Best MPEG-2 Decoder

[outrider]

I have seen a lot of people using 3rd party decoders for their BTV setup. My setup stutters every once and while and I fix it by uninstalling the ATI Drivers and reinstalling them.

What do you recommend for a decoder. I see mayham70 recommending Nvidia Purevideo DVD decoder, but I'm assuming that only works for nVidia cards.

[ZetaVu]

I have no issues with the default snapstream sp decoder, and have compared to to nvidia, no difference on my system. On my old ati their mpeg decoder worked best, but my video card was undersized

[mayhem70]

The whole concept of what is the best decoder is subjective really. It's like asking if certain types of shoes make you faster runner. What I can tell you is BTV use decoders that are registered on the OS. Some offer better performance options depending on your hardware and its options.

Nvidia recommends its decoders so that you can take advantage of the raw power of a GPU. Here are some of the more popular ones for MPEG2:

PowerDVD
Arcsoft
Nvidia's
ATI's
Intervideo
Ligos
Nero

Where it gets sticky is licensing. Some might not like to pay Nvidia for their Purevideo decoder. They might try PowerDVD that was given to them as part of the OEM software pack that came with their DVD burner. Whether one is superior over the other, I would say the manufacturer's and then it's a toss up between the rest. I was surprised to discover that for h.264, I got better performance with the Arcsoft decoder...given that I have the hopped up 8800 GT and bought Purevideo.

[outrider]

Hmmmm. Thanks for the explanation mayhem.

I'm just trying to figure out why my ATI Drivers are "failing" inside BTV. I've narrowed down my problem to MPEG-2 encoded files, but I can't force the "failure" of the driver/decoder. The pause and wait 5 seconds doesn't fix the problem either. I thought that it could be the decoder, but it isn't sounding like that.

I may try older ATI drivers.

Thanks!