DirecTV2PC doesn't play on my freshly upgraded laptop.. Advisor says..

[JerseyMatt]

.. I don't have hardware graphics acceleration, but I definitely do (that's the only red dot on the advisor program) Why isn't it recognizing it? The D2PC program loads fine (it doesn't complain), it allows me to select a DVR and a program, the progress bar at the bottom starts going when I hit play, but there is no video..

Specs:
Toshiba Satellite
AMD Turion X2 Ultra (Dual Core) @ 2.1GHz
8GB RAM
ATI Radeon 3100 integrated video
256MB Video RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit)

I have the latest driver from ATI installed (just did a fresh install of Windows after I upgraded the processor and RAM), and my benchmark programs (and even Firefox) recognize hardware acceleration, but why won't D2PC?!

 

[wildbill129]

I have the same issue on my desktop. It won't allow the "protected" content. I also loaded the latest driver. My video card is just to old. It works fine on my laptop. Have you considered buying a good video card?

 

[JerseyMatt]

Have you considered buying a good video card?

It's a laptop.. Can't be upgraded. But this is hardly a mediocre card either. It's not the best you can get in a laptop, but it's hardly the worst. The laptop isn't even a year old. It passes the protection test fine. Like I said, the card HAS hardware acceleration, the advisor program just isn't recognizing it for some reason.

 

[JerseyMatt]

Nobody else on this one, huh?

 

[charper1]

I agree I think its the video card. The Radeon 3100 Series likely doesn't have enough horsepower. My laptop's Radeon HD 4200 has no issues.

So even though this video card is integrated, why can't you upgrade?

 

[bacchus101]

The advisor said it wouldn't play on my laptop (fails on graphics card, cpu) but I installed it anyway and it plays fine on an HP with a dual core 1.5MHZ intel processor, an intel 965 integrated video card and 4 GB of RAM.

 

[JerseyMatt]

...Because its a laptop?

There aren't many laptops that have the video card as a 'daughterboard' that can be upgraded. My old Dell did, but this one doesn't. There's absolutely no way to upgrade on a laptop with integrated graphics (well, technically I could lose my wifi card and put a PCI-e x1 graphics card in, then Frankenstein the power/video connection, but that's not the direction I want to go). The only thing that was upgradeable was the processor and memory, and I already did that. I got the laptop free, and maxing out the the processor and memory made it 1000x better for under $200.. I can't buy a better laptop for that money...

I honestly don't think the video card is the problem anyway, because the advisor program knows which card it is and gives it the ok..


CPU : AMD Turion(tm) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-80 Yes
__dwItemID=1001__ : szLibCPUName = AMD Turion(tm) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-80
__dwItemID=1002__ : dwLibClockRate = 2092
__dwItemID=1003__ : dwLibFamily = 15, dwLibModel=3, dwLibStepping=1
__dwItemID=1004__ : dwLibNumPhysicalProc = 2, dwLibNumCorePerPackage=1, dwLibNumLogicalPerCore=1
__dwItemID=1005__ : dwLibCorePerPackage = 2, dwLibTotalLogicals=2
__dwItemID=1006__ : szWMIName=AMD Turion(tm) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-80
__dwItemID=1007__ : szWMIManufacturer=AuthenticAMD
__dwItemID=1008__ : dwWMIMaxClockSpeed=2100
__dwItemID=1009__ : bBatteryExist=1
__dwItemID=1010__ : szGuess=Athlon 64 FX

GPU (Hardware acceleration) : No hardware decoder detected No More Info <- This is the issue right here.. The 3100 DOES have hardware decoding, but this doesn't recognize it..

System Memory : 4096 MB Yes <- FWIW, it's not recognizing the correct amount of RAM either.. I have 8GB, not 4.

Operating System : Windows 7 Yes

Graphics Card : ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics Yes
__dwItemID=1301__ : Adapter Compatibility: ATI Technologies Inc.
__dwItemID=1302__ : VideoProcessor: ATI display adapter (0x9613)

Screen Capture Protection : Yes Yes
__dwItemID=1304__ : ATI PCOM=Yes
__dwItemID=1304__ : ATI SORT=Yes
__dwItemID=1305__ : GPUDetectPass Yes

Graphics card video memory : 256 MB

Graphics Card Driver : 8.632.1.2000 Yes
__dwItemID=1501__ : 2D Driver=8.632.1.2000
__dwItemID=1502__ : COPP=Yes
__dwItemID=1504__ : DEVICE=N/A

Video Connection Type : Internal connection Yes

Network Adapter : ETHERNET: Realtek RTL8102E/RTL8103E Family PCI-E Fast Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.20) Yes

Network Adapter : IEEE80211: Realtek RTL8187SE Wireless LAN PCIE Network Adapter Upgrade Recommended More Info

Program version : 1.0.0.2107

System language : 0409 ENU English English
Time : Sun Jan 16 16:15:48 2011
Computer : Notebook

 

[bacchus101]

GPU (Hardware acceleration) : No hardware decoder detected No More Info <- This is the issue right here.. The 3100 DOES have hardware decoding, but this doesn't recognize it..

