Little HTPC Help Please

hey guys,
I got a new motherboard today for my htpc because my old one couldn't keep my blu rays in sync amongst other issues. The new board is the ASUS M3N78-VM. Now I was under the impression that an 8200 chipset could easily handle blu ray but wasn't much good for anything. I set it all up today and it seems that it cant even do that. I get a lot of stutter and what looks like slow motion (I'm guessing this is dropped frames) when playing back blu ray/hd dvd rips. So far I've eliminated HDD activity being the cause, cpu is around 10% during playback and this happens with aero on/off in both TMT3 and PowerDVD 9. Now since I've built my htpc (last september) I have bought 3 different gpus and now 2 different motherboard to solve poor blu ray playback problems. Now either I am the most unlucky guy on earth or I am doing something very wrong. I would love to just scrap the onboard video and buy a 9500GT but the only low profile one I can find will be too noisy so I'm all out of ideas. So if anyone has any suggestions at all I'm all ears... either that or I'll have to pull out the sledgehammer and see if that helps... btw this is with a 4850e and 2GB ram

Imo your hardware has never been an issue it should be fine.. have you tried other software, drivers, OS etc..

It seems very odd indeed, even my crappy £30 690G board can do blu ray.

I've tried PowerDVD 9, TMT3 and I'm going to try my older copies of Powerdvd tomorrow. I have read that this board works best with a phenom but I have read about loads of people that have it working with a 45w cpu. Might have to give XP a go as well. That sledgehammer is looking awful tempting tho

Lol well the sledge is always an option but I'd hold off a little longer :)

Have you ruled out audio yet, that can be a pain..

I really do not know why crazyfool is having so many issues!! The AMD 780G and Nvidia 8200 seem to be having issues as well as an ATI HD4350 and Nvidia 8400GS IIRC too!!

TBH have you tried using VLC or MPC for playback??

What OS is this?

I have an 8300 board (currently RMA'd due to a fault) and it plays like a charm. TMT3 is pretty flawless during playback at 60hz. What refresh rate have you got your display set to? You might be seeing 24hz judder rather than anything else thought from what you say, probably not.

Also, what drive are you playing these on? My old Pioneer BD-ROM is pretty bad, but my LG one is spot on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

I really do not know why crazyfool is having so many issues!! The AMD 780G and Nvidia 8200 seem to be having issues as well as an ATI HD4350 and Nvidia 8400GS IIRC too!!

TBH have you tried using VLC or MPC for playback??

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I wish I knew. The only thing I haven't changed since I started is the cpu and ram so obviously all of these big companies hate me :(
VLC works but stutters because its cpu only no dxva. Going to try the mpc vc1/h264 codec now

Quote:

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Originally Posted by crazyfool

I wish I knew. The only thing I haven't changed since I started is the cpu and ram so obviously all of these big companies hate me :(
VLC works but stutters because its cpu only no dxva. Going to try the mpc vc1/h264 codec now

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I really hope you get these issues sorted as it seems a right PITA!! Does your main rig have the same issues BTW??

Well after browsing a number of forums and finding peoples solutions to be either use a 4550 (which I've tried) or buy a phenom (which I refuse to do) I decided to low the multiplier to 8 and increase the fsb to 250 from 200 (although in the bios these were called different things so hopefully I changed the right values) giving me a 2ghz speed but a higher front side bus and now suddenly 24p blu ray is working perfect... Going to up it a little more if I can but hopefully it is fixed :D

How strange.. well done anyway.

spoke too soon :censored:
I closed PowerDVD to check cpu-z to see if my settings had been applied which they had, then opened powerdvd again and guess what, bad stuttering... thing I've just realised though is that in cpu-z all of the values are constantly changing, the same kind of thing that happens with on my gaming rig when I have speedstep on however I have cool n quiet disabled in the bios, I'm sure this has something to do with it... now what the :censored: do I do :crazy:

Ok now I have worked out that the board is capable of playing back blu ray without problems. Just not in any manner of conistency. I restarted the machine and it played back fine. The I closed powerdvd and repoened and it stuttered. Then I closed and repoened again and it was fine. After about 10 mins of this and restarting I have found out it works randomly. So atm I have a htpc which is capable of blu ray depending on the time, the height of the sun and if it feels bother or not. :(

Again, what OS is this?

And how much ram do you have allocated to the 8200?

Vista SP1 and 256mb allocated.

You're currently overclocking yes? Have you tried when not overclocking?

I can get perfect BD playback on an Athlon XP 3000 with 1gb ram & a 512mb 2600XT.

Can you bump the ram allocated to the 8200 to 512mb? Unsure if your board supports that.

The board doesn't support 512mb, I have one.

Crazyfool, are the options for dxva available or greyed out in powerdvd and tmt3?
did you use the evr option in media player classic?
It definitely sounds like software issue. Maybe a complete new reinstall of vista and drivers would solve it?

The option for DXVA is available in both. I agree it must be a software issue as if it can play back 10 mins of a blu ray without problems then I dont see why it cant all the time. Haven't tried mediaplayer classic yet. I'm going to play around with it for bit more tomorrow, then I'm going to go bacjk and try xp. If not then I'm out of ideas... thanks for all your help guys:)

http://www.xvidvideo.ru/content/view/7/17/

Very up-to-date site for MPC-HC builds, as the original MPC is not in development anymore. Yes, it's Russian but it's a Russian developed app now and it's perfectly safe.

You might want to try Haali media splitter along side it too as I've found even the new builds of MPC-HC don't like very file. You'll need to disable the appropriate internal filter (i.e. matroska) and set Haali as the preferred decider in the options\external filters menu.

Unless I'm playing physical disks, MPC-HC is my player of choice.

Good luck, and let us know how you get on.

Okay its looks like I have found a solution :). I installed XP and tried playing a blu ray iso and I had the same stuttering. So I went into the bios and changed the cpu multiplier from auto to 9 and the FSB to 265 (if I go to 270 it wont boot). I then went back into XP and tried PowerDVD 9 and I had the same issue. Tried TMT3 and guess what... it works:D. According to various sources because my cpu only supports HT 1.0 there isn't enough bandwidth (i think???) so I get stuttering, increasing the fsb in turn increases the HT value to 1300 which seems to be almost enough for flawless playback, same reason why a Phenom would of solved the issue because it supports HT 3.0. Now honestly I have no idea what I just said (what the hell is HT lol) but after trawling the net looking at loads of threads this was the most common solution (and they all talked about HT???) and it seems to have worked for me too. Still get the occasional stutter though which I'm sure would be sorted if I could get the FSB to 270 but it just won't boot, you think a little more voltage would do the trick? Anyways thanks for all your help guys... 3 GPUS & 2 mothboards later and it turns out my problem was the CPU... whadaya know... fingers crossed this is it and it won't decide to stutter when I turn the pc back on later