Brand New Machine - Won't Play 1080p - WHY?

Kuffdam · 26-09-2009, 10:25 AM

Hey guys

I have a new HTPC in my living room and I just bought it so I could watch HD movies but I am having some problems. 720P films play with no issues with 5.1 DD sound. The problems start when I play a 1080p movies... It glitches every few seconds and not sure why... is it the CPU, the RAM... the graphics card??? what???

I have a machine in a bedroom and it plays the movies fine but its a higher spec, can anyone help?

Ok so...

Living room - 2.6mhz Intel Dual Core HTPC
This has a Gigabyte GA-EP45C-DS3R motherboard
2GB of ram and running Vista
512MB ATI Radeon 4350 Graphics Card

Bedroom PC - 2.4mhz Intel Quad Core PC
This has a Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard
4GB of ram and running Vista
1GB Nvidia Graphics Card

The living room machine is hooked up to a Sharo 46" Aquos playing 1920 x 1080 screen format via HDMI

The bedroom machine is connected to a 32" Sharp TV playing 1920 X 1080 via HDMI

So why does the HTPC struggle with the 1080p video??? is it the chip, if so can I swap them over, or is it the RAM?

Thanks in advance guys

HELP PLEASE

Boon72 · 26-09-2009, 10:34 AM

have you tried adding more ram to see how it goes?

just having a quick google and the cpu & gfx seem fine for bluray playback so i'd start with the ram & Vista

Earl_Uk · 26-09-2009, 11:18 AM

At a glance the hardware should be ok, what software are you using?

Kuffdam · 26-09-2009, 11:33 AM

I'm using windows media centre or VLC

conan · 26-09-2009, 11:51 AM

The hardware should be fine, I would be looking to the driver setup for answers without knowing anything else about your PC.

Kuffdam · 26-09-2009, 12:08 PM

Driver wise.... I have the latest ATI drivers install for the graphics card

what other drivers would be required?

Just to confirm also, I'm not streaming this movie, its playing direct from the machines hard drive.
Yet the Quad machine can actually play a 1080p movie streaming from a server in a different part of the house.

It just seems weird that the HTPC can't cope with the video... as I said, 720p is no problem
but as soon as I change to a 1080 film the image starts to break up. The sound is normally fine...
just picture

Kuffdam · 26-09-2009, 12:37 PM

I just tried a couple of movies out just now.... and had a CPU meter and Ram meter running. The to Cores seem to be really pushed when it comes to the video. WHen it plays 12 Monkeys its running at between 75 and 80% CPU then drops to 45% and then spikes again....

When watching The Dark Knight it plays fine running around 45%

The Replacement Killers is again spiking around 75% CPU, when this happens then video glitches

So is the Dual Core just not good enough?

The Ram is running around 50% the whole time

Kuffdam · 26-09-2009, 12:40 PM

ok and more strangeness

If I watch the movie on Mediaplayer its fine now.... plays great...
CPU is up at 75% but its playing great... only VLC is causing problems

is that a CPU hungry program pushing the system just too far?

conan · 26-09-2009, 2:00 PM

When I referred to drivers, I was thinking more about what your output settings are from the drivers.

Looking at your other posts since, it seems they are outputting the correct signal. It shouldn't be a CPU issue really, there isn't much difference between your two CPU's.

Try taking some of the RAM out of your other PC and boosting your HTPC to 4Gb for a trial. Ram is always the cheapest upgrade, and if you have more ram you can increase your apeture size giving more headroom for the graphics.

tredman · 26-09-2009, 2:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kuffdam

ok and more strangeness

If I watch the movie on Mediaplayer its fine now.... plays great...
CPU is up at 75% but its playing great... only VLC is causing problems

is that a CPU hungry program pushing the system just too far?

Mediaplayer uses microsofts video codecs to play the films, which use hardware accerleration with your graphics card.

VLC is software only and relies purely on the CPU, and yours aint up to that.

Simple answer, don't use VLC, stick to video players which use DXVA.

MikeK · 26-09-2009, 3:41 PM

is that a CPU hungry program pushing the system just too far?

Depends - what CPU is it exactly?? (ie Pentium D, Core2Duo, Pentium Dual Core etc etc)

If it's a Core2Duo or Pentium Dual Core you should be fine with a 2.6GHz model!
(the older Penium D series might struggle)

Try using Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition

http://www.videohelp.com/download/mp...1.3.1249.0.zip

oliphillips · 26-09-2009, 6:39 PM

In my opinion, your best bet would be to configure some hardware acceleration, making it so your graphics card will be doing most of the processing.

For the bedroom HTPC have a go with KMPlayer and configure it to use CoreAVC codec to play your HD movies.

KMPlayer with CoreAVC How To. Also make sure "Use CUDA" is ticked in CoreAVC.

For the living room HTPC try Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition, this should already be set up to use DXVA for your HD Movies.

DXVA in Media Player Classic

Hope this helps,
Oli