WMV-HD playback with WMP11

[tcsenter]

I was testing a build for a friend (using older hardware) and decided to see how the system played 720p WMV-HD clips.

The graphics card is a Radeon 9200 AGP with 64MB RAM. Now before you snuff such a low-end GPU, playback with PowerDVD 6.0 (DXVA and hardware acceleration enabled) is absolutely perfect and CPU utilization is steady around 80% (Athlon XP).

With WMP11 and DXVA enabled, the same clips play like a slideshow. I enabled high-quality mode in performance options, same result.

It really looks like WMP11 is not using DXVA hardware decode at all but instead using software decode because CPU utilization is 100%.

 

[undeclared]

PowerDVD is known for giving the crappiest playback but always working.
WinDVD is the oposite, it takes up more CPU, but the quality is always nicer.
WMV is probably somewhere between the two.

As in: use PowerDVD till you get an upgrade.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

RV280 doesn't provide hardware acceleration of WMV-HD content. I've read that with some versions of the ATI drivers, you have to uncheck the WMV acceleration box to resolve playback problems with WMP. If the PC isn't connected to the internet, it can cause issues due to DRM with WMP too. But whatever the problem, it shouldn't be software v. hardware acceleration, just the player in use. I use MPClassic with FFDShow for most content.

 

[tcsenter]

As in: use PowerDVD till you get an upgrade.

An upgrade for what...the DVD decoder? The 720p clips I downloaded look beautiful with PowerDVD. I don't have WinDVD to compare side-by-side, but it is definitely better than DVD quality.

Something just seems wrong. WMP11 is taking up more CPU (100% v. 80%) and still cannot play the clips back without dropping huge percentage of frames. I tried unchecking 'drop frames to keep synch with audio' but that only makes it worse (the slideshow gets slower).

I could see WMP11 requiring more CPU time to do the same job as another decoder because it isn't as efficient, but more than 20% greater? Its not even close to PowerDVD, which makes me think that WMP11 is not utilizing the VPU's hardware decoding features at all.