Help Me Not Throw My New Toy Out The Window!

[Mr. Chambers]

New HTPC:

• nMediaPC HTPC 1000B Case
• ASUS P5N7A-VM Motherboard
• Corsair CMPSU-400CX Power Supply
• Core 2 Duo E5200 CPU
• G.SKILL 2GB DDR2 PC6400 RAM
• LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Reader SATA Model iHOS104-06
• Windows 7 Professional

Other Equipment:

• Onkyo 806 Receiver
• Epson 6100
• Windows Home Server /w 4TB of storage (Connected to house via 1000MB Network)
• Microsoft Media Center Remote & Logitech Harmony 890

Admittedly I'm a bit out of my element here with all these codecs and applications I've never utilized before - but I'm having all kinds of issues. I had read that HTPC's were finicky - but I didn't believe it until now!

My ultimate goal is to easily browse and playback my DVD and Bluray collection (which I've already ripped to my WHS) from the HTPC. I'm ripping the video uncompressed into an MKV and ripping the high-definition audio into FLAC for lossless playback. It'd be a plus to be able to get the cool/fancy looking menus/backdrops/etc. that I've seen people online having (I'm looking at you LandShark!)

Issues I'm currently experiencing:

• Choppy playback of bluray (my CPU utilization stays above 80% when playing bluray with spikes to 100% regularly). Regular DVD's appear to work OK for the most part.

• Sound is not synchronized with certain blurays (from my reading this is likely a codec or CPU utilization issue).

• The video goes blank for 1-2 seconds every few minutes (only does this when playing movies, when leaving at the Win7 desktop I have no issue - so this may be a driver or possible HDMI handshake issue?)

• Sound is VERY quiet compared to other sources (such as Dish, PS3, etc.) even though from what I can tell my volume is 100% in all places on the HTPC. I have to set the volume on my Onkyo to -90 vs. -60 to get the same general volume level - and for some reason I feel the sound doesn't have the same impact as playing the bluray on my PS3...

• I get weird video artifacts (these are NOT very noticeable, although they still bother me). My girlfriend can't see them unless I tell her where they are and when they happen. Almost like little sparkles here and there, 2 or 3 in various/random areas of my projector screen. These occur whether I'm playing a movie or not (ie. also appear on the black background of my Win7 desktop).

As you can see lots of strange issues. I can get driver versions of everything when I get home if it would help - although I can say a week ago I downloaded the newest chipset drivers from Nvidia for my motherboard hoping it would help and it did not appear to make any difference.

I should note that the bluray rips seem to play OK on my desktop PC, which is an older E6300 + 4GB DDR2 + ATI X1900XT.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated - I'm not sure where to even start!

 

[Wicked Klown]

What front end are you using? What codecs are you running?

 

[Mr. Chambers]

What front end are you using? What codecs are you running?

This is part of my confusion Wicked - I have read a lot of webpages and forum posts but there's quite a bit of information out there and I'm afraid I'm still a bit lost.

What I've done so far is installed Media Player Classic Home Cinema Edition - which if I understand correctly should play both VC-1 and H.264 high-definition video formats, correct?

After reading more about this yesterday however it appears that MPC-HC simply utilizes a FFDSHOW codec, which is entirely software based no matter what hardware you're running - hence why my poor E5200 is choking?

Do I need to purchase PowerDVD 9 Ultra to enable hardware decoding of VC-1 and H.264?

I've played around a little with both Win7 Media Center (with the My Movies plugin), and also a little with MediaPortal - but until I got the aforementioned issues resolved I didn't want to spend much time working with the front end - perhaps that is my issue...

 

[Wicked Klown]

Grab the MPC Video Decoder. Then register it regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\MPCVideoDecoder\MPCVideoDec.ax". Also download and install Madflac. Afterwards open MPC go to options, External Filters, Add filter. From there add the MPC - Video Decoder you just registered and MadFlac. While in options click on Playback - Output set it to either EVR or EVR Custom Pres.**. Try a movie and let us know if that worked for you. You may want to take a look at MediaBrowser. You can set it up to launch any play you want. I have it set up to launch MPC-HC for my MKVs and WMP for my AVIs.

 

[Mr. Chambers]

Grab the MPC Video Decoder. Then register it regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\MPCVideoDecoder\MPCVideoDec.ax". Also download and install Madflac. Afterwards open MPC go to options, External Filters, Add filter. From there add the MPC - Video Decoder you just registered and MadFlac. While in options click on Playback - Output set it to either EVR or EVR Custom Pres.**. Try a movie and let us know if that worked for you. You may want to take a look at MediaBrowser. You can set it up to launch any play you want. I have it set up to launch MPC-HC for my MKVs and WMP for my AVIs.

Thanks Wicked.

That seemed to fix the stuttering playback and un-sync'd audio - however I still am getting the blanking of screen (and audio) every few minutes when watching a movie - but it only appears to be doing this when I have MPC-HC fullscreen.

[edit]
I just had the video blank out when I was not in fullscreen mode so it doesn't appear to be strictly limited to fullscreen mode apparently.

