Can't play 720p videos in old PC

[mowgli80]

Even the first gen 6xxx series support pure video (code named VP1), HD videos for 7600GT is a piece of cake, please do not spread FUD if you do not know what you are suggesting.

Check the wiki link I listed. VP1 supports full acceleration for mpeg2 (what used to be standard codec for DVD) but limited h264 or VC-1 acceleration (Blu ray, modern downloads). Thats why I suggested 3rd Gen+. If FUD was my intention, I would have asked him to get the latest and greatest, not something thats 3 year old. And against a documented proof of what i am saying, we have your word, so much for FUD. Can you try and decode "killa sampla" (google it) and come back and say if it works on your 7600GT.

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

by the symptoms described in first post, it seems you are having driver problems. What i would suggest and somebody has already suggested, try out linux or live version of XBMC. I would suggest Ubuntu if you want a full fledged OS, the learning curve going from XP/windows 7 to ubuntu is very minimal. Select everything automatic during installation and head on to software centre after installation to install VLC or XBMC. The positive side of trying linux first is that linux is free, by installing linux you will get an idea if your hardware is capable. If you find that 720 struggles with linux, you know for sure that the PC is not capable hardware wise. You can then hunt for a graphics card.
p.S: clean your pc of dust, remove and reseat the heat sink after applying a fresh coat of thermal paste. other wise the processor fan will start humming away with HD videos. (it might even after you have done this)

 

[sam9s]

Check the wiki link I listed. VP1 supports full acceleration for mpeg2 (what used to be standard codec for DVD) but limited h264 or VC-1 acceleration (Blu ray, modern downloads). Thats why I suggested 3rd Gen+. If FUD was my intention, I would have asked him to get the latest and greatest, not something thats 3 year old. And against a documented proof of what i am saying, we have your word, so much for FUD. Can you try and decode "killa sampla" (google it) and come back and say if it works on your 7600GT.

even with without Hardware acc on GPU, the machine will easily play 720p content with a P-4.

 

[mowgli80]

even with without Hardware acc on GPU, the machine will easily play 720p content with a P-4.

The whats the point of asking him to buy 7600GT as well

 

[sam9s]

First gen GPU does support VC1 and H264.

The First Generation PureVideo HD
The original PureVideo engine was introduced with the GeForce 6 series. Based on the GeForce FX's video-engine (VPE), PureVideo re-used the MPEG-1/MPEG-2 decoding pipeline, and improved the quality of deinterlacing and overlay-resizing. Compatibility with DirectX 9's VMR9 renderer was also improved. Other VPE features, such as the MPEG-1/MPEG-2 decoding pipeline were left unchanged. Nvidia's press material cited hardware acceleration for VC-1 and H.264 video, but these features were not present at launch.
Starting with the release of the GeForce 6600, PureVideo added hardware acceleration for VC-1 and H.264 video, though the level of acceleration is limited when benchmarked side by side with MPEG-2 video. VPE (and PureVideo) offloads the entire MPEG-2 pipeline (except the initial run length decoding, variable length decoding, and inverse transform),[2] whereas first-generation PureVideo offered limited VC-1 assistance (motion-compensation).

anyway you got a point, we both are assuming. if he is playing 720p VP1 or 720p H.264 ....... but I still believe machine with p-4 will be able to play even H.264 without hardware acc, given the fact he is not doing any multitasking on the OS. 7600GT as I said will take the load off from CPU enough to be able to play H.264 content easily

 

[omishra]

It's an old HCL ezeebee. It has an OEM gigabyte mobo. The max video memory that I can allocate from the bios is 8MB.

My current desktop is purchased/assembled in Nov 2004 . It has Intel D865GBF board (not Intel chip-set but Intel branded MB) with 4GB DDR 330 MHz RAM and Intel P-IV 2.4GHz processor. It plays 720p without hiccups. But it has BIOS support to change Video MEM up to 256MB. I am running Win-XP SP3.

 

[Rupam]

Hello Friends,

I have 2 old desktop PCs. I planned to fix one of them for Home theater use with my projector. The Configuration is Pentium 4 2.8 GHz. Intel CPU, 1 GB of DDR 1 (or 2?) RAM, 40 GB HDD, and onborad Intel graphics.


