no picture when playing videos

[templar67]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here, so i apologize if this has already been addressed a million times.

Basically what's happening is any time I play a video file on my PC I get audio but no picture. It doesn't seem to matter what type of file it is either. I've tried uninstalling all of my video codecs and redoing them, but it didn't help. The weird thing about it though is that when i play a file with Media Center it works perfectly! But it's the only program that works right. Ive tried WMP, VLC, Real Player, Divx Player and quick time, but none work.

Hopefully someone can help me with this and I hope I'm not being too vague about my problem. In case it matters, I'm using Windows XP Media Center Edition.

Thanks for the help.

[Baldrick]

It sounds like an overlay / hardware acceleration problem. Do you have two video outputs like two monitors or tvs? Then try to set the one you are playing video on to the primary monitor under control panel->display->settings.

[templar67]

I only have one monitor plugged in. Although in order for Media Center to pick up TV channels we have the cable from our cable box plugged into the PC. Do you think that could be the problem?

[Baldrick]

Nope, the tvcard-input should not be the problem.

But even if you have just one monitor plugged in it could be configured for two. Check under the display settings.

You can check if it's an overlay problem by disabling hardware acceleration in wmp under tools->options->performance and deselect turn on directx video acceleration(in wmp11). And then restart wmp and play a video.

[templar67]

You're a genius!
I went into performance and i scrolled the video acceleration bar down to none and it works now!
Many thanks for your help on this Baldrick

[jagabo]

I went into performance and i scrolled the video acceleration bar down to none and it works now!

That may work but it's not an optimal solution. You will lose a lot of video functionality. You should re-enable overlay in WMP and use your graphics card's setup applet to get Video overlay working properly.