Hi,
I built a new HTPC based around the Asus M3N78VM HDMI mboard. I'm running WinXP, and use an Athlon Phenom X4 9550 as my CPU.
I'm getting both audio and video over the onboard HDMI connector - everything seems to be working OK....but....
I've watched a total of 8 hidef (i.e. Blu-ray or HD-DVD) movies on this thing and I've found that HALF of them exhibit some kind of pixelation issues at some points during the movie. Some only exhibit these pixelation issues in a few places and others are REALLY nasty! The 4 that have NO problems at all are Cars, Casino Royale, Oceans Eleven and Hidalgo. The 4 that have exhibited pixelation in some scenes include Batman Begins, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Dark Knight. Of these, Batman Begins is DEFINITELY the worst offender with the first problem scene appearing within the first 30-40 seconds, but it gets MUCH worse later on with some scenes being virtually unwatchable.
I'm trying to identify a pattern, but I haven't had much luck yet. The problems seem to occur in faster-moving scenes (but not always), and darker passages seem to be more prone to the problem.
I've done some testing to try to isolate the problem - I've copied the movie to the local drive and played it from there (just to ensure it's not the board's NIC causing some issues) but the problem still existed.
My main player is Theatertek - I mux the movies into mkv format and use graphedit to play back the files. Theatertek exhibits the problem, the internal player within Graphedit exhibits the problem, and Zoomplayer exhibits the problem. Also, when I monitor the CPU usage during playback the CPU never goes past 40% (remember I'm not using HA) so it's not a CPU overworking issue. Also, these movies playback FINE using my older (non HDMI-audio) HTPC, so I don't believe it's an issue with the mkv files themselves.
My guess is there's a setting or two within either the BIOS or the Control Panel somewhere that needs to be set, but I'm unsure of what settings might be causing the issue and there's not a lot of documentation around for these kind of boards.
BTW....there is an SLI memory sharing setting (can't recall exactly what it's called) in the BIOS, and I've currently got it set to it's maximum value of 512Mb. Initially it was set to 256Mb, but changing this value hasn't made any difference.
What I'd like to know is if anyone else is using this mboard, and it's playing back any of these movies without any pixelation issues, I'd love to know what your BIOS / relevant control panel settings are.
OR, if you've suffered from these occasional pixelation issues and you've SOLVED the problem, I'd love to hear from you too!
Any help is definitely appreciated! I feel I'm now SO CLOSE to getting this board working really well, but this issue is killing the enjoyment factor!
I built a new HTPC based around the Asus M3N78VM HDMI mboard. I'm running WinXP, and use an Athlon Phenom X4 9550 as my CPU.
I'm getting both audio and video over the onboard HDMI connector - everything seems to be working OK....but....
I've watched a total of 8 hidef (i.e. Blu-ray or HD-DVD) movies on this thing and I've found that HALF of them exhibit some kind of pixelation issues at some points during the movie. Some only exhibit these pixelation issues in a few places and others are REALLY nasty! The 4 that have NO problems at all are Cars, Casino Royale, Oceans Eleven and Hidalgo. The 4 that have exhibited pixelation in some scenes include Batman Begins, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Dark Knight. Of these, Batman Begins is DEFINITELY the worst offender with the first problem scene appearing within the first 30-40 seconds, but it gets MUCH worse later on with some scenes being virtually unwatchable.
I'm trying to identify a pattern, but I haven't had much luck yet. The problems seem to occur in faster-moving scenes (but not always), and darker passages seem to be more prone to the problem.
I've done some testing to try to isolate the problem - I've copied the movie to the local drive and played it from there (just to ensure it's not the board's NIC causing some issues) but the problem still existed.
My main player is Theatertek - I mux the movies into mkv format and use graphedit to play back the files. Theatertek exhibits the problem, the internal player within Graphedit exhibits the problem, and Zoomplayer exhibits the problem. Also, when I monitor the CPU usage during playback the CPU never goes past 40% (remember I'm not using HA) so it's not a CPU overworking issue. Also, these movies playback FINE using my older (non HDMI-audio) HTPC, so I don't believe it's an issue with the mkv files themselves.
My guess is there's a setting or two within either the BIOS or the Control Panel somewhere that needs to be set, but I'm unsure of what settings might be causing the issue and there's not a lot of documentation around for these kind of boards.
BTW....there is an SLI memory sharing setting (can't recall exactly what it's called) in the BIOS, and I've currently got it set to it's maximum value of 512Mb. Initially it was set to 256Mb, but changing this value hasn't made any difference.
What I'd like to know is if anyone else is using this mboard, and it's playing back any of these movies without any pixelation issues, I'd love to know what your BIOS / relevant control panel settings are.
OR, if you've suffered from these occasional pixelation issues and you've SOLVED the problem, I'd love to hear from you too!
Any help is definitely appreciated! I feel I'm now SO CLOSE to getting this board working really well, but this issue is killing the enjoyment factor!