Standard Def Steve wrote:

Interestingly enough, my GeForce 6800GT doesn't seem to do any WMV-HD acceleration at all. With that card, 1080p WMV drops a ton of frames.

Purevideo on NV4x apparently had some issues. I think WMV accel works in some driver builds (7x.xx series?) but there are problems and later drivers disabled some/all of it. H.264 acceleration even worked to some degree at some point.

I came across comments (in the comments section) on that while reading an Anandtech article about ATI R600's UVD confusion.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/2243/2

Anyone know the name (or eBay link) for these mini PCI-E to traditional PCI-E adapters for Desktop? I'm considering this for my Opteron 185 system. My x16 PCI slot is unused in this board.

This is like the one I got becasue i wanted a half height bracket to be coupled with the pci 2 pci-e adapter so it would fit in a standard slot. There are alot of other adapters like this and probably cheaper. 😒 https://www.ebay.com/itm/full-half-size-brack … 872.m2749.l2649

ps: I had to de solder and pull off the middle standoffs on my adapter card that I got since my broad com wouldn't lay down with those in the way. there are probably other cards that wouldn't require that.

mini pcie card to pcie express is what you want to search for 🤣

anyways it was an hilarious project that actually worked. but the problem was without sse2 support on the PIII it limited the version of potplayer i could use which even though I found a version that ran on piii and worked with the card, the pot player version it didn't seem like it was youtube compatible like the latest XP versions so i couldn't use youtube 2 extension in palemoon 27. while I could send the video stream to the older version of pot player it didn't play like it does on my T43 that has a pentium M with sse2 and latest version of pot player that will run on xp works like that. so yea maybe ill revisit this issue when i get time and see if i can figure it out how to work on the piii like it does on my pentium m

Ok, thanks. This one is a bit cheaper. https://www.ebay.com/itm/133022142128

I noticed that you are using the BCM970012. The *15 appears to be more advanced. Have you run the BCM970015? https://www.ebay.com/itm/273342682995

And any idea if VLC works with this BCM chips if you have SSE2? What about Windows 10? I've been meaning to upgrade my Opteron 185 system from XP POS2009 to Win10 32-bit and could use some faster video playback for 1080p videos. (Side note: unfortunately the AM2 upgrade card in my Opteron system stopped running reliably recently, so I had to downgrade to the Opteron and, thus, cannot use the 64-bit version of Win10).

The Opteron 185 will play our home videos without skipping from our 1080p HD camera, but I must use the latest VLC version 3.0.8. This version has start-up delays on the videos (a few seconds) which bothers me. Version 2.2.8 didn't have this issue, but has skips on 1080p videos w/Opteron (though not with the AM2 card). I'm hoping this Broadcom card will resolve these issues.

BCM970015 is better, the older version is just what i had, if i was going to be serious id use the newer version.

from all i could gather is VlC at one time experimentally supported it using a shortcut or command line switch --crystal hd or somthing. but issue i had is either it only works on linux or that it is deprecated and didn't work and it just crashed VlC. I had tried this before and instruction support didn't seem to make a differnce when i tried in on a core2duo it still crashed at least on the version of the broadcom pcb revsion or driver version i used i could never get that vlC to work. maybe it works on the pcb revision 15 who knows i never tried that.

now madvr based players work with the card no problem but their level of support varries. for example if you have any experience with windows media player classic home cinema that works, but its buggy pot player works probably the best.

way it works basically is the driver installs a direct show filter called braodcom crystal hd. then in players like potplayer or mpchc you can add registered external directshow filters then select that filter to play all of the files that it supports. so when you try to play a file in that video player that the filter supports it will use the card to decode. there is also a utility the the driver installs and puts in its program files folder that you can launch and it will sit in the notification tray next to clock and when the card is working it will light up to let you know the card is decoding somthing.

Alright, thanks for the information. I'll give it a go. Any issue with the latest versions of media player classic or potplayer for XP? Or is there a particular version you found which works best?

I installed the Crystal HD hardware and went to install the drivers, but I get an error:

1The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed.  This can occur if you are running Windows in safe mode, or if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed. Contact your support personnel for assistance.

I've already reinstalled all versions of the MSI installer. I've had issues installing other software which uses MSI installer. I'm not sure what the issue is, but I've run into this before on my XP POS2009 system. I started a new thread asking for help here: Solved - HELP! Cannot get MsiInstaller to install programs in XP SP3 + POS2009

Was also wondering if a fresh install of XP and the Unofficial SP4 + post-USP4 updates would be a solution to this. Experience with Windows XP Unofficial Service Pack 4 + Post USP4 Updates

Or maybe there is another way to install these Cyrstal HD drivers without using MSI?