The advisor reports this issue for my laptop, but I still get playback.

System Memory : 4096 MB Yes <- FWIW, it's not recognizing the correct amount of RAM either.. I have 8GB, not 4.

I have the same issue here as well. It only reports half my RAM.

Network Adapter : IEEE80211: Realtek RTL8187SE Wireless LAN PCIE Network Adapter Upgrade Recommended

I get this flag as well.

Basically, I get all the same messages (except my cpu fails) yet I can still use the product.

 

[JerseyMatt]

Here's some grabs from DXDiag and AIDA64..

DX Video report

  DirectX Video           



 
[ Primary Display Driver ]        

[B]DirectDraw Device Properties:[/B]    


DirectDraw Driver Name   display    


DirectDraw Driver Description   Primary Display Driver    


Hardware Driver   atiumdag.dll (8.14.10.0678 - ATI Catalyst 9.7)    


Hardware Description   ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics        

[B]Direct3D Device Properties:[/B]    


Rendering Bit Depths   16, 32    


Z-Buffer Bit Depths   16, 24, 32    


Multisample Anti-Aliasing Modes   MSAA 2x, MSAA 4x    


Min Texture Size   1 x 1    


Max Texture Size   4096 x 4096    


Unified Shader Version   4.0    


DirectX Hardware Support   DirectX v10.0        

[B]Direct3D Device Features:[/B]    


Additive Texture Blending   Supported    


AGP Texturing   Supported    


Anisotropic Filtering   Supported    


Automatic Mipmap Generation   Supported    


Bilinear Filtering   Supported    


Compute Shader   Not Supported    


Cubic Environment Mapping   Supported    


Cubic Filtering   Not Supported    


Decal-Alpha Texture Blending   Supported    


Decal Texture Blending   Supported    


Directional Lights   Supported    


DirectX Texture Compression   Supported    


DirectX Volumetric Texture Compression   Not Supported    


Dithering   Supported    


Dot3 Texture Blending   Supported    


Double-Precision Floating-Point   Not Supported    


Driver Concurrent Creates   Not Supported    


Driver Command Lists   Not Supported    


Dynamic Textures   Supported    


Edge Anti-Aliasing   Supported    


Environmental Bump Mapping   Supported    


Environmental Bump Mapping + Luminance   Supported    


Factor Alpha Blending   Supported    


Geometric Hidden-Surface Removal   Not Supported    


Geometry Shader   Supported    


Guard Band   Supported    


Hardware Scene Rasterization   Supported    


Hardware Transform & Lighting   Supported    


Legacy Depth Bias   Supported    


Mipmap LOD Bias Adjustments   Supported    


Mipmapped Cube Textures   Supported    


Mipmapped Volume Textures   Supported    


Modulate-Alpha Texture Blending   Supported    


Modulate Texture Blending   Supported    


Non-Square Textures   Supported    


N-Patches   Not Supported    


Perspective Texture Correction   Supported    


Point Lights   Supported    


Point Sampling   Supported    


Projective Textures   Supported    


Quintic Bezier Curves & B-Splines   Not Supported    


Range-Based Fog   Supported    


Rectangular & Triangular Patches   Not Supported    


Rendering In Windowed Mode   Supported    


Scissor Test   Supported    


Slope-Scale Based Depth Bias   Supported    


Specular Flat Shading   Supported    


Specular Gouraud Shading   Supported    


Specular Phong Shading   Not Supported    


Spherical Mapping   Supported    


Spot Lights   Supported    


Stencil Buffers   Supported    


Sub-Pixel Accuracy   Supported    


Subtractive Texture Blending   Supported    


Table Fog   Supported    


Texture Alpha Blending   Supported    


Texture Clamping   Supported    


Texture Mirroring   Supported    


Texture Transparency   Supported    


Texture Wrapping   Supported    


Triangle Culling   Not Supported    


Trilinear Filtering   Supported    


Two-Sided Stencil Test   Supported    


Vertex Alpha Blending   Supported    


Vertex Fog   Supported    


Vertex Tweening   Supported    


Volume Textures   Supported    


W-Based Fog   Supported    


W-Buffering   Not Supported    


Z-Based Fog   Supported    


Z-Bias   Supported    


Z-Test   Supported        

[B]Supported FourCC Codes:[/B]    


