HTPC Hickups. (I may be in over my head...)

[kilroyperrywinkle]

Okay I'll admit it, I put this thing together, bought the HDTV and I might not have the brains to keep it working.

My system:

AMD X2 4200 2.20
3GB Ram
1TB Harddrive
680w PSU
ATI 3400 Connected to a Vizio 47" 1080p TV with 120mhz

I'm using the 64bit version of Vista and using Shark007 codec pack with the 64bit add-on.

I've been fighting video tearing. It happens on all types of video be it 720p downloaded tv shows, to flash video. It happens in XBMC, Boxcee, VLC, MCE, and even WMP

Its a line horizontally across the screen halfway up.

I've looked everywhere, and everyone has different ways to fix it, or reason why it's there. I've tried turning so many settings on and off in the CCC that I'm not sure what settings are what anymore. I've tried going from 1080 to 720, tried refresh rates, and enabling vsync in XMBC then disabling... Is it an ATI thing? Should I just scrap the 30 dollar card and get a higher end Nvidia? Is it the PSU maybe? Is there a program I down load that can tell me if the card is getting enough power? Any hints or tips would be great... Thanks.

[mr_lore]

Need some more info,

How is the HTPC connected to the tv, vga, dvi, hdmi?

Whats your CPU utilization looking like when playing back video?

Seems like codec issues to me, but I'm not familiar with the one your using.

[mic]

Codec packs can be very dangerous. I'd remove the thing (if you can) and install only the codecs you need one at a time like you're suppose to do.

[kilroyperrywinkle]

The only codecs I got on the thing are Shark007's, and they're supposely the bare min... I'll try uninstalling them. Where's a reliable place to get codecs as I need them? CPU is at like 45 percent as far as I can tell when video is playing

Its hooked up through HDMI.

[mr_lore]

I would start with ffdshow, uninstall your current codec, reboot, download and install ffdshow from here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow-tryout/files/

other than ffdshow I have a matroska container codec and a hardware accelerated h.264 codec from hauppage for thier HD PVR.

[kilroyperrywinkle]

Yep. I'm stupid. Thread over.

I had turned on some of the advanced filters, and picture processing settings within the TV itself. So I was processing a already processed picture... that overly processed picture was causing the tearing. The reason it was on all the videos was because it was coming from the TV and not the computer.

I wasn't paying close enough attention to the screen when I wasn't playing video. You could see the tearing if I moved a window around, or when Vista logged in. I assumed it was the computer because... well its a computer, but really it was me and my fiddling with the TV settings.

Crazy.

[mr_lore]

Good work, never would have guessed the TV itself.