video pixelation/noise HELP!

[dennysnight]

i am having a hard time trying to figure out what is causing the noise/pixelation problem while watching some types of videos...

the pic is of my desktop running vista's dreamscapes animated backgrounds. the file is their sample from M$. i get really bad noise as the video is moving. the format of the video is mpg.

i am also having the same problem while watching tv off of my tv tuner.

the things i have tried so far....
1. clean format
2. video drivers update
3. running vista codec pack

all videos and tv worked perfect with xp pro and MCE.

thanks

[dennysnight]

forgot to add that the pixels move with the video, they are not set in one place.

[redwudz]

If the same computer worked with XP, then you likely still have a driver problem, even with some newer drivers. What are you using to play the videos with? I have been using GOM player with my Vista computer and it works very well. It plays most videos without needing extra codecs. Or try VLC, as it has most all codecs built in. That would rule out most codec problems.

And welcome to our forums.

[dennysnight]

well the background is part of vista DreamScenes.... i am using media center to watch tv. i also use WMP11 to playback video files and music.

i have tried all video drivers released for vista since jan. including the microsoft default drivers. Ati just came out with new drivers yesterday and still nothing.

[Richard_G]

Upgrade to Windows XP????

[dennysnight]

that would be a downgrade

[Richard_G]

From the number of posts from people who've been suckered into spending money on the latest M$ beta to be released only to find that most of their hardware and software no longer works, I'd say Vista is the downgrade.

Why do people do it? Spend money on an untried, first generation operating system to replace one that was working perfectly?

[JohnnyMalaria]

A few things to try:

1. Ignore the unhelpful comments about Vista (you have what you have)
2. Try changing video modes - i.e., different resolution and color depth - to see if the problem changes
3. If Aero is enabled, disable it. If it is already disabled, enable it.

Vista has a new way of display things and some older software gets very confused. e.g., some screen recording software just doesn't behave at all correctly when Aero is running.

The appearance of the pixels in your example suggest that some piece of software is writing to the display in a way that either isn't supported with Vista or that your display's drivers aren't behaving properly.

4. Get rid of the codec packs (for now, at least)

Also, please can you confirm which software you have - you mention Vista DreamScapes and DreamScenes? And where you got them?

[pole307]

Had exactly the same issue as you, and I've just sorted it out this evening.
Will go through step by step as to what I did, some steps may not be required, but I'm just showing exactly what I did....
Disabled UAC
Booted up in unsigned driver allowed mode (press F8 to get to the boot menu before the vista startup begins) - as the program we're installing has to install a low level driver to talk directly to the graphics card
Downloaded atitool 0.27 and installed it
rebooted again in unsigned driver mode
ran atitool and played with the gpu clock and memory speed to get it to a point where the artefacts went. For me, I had to reduce the memory speed.
Now everything's perfect, I've got vista on dual boot and that's been working fine, just this problem in vista, which shows it's not a hardware fault, just a driver issue.
Matt

[pole307]

And meant to say, dreamscenes came out on vista ultimate a while back. Very pretty, although not actually found any use for it yet! --
edit - should have said, the atitool program allows you to change the speed ati graphics card works at, both the gpu and the memory speed. Basically it's looking like there's a timing violation caused by the drivers which can be corrected by slowing down the cards. Okay it's not a great fix, you may notice a slow down in games (if you play them, I don't, so don't care too much), but least you'll get a clean display for videos, tv and general windows stuff. Hopefully this'll keep me going till ati release some working drivers.
Matt