AYUV   Supported    


DXT1   Supported    


DXT2   Supported    


DXT3   Supported    


DXT4   Supported    


DXT5   Supported    


EAPI   Supported    


GET4   Supported    


INST   Supported    


M2IA   Supported    


NV12   Supported    


NV21   Supported    


R2VB   Supported    


RESZ   Supported    


SORT   Supported    


SYV2   Supported    


TES1   Supported    


TESS   Supported    


UYVY   Supported    


YUY2   Supported    


YV12   Supported

 

[JerseyMatt]

The advisor said it wouldn't play on my laptop (fails on graphics card, cpu) but I installed it anyway and it plays fine on an HP with a dual core 1.5MHZ intel processor, an intel 965 integrated video card and 4 GB of RAM.

If it works on a 965, there's no reason it shouldn't work on a 3100. The 965 is even more of a slug than the 3100!

 

[bacchus101]

If it works on a 965, there's no reason it shouldn't work on a 3100. The 965 is even more of a slug than the 3100!

Ya, it is a three year old laptop so if it works on this machine it should work on yours which is spec'd out higher across the board.

This looks like the same issue.

 

[charper1]

I simply don't think specs alone are the issue and the thoughts post at the DirecTV Forum link seem useless. I don't switch into Win& Basic and I can also play via WiFi without issue so not sure what they are talking about.

 

[JerseyMatt]

Unbelievable..All that time thinking it's something to do with the video card, and it's choking on the wireless. Plugged it right into the router and it works beautifully. Guess my next upgrade is an N card and a new router.. Otherwise I'll have to install a Cat5 jack in the bathroom...

 

[bacchus101]

Unbelievable... It's choking on the wireless. Plugged it right into the router and it works beautifully. Guess my next upgrade is an N card and a new router.. Otherwise I'll have to install a Cat5 jack in the bathroom...

Interesting as we have almost identical wireless adapters (I have a Realtek RTL8101.) Well, at least you know what the issue is now. I assume you are connecting via wireless G? (or B?)

Edit: Scratch that. I am connecting with an Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG and it was flagged by the advisor - although I have a strong signal and I'm connecting at 54Mbps.

 

[charper1]

any new driver for that wifi chip? what version is it? can't believe that is the bottleneck

if you really do any CAT runs; go with 6 or 6a and make sure you are gigabit ready

 

[JerseyMatt]

I simply don't think specs alone are the issue and the thoughts post at the DirecTV Forum link seem useless. I don't switch into Win& Basic and I can also play via WiFi without issue so not sure what they are talking about.

Mine switches automatically into Basic when D2PC loads.. Do you have wireless G or N? N would be able to handle it no problem. I guess G is iffy, especially if you have more than one device on Wifi because the bandwidth is split (I have 3 wireless security cameras that run off WiFi as well)..

 

[charper1]

all 3 wireless devices in my house are 802.11n and router is also gigabit 802.11n and all CAT6a - throughput is no issue. My old laptop was the only 802.11g device and it ran DirecTV2PC also (it was XP Pro 32-bit)

 

[bacchus101]

Mine switches automatically into Basic when D2PC loads.. Do you have wireless G or N? N would be able to handle it no problem. I guess G is iffy, especially if you have more than one device on Wifi because the bandwidth is split (I have 3 wireless security cameras that run off WiFi as well)..

I connect via G and in theory there should be plenty of free overhead (being an MPEG-4 HDTV broadcast on average runs between 5-10Mbps.)

 

[JerseyMatt]

all 3 wireless devices in my house are 802.11n and router is also gigabit 802.11n and all CAT6a - throughput is no issue. My old laptop was the only 802.11g device and it ran DirecTV2PC also (it was XP Pro 32-bit)

Yeah thats why you have no problem with it.. I'm running a G router with four G devices, meaning each device only gets 1/4 the bandwidth (12.5Mbps max).. Never really gave it much thought since my internet connection is only 6Mbps so it's not bottlenecking. With D2PC streaming an HD program, the network is running about 10Mbps on average, with a starting/buffering spike over 40Mbps. I'd take a screencap of it but with the program running it wont let me.. That could definitely overwhelm a G connection, especially if it's shared.

Open up Task Manager and go to the Network tab.. Then open a stream and watch the graph and utilization, and you'll see how bandwidth-hungry it is..

 

[bacchus101]

Open up Task Manager and go to the Network tab.. Then open a stream and watch the graph and utilization, and you'll see how bandwidth-hungry it is..

Yes, it is...
Especially on the initial buffer where I saw a spike of 100% network utilization for a couple of seconds before it settled in around 10Mbps.

That said, it does work fine on my laptop although it is the only wireless device in use most of the time (everything else is hardwired.)