I read a report on PC Pro’s web site that some ATI cards are struggling with HD content in Windows Media Center. The post quotes forum members from AMD’s forums complaining that HD content from the BBC recorded via Freesat will not play on certain ATI Radeon cards. ATI told PC Pro that it may not all be down to ATI’s cards:
Despite the numerous complaints, AMD says it’s not certain that ATI cards are to blame. "A forum poster on a British enthusiast site has drawn our attention to a possible issue with ATI Radeon graphics cards and HD content broadcast by BBC when used with Windows Media Center (in Windows 7)," the company says in a statement sent to PC Pro.
"We are looking into the matter and first need to determine if the issue mentioned on the forum is in fact related to our hardware, and if so, is it repeatable and persistent, or an isolated case with other hardware or software contributing to the problem. Once we have done so, we will determine next steps."
I don’t have Freesat or a Radion so I have not been able to test it, have any of you readers experienced any issues with HD in Media Center and ATI graphics cards?
0 thoughts on “ATI cards "struggling" with HD channels in Windows 7 Media Center”
I initially thought this might be related to the issue that high bitrate h264 files have when using DXVA but I downloaded a test file someone posted and it was corrupted so disabling DXVA doesn’t fix this one.
Yes, this is big problem for Freesat users. I’ve had to move to NVidia cards to get around this problem. With ATI cards, sometimes a BBC HD program will play ok but most often it plays ok for about 20s then rythmically pixellates in a pulsing fashion. Pausing the playback and restarting again cures this for another 20s. There is a huge topic about this on the GreenButton. I have a 1080p display laptop which fortunately has a NVidia chipset so it does play BBC HD files correctly. Anecdotally, it is thought that this started or was made worse a few months ago when the bit-rate changed, prompting a response from the head of BBC HD at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/09/picture_quality_on_hd_a_respon.html
I’m not sure if it’s Win7 or driver related, but my video performance in 7MC is not as smooth as with VMC. I have a intel onboard 945GM graphics and a driver from Intel dated 2-Oct-2009.
Sometimes the HD channel will pixelrate, chop up. Guideoverlay will cause the playing TV to skip frames on all channels. Scrolling Recorded TV the show icons and text is not scrolling 100% smooth.
I’m hoping that this is just an driver issue and that intel will be able to release a better 945GM driver for win7.
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I initially thought this might be related to the issue that high bitrate h264 files have when using DXVA but I downloaded a test file someone posted and it was corrupted so disabling DXVA doesn’t fix this one.
Yes, this is big problem for Freesat users. I’ve had to move to NVidia cards to get around this problem. With ATI cards, sometimes a BBC HD program will play ok but most often it plays ok for about 20s then rythmically pixellates in a pulsing fashion. Pausing the playback and restarting again cures this for another 20s. There is a huge topic about this on the GreenButton. I have a 1080p display laptop which fortunately has a NVidia chipset so it does play BBC HD files correctly. Anecdotally, it is thought that this started or was made worse a few months ago when the bit-rate changed, prompting a response from the head of BBC HD at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/09/picture_quality_on_hd_a_respon.html
With the Vista TV Pack, I had major problems with ATI. The WTV decoding flaked out completely.
It was so bad, I had to abort and throw in an Nvidia card. Been happy ever since.
I’m not sure if it’s Win7 or driver related, but my video performance in 7MC is not as smooth as with VMC. I have a intel onboard 945GM graphics and a driver from Intel dated 2-Oct-2009.
Sometimes the HD channel will pixelrate, chop up. Guideoverlay will cause the playing TV to skip frames on all channels. Scrolling Recorded TV the show icons and text is not scrolling 100% smooth.
I’m hoping that this is just an driver issue and that intel will be able to release a better 945GM driver for win7.