Geforce 6600 fast enough for 1080i?

I've got the following setup now:
MB: Biostar K8M800 Micro AM2
CPU: AMD athlon 64 X2 2ghz
RAM: 4gb
Gfx: Geforce 6600

I've been using media portal to play my various HDTV transport streams I have recorded in (1280x720, 1280x1088, 1920x1088). It has worked great with my screen resolution set to 1280x768 output SVIDEO.

I just got a new 1080p HDTV, so I changed to the DVI output and connect to my TV's HDMI. I also upped the res to 1920x1080.

All my video plays fine EXCEPT the 1920x1088 video, it is a little choppy. More specifically, it seems to skip every half second.

I am using the Nvidia PureVideo decoder so it is being offloaded to my Geforce card. i'm wondering if my geforce card is too slow or there is some configuration setting. If I have to change cards, it will be costly as I will likely have to switch to a PCI-E motherboard. There are not too many settings in the Nvidia Purevideo or VMR9 tabs on media portal. I tried EVR but I seem to get no HW accel from that. Is it possible that it is trying to resize the 1920x1088 video to 1920x1080 (which it shouldnt)

My motherboard is already "pretty fast" dual core, 2ghz, 800mhz ddr ram. I looked around and found a Geforce 9500 and a new motherboard for a total of about $100, but I want to make sure that is isnt just some configuration problem before wasting money.


I have, the CPU usage is only about 5-15% while playing, so that is why i am saying that I am pretty sure it is offloading to the 6600 and why I am wondering if the 6600 is being maxed out. i dont have a GPU montior to know. I am thinking that since i only have the problem with 1920x1088 (highest res), maybe it is. Although, maybe it is being stupid and resizeing the 1088 to 1080 when it really should not.



My screen was set to 1280x720 before, but being output through SVIDEO to the TV. I know svideo is only 480, but i figure I'd try to get close to double to perhaps reduce interlacing effects. NOW, i have an actual HDTV, so i removed the SVIDEO, changed the resolution to 1920x1080 and am output 1080p to my HDTV via a DVI-hdmi interface. Just one display.


720p content plays fine for me but not 1080. My goal is to be able to play 1080 without any stuttering, i dont want to size down to 720 since it defeats the purpose of having a 1080p tv. I will try a different decoder. I already have tried another actually and had the same result, but I cannot remeber the name.




Anyways, to summarize, I would like to know if the problem with playing 1080 content is because I am limited by the GPU or because of some configuration error such as resizing 1088 to 1080. I have no actual 1920x1080 videos since 1920x1088 is standard so I can't test it. Or perhaps there is some other setting. Obviously if the problem can be solved, i wont need to spend $100 and my time replacing the motherboard and GPU with the risk of having the same problem.

sorry i did not state it, but I am decoding MPEG2-HD from OTA recordings and a few from direcTV. I have non-HD stuff in mpeg4.

1920x1088 is standard US ATSC broadcast 1080i The bottom 8 lines are defined to be blank. I think it is because 1088 is a multiple of 16 so it is easier for broadcasters, I don't know the details.

According to wikipedia: 1080-line video is actually encoded with 1920×1088 pixel frames, but the last eight lines are discarded prior to display. This is due to a restriction of the MPEG-2 video format, which requires the number of coded luma samples (i.e., pixels) to be divisible by 16.

The bottom 8 should be discarded when displayed, but if the image is being resized, that would be alot of extra processing. Note my 1280x1088 (directv) video plays fine. DirecTV broadcasts 1280x1088 but sets the pixel aspect ratio to 16:9

I just want to be sure that I am really GPU limited before i purchase it. Is there any way to monitor the GPU usage or if frames are being dropped while I am playing. Maybe i'll download some 1080 sample videos (if there are truely 1080 and not 1088), that should tell me if the problem is with what i say above, however I it could still be some other thing that is configured wrong.

Very little is running in the background, I don't even have a virus scanner on this system since it is isolated. The pagefile on the hard drive has not even been used at all. The HD data throughput from the hard drive is actually very low, maybe 2-3MBytes/second. Obviously, when it actually gets decoded (in the video card), the throughput is very high. Hence the low CPU and memory utilization during playback.

as for 1088, Every 1080i OTA broadcast I have ever recorded in the three cities that I have lived in are all 1920x1088 resolution. I once had an R5000 and pulled the transport streams from directv, and those were all 1280x1088 resolution. I know this to be true so for my own sanity, i grabbed the ATSC standard (A/53 Part 4, Page 11), there is a footnote next to the 1920x1080 format and it reads: "Note that 1088 lines are actually coded in order to satisfy the MPEG-2 requirement that the coded vertical size be a multiple of 16 (progressive scan) or 32 (interlaced scan). The bottom 8 lines are black, per MPEG rules."

So for playback, somewhere, the bottom 8 lines should be cut out for display. I'm trying to find out now if that is the case, it could be some entirely different issue causing the skipping, or the GPU could be overloaded. I guess I would need to find some sorta of GPU usage monitor. My original hope for this post was to find someone with a 6600 output 1920x1080 to a tv or monitor and verify for me if they can actually play 1080i content.

Yes i think that is what I will try before buying.

Looks like CCC uses the Haali Media Splitter so I guess that is what you are using. I'll give that a try tonight.

what screen resolution are you running at when you play your 1080i content?

I did not have this problem until I jumped up to 1920x1080 (from 1024x768)

Just tried CCCP, gave me the extra option of MPC-gabest which did play one of the videos smoothly but the others were still choppy somewhat. not sure what the difference is.

If I try ffdshow, I get the same results as nvidia.

I dont know much about renders, but mediaportal seems to only allow VMR9 or EVR. EVR seems to perform very slowly.

I tried installing PowerDVD and it plays fine in there but not in media portal even when I select the cyberlink decoder so it must be VMR9

So I guess if I want to keep using mediaportal I'm stuck

What decoder and renderer do you use to play your videos?
I am using mediaportal so I am stuck with using VMR9 or EVR for my renderer. With VMR9 I have the problem as described, with EVR it is much worse.

If I just use powerdvd directly, I think it overlays maybe, and it looks perfect.

I fear that if I do buy another card, it may not solve the problem if my decoder/renderer are different. Also, I have looked around for AGP 7000 series and the ones I have found are around $80, where I could get a PCI-E card and a new motherboard for $100.

When you watch 1080 video in MPC HT, which renderer do you have selected? Overlay Mixer, VMR7, VMR9 or VMR9