are one of those people who don't care about quality and doesn't notice the BOB de-interlacing.
3. This could be Driver/Codec/setup issues
4. This is fairly common problem on ATi cards in general.

good tools are half the job


As for jo16v, gathering info is a good idea, however as I've said before I've moved over to a ATi4650 board, so I can't test anymore.
I can add though that I had a Rev1 gigabyte board. I've tried Catalyst 8.3 - 8.7, always had problems, sometimes more than others.

Oh, and 1280x768 isn't exactly low res, that is a resolution that comply to the HDready standard


Also when you start a thread with problems in this forum you have to supply all you hardware/software info, when you reply and say there isn't a problem you don't have to document anything, not fair It would be nice if all those who have perfectly working system would supply there complete info!

 

[mdsflyer]

KRA I agree about the good tools!

jo16v

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H rev 1.1 (larger northbridge cooler)
Vista 32bit
Catalyst 8.10
MP RC2
Cyberlink Powerdvd 8 Codec (primarily)

 

[globaldonkey]

My observation is that a lot of the problems are around HA with this and other boards, than anything to do with a specific board. I think the technology here, particularly h.264 and VC-1 HA is pretty new. There's bound to be a few bugs, given that this chipset was one of the first to support it. I'm holding off trying to tackle HA for a little while yet...... let you early adopters sort out all the problems first