I have been using my computer to record TV shows, and watch them later (well, you all know what a VCR can do). But under Windows XP the Media Player cannot keep up with the MPEG decoding. The CPU is pegged at 100% and video/audio sync suffers.
I am running this on a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 which has 512 MB of RAM, so it cannot be a hardware performance issue. With Windows 2000 there were no problems. Windows 2000 is decoding fine even on a 800 MHz Pentium III laptop and 1280×1024 full-screen display mode.
I’ve tried searching the Microsoft Knowledge Base but I have found no relevant articles so far. Maybe I need to evaluate alternate players, although I would rather not — Media Player comes with Windows so it is conveniently always there.
Software I’m currently considering:
- SnapStream Personal Video Station
- Showshifter Home Entertainment Manager
- Sonic (Ravisent) CineMaster DVD Decoder
I still haven’t decided whether I should play movies and other video media on a digital or analog monitor. I need to arrange more (physical) space for connecting both…