• AnyStream is having some DRM issues currently, Netflix is not available in HD for the time being.
    Situations like this will always happen with AnyStream: streaming providers are continuously improving their countermeasures while we try to catch up, it's an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. Please be patient and don't flood our support or forum with requests, we are working on it 24/7 to get it resolved. Thank you.

Will AnyDVD HD help enough?

cjbrown

New Member
Thread Starter
Joined
Nov 3, 2007
Messages
2
Likes
0
About to put together my first home build htpc. Got a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD player and a geforce 8600 gt xxx video card. On the box the vid card says it supports hdcp but i've been reading on the web today that it really doesn't. My question:

If I get Anydvd-HD to bypass my video card non-hdcp status, will it still use Nvidias PureVideo2 to decord the high-def movies I play? In otherwords, will it take the load off of my cpu or just allow the films to be played without the video card doing the majority of the decoding.

(Sorry if the question is basic but the major reason for the video card in an htpc is to actually decode the video so you don't need a huge honkin' cpu).

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
Yes, AnyDVD HD should remove the need for that HDCP nonsense.

As for the PureVideo2, that should still work, if you can even get it to work for you. I had lots of problems trying to get video card acceleration to work (both ATi and Nvidia) and eventually gave up and got an Athlon 64 X2 4400+. Coupled with an old ATi X1300 (which does probably zero acceleration) PowerDVD plays all my HD-DVDs beautifully. I got one of the 65nm ones with low power consumption and it runs very cool with its stock heatsink. I only got an Athlon because the system already had a socket AM2 motherboard, and it was an easy replacement. If you are building a new system, just about any Core2 Duo will work great as well, and they run very cool too. That's my two cents, perhaps others have had better luck with GPU acceleration of HD content...
 
Thanks

Yes, AnyDVD HD should remove the need for that HDCP nonsense.

As for the PureVideo2, that should still work, if you can even get it to work for you. I had lots of problems trying to get video card acceleration to work (both ATi and Nvidia) and eventually gave up and got an Athlon 64 X2 4400+. Coupled with an old ATi X1300 (which does probably zero acceleration) PowerDVD plays all my HD-DVDs beautifully. I got one of the 65nm ones with low power consumption and it runs very cool with its stock heatsink. I only got an Athlon because the system already had a socket AM2 motherboard, and it was an easy replacement. If you are building a new system, just about any Core2 Duo will work great as well, and they run very cool too. That's my two cents, perhaps others have had better luck with GPU acceleration of HD content...

Appreciate the quick response.
The card is for my htpc build which, funny you should mention it, uses an Athlon 64 X2 BE-2400, which I think is the same as yours only even lower on power consumption. Still gonna try to go with the PureVideo2 route because I'm shooting for as little cpu load as possible.

Thanks again for getting back to me so soon.
 
You may have better luck than me since you have a stronger video card. I was trying to get away with a 1.6 GHz Sempron and either a Radeon 2400 Pro or a GeForce 8500 GT. The Radeon handled VC-1 beautifully! But that was about all it could do well. It didn't handle 1080i HDTV very well (MPEG2) and it did absolutely nothing with my AVC HD DVD "Discovery Atlas Australia." The GeForce did my HDTV stuff ok, but it could not accelerate VC-1 or AVC video enough for the Sempron to handle the rest. Perhaps it would have worked better with Vista instead of XP, but I didn't want to mess with that. Just before I gave up, Nvidia did release their PureVideo drivers for XP, but that didn't help much, and it actually made the 8500 GT stop doing my HDTV correctly. Not to mention, it also caused some really excessive overscanning.

The other problem with relying on GPU acceleration is that you will be tying yourself down to the commercial players, as the open source decoding software is unlikely to support GPU acceleration. I hear that such open source players may not be too far off, so when they do, all you'll need for HD-DVD/Blu Ray playback is a nice CPU coupled with AnyDVD HD to handle the decryption!

For now though, what you have should be fine. You could always try it first without AnyDVD HD, and then download and install the trial version if your playback software complains about HDCP. That's the beauty about AnyDVD HD, fully functional for 21 days to try it out first.
 
Will ANYDVD help enough

QUOTE=cjbrown;62973]If I get Anydvd-HD to bypass my video card non-hdcp status, will it still use Nvidias PureVideo2 to decord the high-def movies I play? In otherwords, will it take the load off of my cpu or just allow the films to be played without the video card doing the majority of the decoding.

([/QUOTE]

Just to let you know I also recently purchased an 8600 GT XXX OC video card and it works great on all my HD DVD`s and Blu Ray. AnyDVDHD takes care of the HDCP issue perfectly. I found that in order for the pure video to work, you must download a program from Nvidia called Pure Video Decoder 1.02-223 . You get a 30 day trial to test the program before purchasing. After the 30 days you need to go to nvidia`s website and buy the program. They offer various packages from $19.99 to 49.00. You only need the $19.99 package with video support only to get the pure video function to work on you card. The more expensive versions come with audio drivers for dolby digital, DTS etc, which you already have on you system if your using PowerDVD already. All you need to do is install the card, update to the most recent Nvidia drivers, download and install the pure video decoder 1.02-223 from Nvidias website, reboot and your done. Pure Video lowered my CPU from 80-90% to 40-50% while watching the disc. Even lower when playing a backed up HD movies from your hard drive as low as 15-25% CPU usage. Almost bought an 8800 GTX but AnyDVD forum members told me that the 8600 GT and the 8600 GTX are designed just for HD DVD and Blu Ray playback, and the 8800 card is designed more for the gamer. Hope this info helps you in some way and good luck with your HTPC. Nova935
 
Last edited:
Back
Top