Please let me know, if there is a way I can use it to play HD videos? I will be trying with some driver updates tonight but not sure.

Please suggest.

Thanks,
Saket

Dear Saket,
Please follow these steps carefully and then try to play HD video. See if there is any improvement. Download the specific file of step 3 from torrent.

https://forum.suprbay.org/showthread.php?tid=14169

Let me know if you face any problem.

 

[mowgli80]

First gen GPU does support VC1 and H264.



anyway you got a point, we both are assuming. if he is playing 720p VP1 or 720p H.264 ....... but I still believe machine with p-4 will be able to play even H.264 without hardware acc, given the fact he is not doing any multitasking on the OS. 7600GT as I said will take the load off from CPU enough to be able to play H.264 content easily

You missed what it says after what you underlined ... Again as I said in my very first post, low quality 720p might be possible but is borderline and very high bitrate with advanced profiles in H264 will definitely fail.

Please let me know, if there is a way I can use it to play HD videos?

Anyways as OP says he wants to play HD videos so I assume he is interested in 1080p videos as well and 720p was just a test that failed.

 

[Saket]

My current desktop is purchased/assembled in Nov 2004 . It has Intel D865GBF board (not Intel chip-set but Intel branded MB) with 4GB DDR 330 MHz RAM and Intel P-IV 2.4GHz processor. It plays 720p without hiccups. But it has BIOS support to change Video MEM up to 256MB. I am running Win-XP SP3.

My system 'dates' back to that era only! Trying to get lucky.

Dear Saket,
Please follow these steps carefully and then try to play HD video. See if there is any improvement. Download the specific file of step 3 from torrent.

https://forum.suprbay.org/showthread.php?tid=14169

Let me know if you face any problem.

Hello Rupam,

Thanks for the effort that you undertook. I had a look at the link but was unable to find 'CoreAVC Professional Edition 1.8.5.0' as a torrent file as stated in step 3.

Did I miss something?

Regards,

Saket

 

[thevortex]

To the OP - is there a reason why you cannot try something in Linux real quick? As in:

- Download the .iso file of a decent consumer oriented distribution (say Linux Mint)

- Burn it onto a CD or DVD

- Insert it into your computer's CD/DVD drive (after ensuring that the system is set to boot from CD/DVD drive before booting from hard disk)

- See if you can play the same file using VLC or any of the other players in a Linux environment.

This is also a zero commitment procedure. You would not need to commit anything to hard disk or install anything. If you do not like it, you can always restart and remove the CD from the drive to enjoy your existing environment!

Worth a try?

 

[Saket]

Worth a try?

Certainly, if all fails!

Would like to give another OS a try before spending money on a gfx card or a new mobo + cpu

Thanks,
Saket

 

[sam9s]

You missed what it says after what you underlined ... Again as I said in my very first post, low quality 720p might be possible but is borderline and very high bitrate with advanced profiles in H264 will definitely fail..

Almost all h263 MKVs are [email protected], which is pretty playable. Advance [email protected] are utmost rare, so its safe to say that old gen machines can play these 720psss. The "killa sampla" you mentioned is the one with high profile @5.1 with a 35mbps bitrate@full 1080p, which makes it an exception, and anyhow would not be played without hardware acc.

 

[Rupam]

Certainly, if all fails!

Would like to give another OS a try before spending money on a gfx card or a new mobo + cpu

Thanks,
Saket

Check your PM.

 

[mowgli80]

Almost all h263 MKVs are [email protected], which is pretty playable. Advance [email protected] are utmost rare, so its safe to say that old gen machines can play these 720psss. The "killa sampla" you mentioned is the one with high profile @5.1 with a 35mbps bitrate@full 1080p, which makes it an exception, and anyhow would not be played without hardware acc.

I had a tough time playing "Sin City" 720p file I had on AMD Phenom dual core so had to give some GPU love to the system to make it work . Anyways, if I were to buy a GPU now, Gen 3+ would be my choice as it allows full acc for anything h264 can throw at it and also allows me to play 1080p as well and will be future proof . I would also checkout those (ASUS?) new media players on ebay as I am pretty sure 10 year old P4 will have that huge (white?) tower cabinet which looks ugly in the living room ... to each his own

 

[Audiodoc]

My old PC 2004 which had an intel 925XBC motherboard, pentium 4 3gHz LGA775 with GeForce 5200 graphics used to play 1080p content till the motherboard got kaput. Replaced with an ASRock motherboard with on board intel graphics plays blurays too.

