GPU accelerated .mkv playback?

[AKarpo]

Hello. Recently I purchased a Nvidia 8800GTS and was wondering what software might I need to utilize my GPU to acclerate .mkv playback on a Windows (Vista) machine? I've been playing around with codecs (CoreAVC and FF) however I'd like to put this powerful GPU to use. Right now I have Cyberlink PowerDVD 7.3, (I know that it has H.264 accleration support) and am using MPC with DX9 renderless enabled, however I'm not entirely sure if I'm getting hardware acceleration. I figure I might as well ask the experts.

[foxyshadis]

You have to be using the Cyberlink decoder in order to get any GPU assist, at least until the fabled GPU-enabled Coreavc shows up. The best way to do this in MPC is to add it to the External Filters list, and make sure that it's set to Prefer (or some ludicriously high merit) and that the other AVC decoders aren't.

Nero decoder will also do GPU-assist decoding, in case you have that kicking around and want to compare.

[AKarpo]

so I did what you said and I noticed that playback, according to MPC, is marginally better with software as opposed to the Cyberlink codecs...10ms vs. 0ms delay & 1 frame dropped every 30 seconds-ish vs. 0 frames dropped. Interesting I guess.