High quality video, nVidia card

My PC is:

AMD Athlon 64 4000+, 2.40 GHz
RAM 1 GB DDR
nVidia Geforce 7300 GT

I connected it to my big TV, Full HD via HDMI->DVI CABLE.

When I download some high quality video from Internet (1080p, 100 Gbyte/min)
my computer is absolutely not able to play them.
What can I do to improve the situation? Would it be better to increase the
RAM or to change the graphics card?

On Sep 21, 1:41*pm, "Oronzo Cana'" <b877...@tyldd.com> wrote:
> My PC is:
>
> AMD Athlon 64 4000+, 2.40 GHz
> RAM 1 GB DDR
> nVidia Geforce 7300 GT
>
> I connected it to my big TV, Full HD via HDMI->DVI CABLE.
>
> When I download some high quality video from Internet (1080p, 100 Gbyte/min)
> my computer is absolutely not able to play them.
> What can I do to improve the situation? Would it be better to increase the
> RAM or to change the graphics card?

High quality video can be forced to the HDCP compliancy codes. If you
have installed a recent video card, the nVidia Control Panel will have
an option to test your video card for this. If your video card does
not pass this check, you can not play most HD 1080p grade video. You
should consider replacing the video card to a HDCP compatible one.

Oronzo Cana' wrote:
> My PC is:
>
> AMD Athlon 64 4000+, 2.40 GHz
> RAM 1 GB DDR
> nVidia Geforce 7300 GT
>
> I connected it to my big TV, Full HD via HDMI->DVI CABLE.
>
> When I download some high quality video from Internet (1080p, 100 Gbyte/min)
> my computer is absolutely not able to play them.
> What can I do to improve the situation? Would it be better to increase the
> RAM or to change the graphics card?
>
>

I used to have an A64 4000+ and I remember 1080P software decoding to be
pretty sluggish. VLC (which at the time only used a software H264 and
MPEG2 decoder) dropped frames like crazy with 1080P, but played 720P
just fine. Videos from NASA and various film trailers were especially
brutal.

But there's some hope; your 7300GT supports partial HD video
acceleration (I think) through a Microsoft framework called DXVA that's
built into your drivers. It can take some load off the CPU when
decoding the stream.

Use this player:

Media Player Home Cinema (free, open source):
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/downlo...lassic-hc.html

And read up on DXVA support here:
http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/DXVASupport.html

Other programs like WMP10/11 support it too; but you'll need to download
a MS patch if you haven't updated in a while on XP.

If you do upgrade, you'll want to get a better CPU if possible. But
unfortunately you're stuck with S939 CPU's if you stay with your current
mobo/RAM; and those are very hard to find (I have one of the last
Opteron 180's ever made ). You could still go to a Athlon X2 4400 or
4800 fairly cheap and upgrade to at least 2GB at the same time.

Keep in mind a complete system overhaul (Phenom 2/Athlon II/AM3/4GB
DDR2) would only run about 230-300 USD if you get a bundle deal on
Newegg or such (providing your current power supply and video card are
sufficient).

Using FFDshow to decode the video is also a good idea. FFDshow is very fast and can devoce 720p videos w/o a glitch on something like VIA KT266A chipset and AXP 1800Mhz CPU + AGP FX5600XT gfx card.

Dunno why much more powerfull machines having a problems there, but that is probably due to some incompatibility. VLC is a slow player, true. De-blocking that only blur the video should be also turned off