I'll try another HDMI cable later tonight to make sure it isn't the cable.

 

[Mr. Chambers]

Spoke too soon. MPC-HC seems to work OK (relatively low CPU utilization, no audio skipping, etc.) with Transformers 2 - but on another BR rip (Gran Torino) I get high utilization and lots of video stuttering, etc.

I'm assuming they may use different codecs?

 

[{PMS}fishy]

You have to make sure that your software is offloading the video decoding to the on-board video. I'm not at all familiar with your software but it basically needs to support the Nvidia PureVideo.

 

[Wicked Klown]

Take a look at Purevideo HD and acceleration.

 

[Mr. Chambers]

I started over from scratch (reinstalled Win7) and now I seem to be a lot better off., however randomly the sound will stillskip a second, or the video will go blank on my projector (also for just a second). This appears to be very random - sometimes I can watch an .MKV for 30 minutes before I'll see it, and other times I can see some sort of blip once every 5-10 minutes. Very strange!

From what I can tell this is occuring ONLY when I'm watching a movie fullscreen - but I need more stringent testing to ensure.

I'm still thinking it's a possible HDMI cable/handshake issue - or possibly something with my Onkyo but I need to do some more investigating - just wanted to give an update and say thanks for the help thusfar everyone.

 

[Trap05]

Is your motherboard bios up to date? 0514 is the newest from Asus From June 09

 

[||Console||]

If you bypass the onkyo does it happen ?

 

[Mr. Chambers]

If you bypass the onkyo does it happen ?

I took the entire setup upstairs to my HDTV up there and connected directly from my HTPC to the HDTV via HDMI cable and I watched half a movie. I did NOT notice the video or sound dropping as it does downstairs with my Onkyo + Epson projector. Not good! I'd almost rather it was the HTPC as that'd likely be easier/cheaper to fix!

When I get home from work I'm going to try going straight from the HTPC to the Epson. We'll see what happens.

 

[Wicked Klown]

I've read before about issues with Onkyo and Yamahas. That issue had more to do with ATI cards and HDMI handshaking.

 

[Mr. Chambers]

I finally got the chance to do more testing.

It appears that all the playback issues have been resolved - at least from the HTPC perspective. I have 5.1 sound coming from the HTPC to the Onkyo via HDMI cable and my ripped movies seem to play now without issue - regardless of whether they are VC-1 or AVC encoded. CPU utilization (I'm not overclocking my CPU at this time) never seems to go above 30% and I do see DXVA is enabled in MPC-HC when a movie plays.

However (always something right?) - I do still get the occasional audio and video blip/cut out when the unit is connected to the Onkyo - whereas when I did some testing with my projector plugged directly into the HTPC I did not notice the video dropping (obviously couldn't test sound without the Onkyo in the picture).

I also still notice what appears to me to be video artifacting - but again this only appears when connected to my Onkyo and then to my projector from there - when going straight to the projector or my other HDTV - I do not notice these small white/light blue dots blinking randomly every few seconds on the screen. I admit they are hard to notice and can't really be seen unless there is a dark scene so that's good at least. I've read that my Onkyo 606 can suffer from some strange HDMI video issues - I'm assuming that's all that is at work here and I doubt there's much I can do to fix it?

 

[ratbuddy]

I finally got the chance to do more testing.

It appears that all the playback issues have been resolved - at least from the HTPC perspective. I have 5.1 sound coming from the HTPC to the Onkyo via HDMI cable and my ripped movies seem to play now without issue - regardless of whether they are VC-1 or AVC encoded. CPU utilization (I'm not overclocking my CPU at this time) never seems to go above 30% and I do see DXVA is enabled in MPC-HC when a movie plays.

However (always something right?) - I do still get the occasional audio and video blip/cut out when the unit is connected to the Onkyo - whereas when I did some testing with my projector plugged directly into the HTPC I did not notice the video dropping (obviously couldn't test sound without the Onkyo in the picture).

I also still notice what appears to me to be video artifacting - but again this only appears when connected to my Onkyo and then to my projector from there - when going straight to the projector or my other HDTV - I do not notice these small white/light blue dots blinking randomly every few seconds on the screen. I admit they are hard to notice and can't really be seen unless there is a dark scene so that's good at least. I've read that my Onkyo 606 can suffer from some strange HDMI video issues - I'm assuming that's all that is at work here and I doubt there's much I can do to fix it?

Is it the 606 or the 806 as mentioned in the OP? Either way, if you can return it, I'd get right on that. Those Onkyos are notorious for crappy HDMI support. They have mentioned a firmware update is in the works, but do you really want to keep a defective unit and hope it's fixed some time down the road?

 

[Mr. Chambers]

Sorry about that - I made a typo, it is an 806.

I've read of some complaints with the HDMI switching just after I purchased the unit - but I never experienced any issues really with my PS3 or my Dish receiver (both connected via HDMI) so I didn't bother to send the unit back. Unfortunate!

I see there are options in the receiver setup to HDMI passthrough, 1080p, 1080i, 720p, etc. - but I doubt changing those would change the situation (although I will certainly try). Currently it's set to pass-through.