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

[KRA]

htpcbox, I started this thread, and I have moved on (buying a 4650). However I still get notified when this thread gets updated, so I check in sometimes.

First off, my goal with this thread was to warn people. Mission complete. Now if people blindly trust one post on this forum and base their purchase on that, then their loss. Do your own research. I did mine, poorly however. I did a mistake I never did before. I only read "professional" reviews, wich all hail this board I got as the best thing since sliced bread. Most important thing to research is user experiences, not what reviewers write.

IMO post like yours are the ones that cause confusion. Don't come here and say "everything works fine". Be more spesific.

This thread got 15 pages 140 replies. This is by far the most active thread in this section. I think it has earned the right to live on.... to as you put it "confuse" others.

EDIT: I will however admit to one thing, I may use harsh language, like in the thread title, it's just to get attention.

 

[S.O.P]

And as I'm discovering, professional reviews leave interlaced sources well alone. Which creates a lot of misinformation when one must trawl through forum after forum looking for the definitive solution to interlaced HDTV.

I'll have to keep an eye on further efficient systems down the track.

 

[kszabo]

I'm amazed his thread is still not deleted.
...
Topic title is stupid and missleading

I think that this thread should not be deleted definitely BUT an administrator should change the title. Because it is 1st misleading 2nd not true and harms ATis/AMDs interests unjust.

Correct would be: WARNING: 780g chipset mobo = a bad solution for MP ?

ps I am still happy with 780g and 1080i hdtv (with a Phenom)

 

[flokel]

Changed title of the thread.

 

[jo16v]

The criticism of the 780G boards definitely seem to be more than usual- see this 125 page thread on 780G Gigabyte boards on avs forums. It appears there must have been something badly designed about the MA78GM-S2H board otherwise it wouldn't have had 2 revisions. Also, it seems AMD seemed to fix and break things with each driver update causing a lot of confusion. To compound that confusion, different builds and different versions of PowerDVD work variably in conjunction with the AMD drivers and different operating systems.

 

[Lucky_JL]

So now that we have a new title, let's get back on track!



Like lots of people, normally the more we read about 780G/MediaPortal the more confuse we get , we really need to sumarize the state of the art, what works and what don't works ( like for example this post of jo16v )


At this moment, we know that is possible to get DVXA inside MP without subtitles using MPC-HC codec ( thanks hoborg for the SAF ) but the most stable way to watch HD contents through 780G is using MPC-HC Player ...



I think that only makes senses buy the 780G for use DVXA, at the moment all this "DVXA stuff" is very recent, with time problems will be solved, but anyway does anyone knows that MP Team pretends to do ?
I know that at the moment they are very busy with 1.0 RC3 and 2.0 Previews, but would be good to know something, if they plan to change something in MP or if DVXA is just a codec issue and there is nothing to do in MP ?



As for me at the moment i plan to buy the 780G chipset and Athlon X2 4850e unclocked at 1.5GHZ ( or maybe the new Athlon X2 3250e if they sell to general people ), configure MPC-HC Player as "External Player" ( yes i lose MP menus during the playing ) and watch my videos with DVXA/subtitles support
( till the day i can get this features using MP internal player )



Comments ?
Ideas ?


Regards,
Lucky_JL

 

[flokel]

It appears there must have been something badly designed about the MA78GM-S2H board otherwise it wouldn't have had 2 revisions.

If you look at other popular mainboards from Gigabyte
you'll certainly notice these have more than one revision as well.

 

[jo16v]

If you look at other popular mainboards from Gigabyte
you'll certainly notice these have more than one revision as well.

They have, but it looks like the MA78GM-S2H is the only one with 3 versions out of the 770 and 780 chipsets- that suggests that this board in particular was rushed onto the market without enough testing.

 

[flokel]

As this board was the first available 780G board this may true.

However none of the differences in these revisions (bigger heatsink, 140W support, no more TPM header, dual bios)
should have caused issues when using MP.

 

[jo16v]

As for me at the moment i plan to buy the 780G chipset and Athlon X2 4850e unclocked at 1.5GHZ ( or maybe the new Athlon X2 3250e if they sell to general people ), configure MPC-HC Player as "External Player" ( yes i lose MP menus during the playing ) and watch my videos with DVXA/subtitles support
( till the day i can get this features using MP internal player )

Comments ?
Ideas ?


Regards,
Lucky_JL

I totally agree with your post- I have been unable to get any hardware acceleration inside MediaPortal so I have MPC-HC set as an external player which plays just about all (properly encoded) HD formats with acceleration - i.e. h.264 and VC-1 interlaced and progressive. I did a little testing with PDVD versions and builds and I couldn't get VC-1 acceleration working even on the latest builds- apparently it last worked on 8.3 Catalyst and old F3 BIOS - here's a VC-1 file that you can use to test whether yours is working or not.

For TV I am testing the latest builds of FFdshow which now support h.264 TV so there is now a free alternative to Core AVC to consider- download the latest builds from here, some discussion here. You need to select "skip deblocking when safe" in ffdshow h.264 options and deinterlace (linear blending) if you have interlaced TV (i.e. 576i, 1080i). As ffmpeg is the basis of the MPC video decoder it is hoped that the same changes made to ffdshow will be implemented to MPC eventually creating a non commercial alternative to PDVD for accelerated TV.