Sometimes you can extract the files using an archive utility such as 7-zip. If you can get into one of the cabinet files (or whatever that package uses), you're probably all set. Alternatively, maybe you can run the installer on a different PC with a functioning MSI? I'm sure you know this, but the installer usually extracts its payload into one of the temp folders, so you can get access to the driver files that way.

your windows installer is broken also what version of msi.dll do you have i installed it on
it worked for me on clean xp pro with only sp3 slipstreamed and it worked with xp slipstreamed with sp3 +usehidden Qfe pask+seraph pos addon +pos reg and fully updated circa march 2019

regsvr32 MSI.DLL
regsvr32 MSIHND.DLL
regsvr32 MSISIP.DLL

SirNickity: Looks like the driver files aren't in the msiinstaller file, but in another folder. But there's a lot of other files in other folders that I don't quite understand. Would prefer to get the MSI Installer working. I started another thread on this, Solved - HELP! Cannot get MsiInstaller to install programs in XP SP3 + POS2009

Warlord: I noticed that a pre-requisite for the CrystalHD -v3.6.9-x86 is Windows Installer 4.5, KB942288, https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/9422 … -5-is-available

The CrystalHD drivers come with this prerequiste installer. Another pre-requisite is Microsoft Visual C++ 2008, which the driver package also comes with, but I cannot install the C++ redistributable. Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package has encountered a problem during setup. Setup did not complete correctly. I cannot make sense of the error signature, but there were a few more intelligable words: "Windows Installer service could not be accessed. Contact your support personnel to verify that the Windows Installer service is properly registered.

The Windows Installer 4.5 does install though.

The version of msi.dll, which resides in C:\Windows\System32 is 4.5.6003.20488

I will try this

1regsvr32 MSI.DLL
2regsvr32 MSIHND.DLL
3regsvr32 MSISIP.DLL

later this evening and report back. Perhaps the system using a temporary profile is causing Windows Installer to de-register? That's another problem I started a thread about that I need to fix. Happened after using a restore point after some botched POS2009 updates. Solved - HELP! Cannot get MsiInstaller to install programs in XP SP3 + POS2009

maybe that installer was bundled with the driver, because I installed it with just a vanilla SP3.

appiah4 wrote:

Are there any AGP cards with decent H264 decoding? Off the top of my mind the ATI HD3000/HD400 AGP series cards could do this, I suppose? And IIRC you need HD4000 for YouTube acceleration regardless.

I had a good experience with an AGP HD2600XT doing this. However, as you mentioned it won't work on youtube. I needed to download videos locally and play them in MPC-BE. You have to dig into the settings but if it's correctly configured that program will support hardware decoding on WinXP. VLC will not.

Limitations: The HD2600XT will play H.264 1080p30, but it will not play 720p60. 60fps videos stutter and are usually unwatchable. 720p/1080p 30fps works great though.
I don't know what bitrate limitations might apply. I never ran into an issue with anything from youtube.
Other people have used HD2400 cards, I assume it probably has the same abilities and limitations where H.264 is concerned.

People worry a lot about driver quality with these cards, but it worked well enough for me. I'm hesitating to say it was perfect but I don't remember any significant problems. I think the bad reputation comes from older drivers and maybe from the difficulty in finding the correct ones for AGP.
The driver I used was Catalyst 10.4 downloaded from Visiontek in reference to the AGP model, so I don't know if it's a special version of the driver or the generic one. GPU-Z reported the driver version as 8.723.0.0.

As for PCI, I had success with hardware decoding with an 8400GS PCI card, but I didn't use it long term and I don't remember if my test file was 1080p or 720p. I think I probably would have tested at 1080p. Again, suitable software is needed to use the hardware acceleration. My test was under linux in some player whose name I don't remember, but I'm guessing MPC-BE would work in Windows.

My experience with this was on Pentium 4 machines, but the CPU usage was so tiny that a P3 should have no problem. The question in my mind would be if you can get a candidate card running on a P3 with compatible drivers.

Re-registering those 3 DLL's solved the MsiInstaller problem (thank you!), but there is another problem now - the installer doesn't find the decoder (image of hardware and the error message shown)

Did the installer autodetect your Broadcoam decoder card? Its not detecting mine.

ya it did auto detect mine. 😵

Have you tried using yours in a regular PCI Express x16 slot? Perhaps the slot I am using is only for video cards? I"m using an AsRock 939Dual-SATA2. The manual mentions the PCIE specificaiton is 1.0a.

Should something show up in Device Manager when this hardware is plugged in, but before drivers are installed?

in a regular PCI-e slot no but I did install it in a thinkpad t43 with a mini pci-e to Expresscard 54 adapter. 🤣 that worked too. Id be willing to bet that if you see the card in the device manager than windows detects it just fine. And that the issue is the driver version that you are trying to use and that it doesn't have the hardware ID for your adapter hardware revision.

Id try a differn't version of the driver, newer version and if that didn't work id try to manually add the hardware ID of your card to the installation package.

Probably possible but since I never did that I can't say how to.

these drivers specifically list your card. 3.6.9.64
https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/GRAPHICS-BO … river-369.shtml

Warlord wrote:

Id be willing to bet that if you see the card in the device manager than windows detects it just fine.

I don't recall saying I saw the Broadcom in the Device Manager. I asked if you can see it.

feipoa wrote:

Should something show up in Device Manager when this hardware is plugged in, but before drivers are installed?

I do not see Broadcom in he device manager. Should I prior to driver installation? I don't see anything with a yellow exclamation.

That driver package is the exact same driver package I already tried. Perhaps a BIOS issue?

ya there should be an unknown device in the device manager. I just assumed there would be. If you don't see an unknown device than your motherboard isn't seeing the card.

You could try putting it in another computer with pci-e just to see if it shows up in device manager, or try putting it in a laptop with a empty mini pci-e slot like for like a wifi card just to make sure the card isn't bad.

If the card isn't bad than your motherboard isn't seeing it but it shouldn't be a issue.

I suppose could move the gigabit ethernet + USB 3.0 card to the x16 slot and try the Broadcom in the x4 slot. I'm using the latest BIOS already.

i would just try to verify you don't have a defective part somhow.