Hi, My htpc with win7 x64 is up and running lovely jubbly. Media centre is awesome! However 1080 .mkv's just wont play smoothly. CPU is an AMD Energy efficient dual core 4850e, theres 2gb good ram, and gfx powered by a Zalman passive HD4650 512mb. The mobo is the MSi Media Live. I brought the gfx card due to its UVD rendering. How do I ensure its being used? Surely that should be able to do HD movies. Im playing them in vlc media player if that helps? I really dont want to upgrade! I just put her together! Help!!! Dean.
Have you gone into the BIOS and checked the settings are changed to the card as opposed to the onboard?
if you want GPU accelerated videos have a look here http://www.guru3d.com/article/accelerate-x264-1080p-movies-over-the-gpu-guide/ just be aware that any videos using anything above Format profile 4.1 (5.0 and 5.1) will not run on your GPU (Ati based card can't only Nvidia for the moment)
OK! So getting media to play over the gfx card wasnt too hard. You just have to install media player classic and set the output in options to EVR. Works a treat - Dark Knight is breath takingly smooth in full HD on the old Sony Bravia! However does anyone know how to enable gfx card acceleration in windows 7 media centre or media browser within that? Thanks in advance, Dean.
iirc cant you install the divx splitter http://labs.divx.com/mkvwin7preview I think you need AC3 filter for audio aswell though http://ac3filter.net/ I think thats all i installed on my htpc to get it all up and running.
DivX splitter + WMP = GPU acceleration of MKV's. VLC won't accelerate them, but I believe Media Player Classic Home Cinema will - there's a thread in the Tech Support Section.