my PC doesn't have smooth HD playback, should it be able to do better? how are yours?

[theodork]

Sometimes it seems like my system plays back HD video just fine, but other times i'll see the picture "tearing". Its different from deinterlacing or stuttering issues, just visual tears in the image but i can't help but feel my system may not be keeping up. This happens on live playback as well as recordings. It also happens with both BeyondTV and the Fusion HDTV applications. Also when switching from windowed to full screen modes, there are LONG pauses and freezes for beyondtv to do its thing. Changing channels also seems delayed, at least compared to my buddies macbook and eyeTV software and obviously built in HDTV tuners.

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (usually running at 3200+ without problems)
shuttle an45 ultra nforce2 chipset motherboard
1gb DDR400 ram
ATI x1600 pro AGP
M-Audio revoltion 5.1 sound card
80GB HD with 8MB cache
Dvico Fusion5 Gold HDTV USB tuner

Fresh install of windows XP sp2 and all updates applied
most recent available drivers for video, motherboard, audio, and tuner
beyond tv 4.7.1 rc2 (although problem is the same with 4.6)
made sure bios settings are optimal
vid card is not sharing IRQs and has all GART options turned on
vid card deinterlacing and pulldown options is set to auto, although i dont think this should come into play if beyond TV is set to overlay and not hardware.
using snapstream codecs for audio and video, I dont believe basic ones work correctly with HD, at some point i had toyed around with powerdvd and nero codecs but i didnt see any difference.
overlay with default options,

im going OTA HDTV, with 1080i and 720p signals reporting around 98% according to beyondtv's setup wizard

Im using component tv out on vid card to receiver to SDTV at 800x600, audio is using optical.

My CPU levels dont ever seem to max out, so i wonder if its a video card limitation or some software or codec setting i need to deal with, or if this is just totally abnormal.

Thanks for any input!

[Bigbird999]

Great CPU, I have 2 but, sadly, an XP 2500+ even when overclocked to 3200+ is, at best, at the very bottom end of horsepower required for HD playback. You need to upgrade your mobo/CPU. Or be like me and use it for SD recording.

BB

[theodork]

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

Great CPU, I have 2 but, sadly, an XP 2500+ even when overclocked to 3200+ is, at best, at the very bottom end of horsepower required for HD playback. You need to upgrade your mobo/CPU. Or be like me and use it for SD recording.

BB

Hrm, I thought this too at first, but my task manager CPU usage doesnt even approach 100% when viewing live TV and such. Is there another way i should be measuring this?

[bronze]

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

Great CPU, I have 2 but, sadly, an XP 2500+ even when overclocked to 3200+ is, at best, at the very bottom end of horsepower required for HD playback. You need to upgrade your mobo/CPU. Or be like me and use it for SD recording.

BB

while this is true, if you use the 3d mode to assist in HD decoding, the Athlon XP has no trouble with it. My AXP 3200+ does just fine, while using 3d overlay mode i only use about 20-30% cpu time.

[Bigbird999]

Bronze
What do you have for a vid card? Can you post your system specs? Most ppl have trouble getting 3d to work even with much faster systems. Just curious??

BB

[Jakesty]

Your bottleneck as you mentioned is not likely to be your CPU, could possibly be your video card, but I think it's above the specs. Most likely is that you have too much contention on one simple hard drive for all of the BTV, OS and video demands on it.
You can test by running perfmon from windows and review some of your disk activity. The easy solution is just to add a second drive and have all of your data there and your OS on the first drive.
Jake

[theodork]

I've been thinking of putting in a second HD for the same suspicions, I'm going to try that soon.