Radeon 8500 mpeg2 hardware decoding doesn't work

[symonjfox]

Hi. It's long time since I bought an Ati Radeon 8500 and it always gone well.

First, I installed it original drivers into both WinXP and ME. The results ... great. It played DVD with a very very good quality (using Power DVD 3.5 and 4).

Then new drivers came out of ATI site, so I installed them (catalyst 2.5 and DirectX8.1). The result is that 3D games played better, but Power DVD doesn't find Hardware Acceleration so it plays DVDs in software mode (very bad quality with macroblocks and awful deinterlacing).

So I uninstalled those drivers and reinstalled newer ones (catalyst 3.0 and Direct X9). The same problem! Better 3D, No hardware acceleration for mpeg.

I can't use my (fantastic) hardware Aceleration for MPEG videos. I tried everything ... I don't know what to do.

Anybody could help me? Thanks

PS. The board is an Expert vision powered by ATI, but in http://www.expertvision.com there's nothing useful.
What shall I do?

[JReiginsei]

There was a patch released from Cyberlink last summer that fixed problems with hardware acceleration with Radeon 8500. You can also use Ati DVD player from ati's website. It uses the PowerDVD engine but has less features than the retail PowerDVD.

[symonjfox]

Thanks for the suggestion, but there're no hope.

I installed the patch, the settings windows displays this thing.

Hardware Information :
Processor: AMD Athlon(TM) XP1700+ running at 1492 MHz
3DNow! Technology : In Use
Enhanced 3DNow! Technology : In Use
3DNow! Professional Technology : In Use
IA MMX Technology : In Use
IA Streaming SIMD Extensions : In Use
IA SSE 2 : Not Detected
Video Accelerator : Not Detected
Multispeakers Audio Device : Creative SB Live! (not in use)
SPDIF Output Device : Creative SB Live! (not in use)

I haven't ATI DVD software because my board is Powered by ATI, not Built by ATI, so there are just the drivers in the installation CD.

[Ramirez]

Hi,I've find this info on the German ATI's mirror site(go figure) it's perfectly match your situation IMO.

Power DVD 4.0 XP - fails while playing DVDs if the Feature „Hardware acceleration” is activated
If the Feature „Hardware acceleration” is deactivated, the DVD can be played normally
To solve the problem,please,install the graphic driver 6/13/10/6094 (http://mirror2.ati.com/drivers/wxp-radeon-6-13-10-6118-efg.exe) or higher.
This is actually an old catalyst 2.0 driver, but hey give it a try.
Please report back whether it helps to solve your HD-Acc Problem.

Regards.