My current vaio W115xG netbook with a 1.6 ghz atom, windows XP, media player classic and latest drivers plays most 720p bluray rips.

Trying a new windows xp install with the latest drivers for your hardware and klite mega codec pack after a through cleaning of the innards of the computer will definitely help. After doing the same you can tweak the settings of media player classic or KMPlayer to perform at optimal conditions for your hard may even make it play 1080p content.

You just google playing 1080p on net books and you will get a number of techniques of tweaking your media players or using codecs which are better performing with underpowered hardware.

Using Linux is also a good way to proceed before buying old world graphics cards. However if you can get a cheap graphics card supporting hardware acceleration you make definitely try it.

 

[sam9s]

I had a tough time playing "Sin City" 720p file I had on AMD Phenom dual core so had to give some GPU love to the system to make it work . Anyways, if I were to buy a GPU now, Gen 3+ would be my choice as it allows full acc for anything h264 can throw at it and also allows me to play 1080p as well and will be future proof . I would also checkout those (ASUS?) new media players on ebay as I am pretty sure 10 year old P4 will have that huge (white?) tower cabinet which looks ugly in the living room ... to each his own

well given the price of low end GPUs, I kinda would agree with you as you can easily get a Geforce GT210 4th Gen GPU for as low as 1700 bucks which supports full hardware acc, with advance profile and even CUDA Technology as well.

 

[Saket]

Friends, first of all, I would like to thank each & everyone who helped me getting out of this situation!

Thanks to Rupam for the codecs too.

And...some good news. I installed K-lite video codecs and newer drivers for the onboard gfx. I got the video drivers from Intel website. The good news is that now my system is playing 720p videos.:yahoo:

But now there is another problem. When I attach & play a video from my external HDD, suddenly it loses connection with the USB The player stop player the video of course and state the error that the location is not valid. Then without my intervention, the drive will be read automatically and will show all the files.
I am worried that this causing repeatedly may corrupt my HDD's file system. The problem does not happen when the HDD is connected to my laptop again!

Looks like the HDD has developed a liking for my lappy!

Any idea guys?

 

[Rupam]

Hi Saket,
HDD disconnecting from computer is a very common problem. I have the same problem with one of my HDD. There are 2 probable reasons for this problem.
1. The USB connector is faulty or the pin are not touching properly.
2. Sometime USB hosts lack power to drive HDDs (even smaller ones), specially if it is a slave USB host. In that case, if your hard disk has external power , use it or you may change plugging it in another USB.

Crashing the pin of HDD on the platter is very bad for your data.

 

[Audiodoc]

Looks like the external hard drive is not getting enough power.

Firstly try to attach the drive to a USB port on the motherboard itself. Not the ones in front of the cabinet.

Secondly you may try a cable which attaches to two usb ports using a y type usb cable.

Thirdly you may update the USB bus drivers.

 

[Saket]

Hi Saket,
HDD disconnecting from computer is a very common problem. I have the same problem with one of my HDD. There are 2 probable reasons for this problem.
1. The USB connector is faulty or the pin are not touching properly.
2. Sometime USB hosts lack power to drive HDDs (even smaller ones), specially if it is a slave USB host. In that case, if your hard disk has external power , use it or you may change plugging it in another USB.

Crashing the pin of HDD on the platter is very bad for your data.

Thanks Rupam! I think its the lack of the power on the USB port. I am really worried as last evening that happened 4-5 times within a span of 5 mins. Should I run a chkdsk for cheking any problems with my HDD & file system?

Looks like the external hard drive is not getting enough power.

Firstly try to attach the drive to a USB port on the motherboard itself. Not the ones in front of the cabinet.

Secondly you may try a cable which attaches to two usb ports using a y type usb cable.

Thirdly you may update the USB bus drivers.

Thanks Audiodoc!

I am already using a Y cable which is not helping, of course. However, your first & third suggestions are great. I will try doing that.

Thanks,
Saket