Hi Folks,

I solved my video glitch problem thanks largely to this community.  I figured I would write what I learned for the benefit of others who probably have this same problem.

To start with, I had a pretty good build using Vista media center, but the one problem I couldn't seem to solve was glitchy video problems when watching recorded video.  I interestingly found out that other types of videos (Not encoded with MPEG2) seemed fine. 

My hardware is a Intel 965 based chipset board from gigabyte with a Core 2 E6700 processer and 2 gigs of memory.  Its no sloth, but I also just have an Nvideo 6600 video card which is by no means a powerhouse by todays standards.  Still, I was confident that it can perform great full screen HD videos because back in the day I did just that when I was testing MythTV (A whole other story).

I upgraded /downgraded the Nvidia drivers to 174.93 or back to an old one and this actually didn't make much difference.  I tried tweaking the Nvidia driver settings without much success either.  Finally I installed the Nvidia Purevideo HD encoder (This is different than the driver, and something you have to buy that is extra) and I noticed something different.  (You also have to enable that driver as the default for media center using another tool).  The video looked perfect, but then the audio glitched. 

I believe now after testing that this is how the Microsoft MPEG2 encoder differs from the NVIDIA encoder.  When the Microsoft encoder hits a wall and cannot render frames fast enough, it drops them.  When the nvidia encoder hits a wall, it goes ahead and keeps rendering and lets that audio drop out and then come back in.  This is actually a very useful "tool" because it is obvious when you have hit a limitation on the purevideo encoder keeping up. 

Now with purevideo installed and configured, you go back to the nvidia control pannel and disable some of the advanced features (under video color adjustment) until you get the video to play without audio glitches.  This includes disabling the motion frame compensation / etc. That worked great for me, and now I am playing full screen 1080i perfectly with the nvidia 6600.  Probably having the better video cards would allow some of the advanceds features to work, but I am happy without them.

Tony

I have a similar problem with my Nvidia 8600 GTS.  I have drivers 169.25  installed.  My question is that I have previously understood that the Nvidia Pure Video was not the correct CODEXs to use for VMC and that the standard Microsoft CODEXs should be used.

Anyone?

DNR,

I think you are right, Nvidia doesn't officially support it on vista.  I'm not sure if it is for technical reasons or more of a marketing decision, but I suspect the latter.  Without it I'm not sure I would have gotten my card to work and I would probably be forced to upgrade.

I've heard of 8x00 users having luck by tweaking the motion compensation to around 15% in the color settings doing the trick for them. 

T

TorroX,

We may be getting a big off-topic here, but I do now know where in the Nvidia desktop the "motion compensation" can be found.  I looked both in the old driver and in the new driver, searched the Help index and looked at all the settings I could find, both standard and advanced.  Thoughts?

If you are tired of fighting with your older video card, here's a deal that's hard to pass-up.  (I have nothing to gain from this, just trying to help users with problems getting old video cards to work.)

Nvidia 8400GS for $14.99 after rebate.

http://www.techbargains.com/news_displayItem.cfm/120030

I believe that this card supports SD & HD acceleration.

DNR,

The three nvidia video tweak settings are actually called "Inverse Telecine, Noise Reduction, and Edge Enhancements" on the latest drivers.   I think when you are trying to maximize your video these are the features you should tweak for any nvidia enthusiast.   I found a very interesting reference here:

http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/PureVideo_Product_Comparison.pdf

Which shows which card supports which features.   According to the chart my card supported all of the features except Inverse Telecine which means that if I enable that in the video driver then my video card doesn't natively support it and I will have to use CPU power to do it.   It may take a while, but you should be able to tweak these settings to make a good HD video signal look awesome. 

The chart is also kind of interesting because it shows that the later the card, it doesn't necessarily have the latest purevideo support features.   For example the 8800s were missing some features from the 8600 so clearly some are geared towards video media centers while others are more gaming focused.

Tony