[mythtvnz] MythTv playback on Windows Vista

[Stephen Worthington]

On Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:23:17 +1300, you wrote:

>Hi Simon,
>
>
>Windows Vista is what I am running.
>
>
>At the moment I can play the files through mythweb using VLC media player or Windows Media Player.  VLC does the best job and you can deinterlace as well.  However some recordings are laggy and drop frames or have audio problems.  It doesn't seem to make a difference if I download them to my laptop either.  I'm wondering if its some content protection mechanism in Vista that can't process the high def video fast enough.  Or it is a codec issue.  I've tried the latest stable (4.something) and development versions of Myth Player (5.0) but have the issue with the audio stream not being found.  I was just wondering if anyone else is running a windows frontend with FreeviewHD and what they've done.  I've also tried running a live-CD of Mythbuntu but it doesn't seem to connect properly either.
>
>
>Rossco

On Vista, you can use drivers that offload the H.264 decompression
onto the GPU - if you have a video card such as Nvidia 8600? or above
that supports this.  VLC, as far as I know, does not use hardware
acceleration and uses its own internal copy of the X.264 codec.
Without hardware acceleration, you seem to need a 3.0 GHz CPU to do
the job for HD H.264, as is the situation with MythTV at the moment. I
think MythPlayer is the same - it does not use Vista codecs, and
instead uses ones compiled into it, based on the same X.264 code.

The codec that people are using for hardware acceleration on Windows
comes with Cyberlink PowerDVD 7 or 8, but you can get it in other
ways.  I have used GBPVR and MediaPortal to play HD files under Vista
using this codec, as well as PowerDVD.  GBPVR is a bit too buggy in
this area at the moment, so I would recommend MediaPortal.  When doing
hardware acceleration, my CPU stays under 15% usage normally, and
there are no dropped frames or audio problems (except when the
recorded file goes bad).