From what I've heard Win 7 and Vista provide the hardware acceleration for 720p/1080.
But I could be wrong.

dxva - hardware video support - is dependent on the playback application. VLC doesnt support it

Media player and media centre work fine.  Clean install of win 7 with the haali demuxer and you should be good to go as the gma 500 drivers support dxva.

I've gotten into the weird habbit of using my netbook as a portable tv as all my tv shows are already on my qnap ;-)

Last edited by n0ahg (2009-09-13 9:31:23 pm)

n0ahg wrote:

Media player and media centre work fine.  Clean install of win 7 with the haali demuxer and you should be good to go as the gma 500 drivers support dxva.

I've gotten into the weird habbit of using my netbook as a portable tv as all my tv shows are already on my qnap ;-)

thank you very much

i also wanted to report that i found a big improvement in the playback of 720p movies under XP after installing this version http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/directx.html of the DirectX 9 (the normal windows DirectX update wasn't working, says something about cannot download the requested files from the setup, so i used the file that i linked), i'm using Media Player Classic Homecinema

sorry if i made any grammatical mistakes, but i'm italian

Last edited by Cerbero88 (2009-09-13 10:18:02 pm)

My 1101HA keeps hanging when I play HD content. Don't know if it's a **** driver for having installed Media Player Classic Home Cinema which apparently tampers with the driver, or if it's something else (might be a bad file, too, hangs on the same place each time). Either way, I dont really need HD so I dont know why I even tried. Dont have any HD content (except for the 2 minute tekzilla vid i downloaded to try) and dont have the internet speeds to get any, so...

Put it on Windows 7 basic and it worked. Wow, didnt know Aero was that demanding. Think I'll keep it on that :d Thanks!

I run 720p just fine on media player classic... just make sure you don't install any new x264 codecs.. that will screw up the hardware acceleration.

PowerDVD has DxVA AVC Codec inside.
Media Player Classic with external filter priority set to Cyberlink H.264/AVC Decoder from PowerDVD 8 Demo working too.
PowerDVD 8 Demo was preinstalled on Acer Aspire One 751h, so i know it works.

Simply install "K-Lite Codec Pack Mega" which includes MPC Home Cinema and "HD-Pack" and you have everything to run 1080p DxVA Videos smooth.
Drop videofile into DxVA Checker app to see if your video is able to be hardware accelerated.
Many mp4 or mov containers do not use AVCHD or H.264 but only MJPEG which sucks and cannot be played with GPU acceleration.

Last edited by PAPPL (2009-09-21 3:07:05 pm)

I really want to get this to work, but all of this is sounding like a foreign language. Can any one put a step by step guide?
I already have the full version of PowerDVD9 Ultra. What do I need to do next?
How do I get Media player classic and how do I set filter priority?
Where do I get DXVA Checker?
What is this Media player HC? and is it better than Windows Media player? How do I use the "no-install version"

I really need some help here guys.
Thanks

PAPPL wrote:

If you already have Power DVD 9 H.264 1080p and 720p HD Videos should already work with Power DVD.
Afaik Power DVD 9 doesn't share the Codec anymore with other players. With Power DVD 8 or early versions of P DVD 9 it was possible to use Cyberlink H.264 Codec with other player like Media Player Classic HC.
The benefit of Media Player Classic HC (from K-Lite Codec Pack) is that you can play all video formats with one player for free because Media Player Classic can set codecs in codec list. The Media Player with Windows isn't able to add and select Codecs for video file containers, so there you can only play few file formats.
Install HD-Pack to set all needed Codecs after K-Lite Codec install with Media Player Classic HD.

DxVA Checker
This tool detects the DxVA capability of your chipset (GMA500) and Codec in your video file, so you know if you can play this HD-Video smoothly if it says DxVA capable (GPU acceleration of GMA500).

Wow, thanks that really helped.
Where do I get the HD-Pack for Win Media Player classic?
So basically I would add Win Media Classic, install K-lite codec and then get HD-PACK to set the right codecs I need?

I got my 1101HA yesterday, installed Windows 7, then have spent hours figuring out the whole video thing, and it's working pretty well now.

The main issue I encountered was with watching subtitled material: Windows Media Player doesn't support external subtitles, but it was perfectly fast with 1080p h264, while Media Player Classic Home Cinema (and everything else I tried) was choppy with the same files, dxva or not.

After Googling around I found this tutorial that almost worked for me (warning, some vaguely NSFW material on the page): http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watchin … sing-dxva/
I had previously installed CCCP from http://www.cccp-project.net/

You'll still have to experiment a little with the options to get it to work right.

(Sorry if someone saw my deleted post I made earlier. I said something wrong that wouldn't work right, oops)

Thanks for the precisions.

I have a lot of old files in unusual formats, and a lot of files with softsubs and separate subtitles: not using a codec pack would eventually require me to install all that stuff manually. The tutorial describes how to disable the filters in MPC so that DXVA will work anyway.

For full screen playback with subtitles you must overclock the CPU or alternativel enable "D3D Fullscreen Mode", then it will work but you lose the controls of MPC-HC, so, you have to switch languages/subtatles with the keyboard and the only way of stopping playback is using Ctrl+C key combination, which also closes the movie. Not very nice, but ... well ... works. Also you must disable "D3D Fullscreen GUI Support" for fluent playback.

Playback without subtitles is easier: you should use the "EVR (Vista/.Net3)" renderer, this plays 1080p H.264 perfectly even on full screen, you can even set the "Power Saving Mode" in SHE.

Using EVR Custom, subtitles work for me with DXVA, and without SHE, I have not yet tried to enable SHE in Win 7, but I do not think it would improve anything: I tried watching a 8GB 1080p h264 MKV, MPC-HC plays it with DXVA, it averages about 20% CPU and 510MB RAM. It drops frames, but it's watchable.

EVR (Vista/.Net3) mode gives the same good performance as WIMP but it does not support subs. What I really wanted was to get the subs to work without turning movies into slideshows.

An important thing I noticed is that when using EVR Custom, letting the movie play for a few minutes, clicking the stop button, then starting play again dramatically improves performance for me.

Here are some stats, playing about 6 minutes of the test movie mentioned earlier.

EVR Vista/.Net3:


EVR Custom (after "preloading" it as described above):


The choppiness is noticeable, but it not bad enough to make watching subtitled 1080p stuff a bad experience

Last edited by Youpi (2009-11-06 1:11:44 pm)