[Fixed in v7.0] JRiver MC31 not playing when 29 is also installed

[Manni]

Just to quickly conclude on my HTPC recommissioning, I've finally succeeded (it took me more than two weeks!).

I suddenly remembered that there was a known bug for the ampere series re Atmos audio drop outs. It was supposed to have been fixed recently with an nVidia driver, which is why it wasn't really on my radar. However, I did a bit of googling and it turns out that many 3xxx series and even 4xxx series users (as well as 2xxx users) are still affected. It's only present when you also use a HDMI 2.1 AVR (which is my case as I have a Denon X8500HA).

So after having tried every possible software solution, I decided to put my trusty old 1080ti back into my HTPC. And bingo, all my Atmos audio dropouts were GONE.

I've benchmarked it, and it's not that much slower for HTPC use or video editing use (I use Pugetbench for Adobe Premiere Pro for benchmarking and I get a score of 630 in standard mode with the 1080ti and a score of 734 with the 3090). It is, however, much slower for gaming, especially 4K gaming, as one would expect but I don't reall mind about this as I have a 3060 on my laptop so I can still do some light gaming on the move. My priority is to recommission my HTPC as a media player, most likely as my main media player given all the recent improvements in CMC, and I'm ready to lose some gaming performance to get perfect home theatre duties.

So Jamie, if you have an HDMI 2.1 AVR, I would recommand that you steer clear of the 3000 series (and even the 4000 series). For light editing, light gaming and HTPC use, I'd definitely recommend a 1080ti as the best performance/cost ratio in that case.

If, however, you don't use an HDMI 2.1 AVR, I am going to put my 3090 for sale, so let me know if you're interested as I think you're in the UK as well. It's a Zotac 3090 Trinity OC 24GB with its original packaging etc, never overclocked and not used much overall, mostly for video editing and very occasional gaming as I never got to get it to work as a proper media player until a few weeks ago (media-wise, I was only using the HTPC to test content and for research, rather than for critical watching). It's working great apart from the Atmos audio dropouts with my HDMI 2.1 AVR. I could find ways to control the video frame drop/repeats, but I couldn't find a way to resolve these Atmos audio dropouts. Apparently it's a bug in the silicon, so unfixable. I reckon nVidia marked it as solved recently to avoid a class action.

I was using the HTPC less and less for video editing since I got my 3060 laptop last summer, as the performance difference isn't as huge as when I was using my Macbook Pro 13 2018. My laptop is my main work rig, I had even moved my 4K drives to external bays so I could rip my disk from the laptop and not the HTPC, so over the last year or so the HTPC was mostly switched off, until I decided to recommission it.

[Jamie]

my last avr was blown out by lightning a year ago. I am looking at a yamaha v6a and it has 2.1 hdmi ports. I am on the east coast of the USA. I don't know how shipping costs would affect what you would charge, but I am concerned about the size of the card and the power usage. What do you use for a psu? I am looking at a 750w. I am not looking at atmos right now. I want to keep my current 7.2 system right now and if I moved to atmos I would have to buy separate up shooting atmos speakers to be on top of my current speakers. the 1080 ti seems appealing. Since I don't have plans to use powerdvd anymore I may consider buying an amd gpu.

Paul what do you think of amd gpus?

Manni have you been able to look at RO JRVR yet? what do you think of jrvr and RO madvr?

[Jamie]

As I expected the Yamaha V6a is only 7.2. My only other option would be a denon x2800h. That is 7.2 too. Atmos is out of my budget range and I have had 7.2 systems for years so I don't know what I am missing

[Manni]

my last avr was blown out by lightning a year ago. I am looking at a yamaha v6a and it has 2.1 hdmi ports. I am on the east coast of the USA. I don't know how shipping costs would affect what you would charge, but I am concerned about the size of the card and the power usage. What do you use for a psu? I am looking at a 750w. I am not looking at atmos right now. I want to keep my current 7.2 system right now and if I moved to atmos I would have to buy separate up shooting atmos speakers to be on top of my current speakers. the 1080 ti seems appealing. Since I don't have plans to use powerdvd anymore I may consider buying an amd gpu.

Paul what do you think of amd gpus?

Manni have you been able to look at RO JRVR yet? what do you think of jrvr and RO madvr?

If you don't use Atmos the HDMI 2.1 doesn't matter as it's only relevant for the Atmos audio dropouts when bitstreaming. There is no audio drop out using LPCM, which you most likely do to benefit from jRiver's excellent audio processing. Bitstreaming is only necessary for Atmos and DTS:X.
750W isn't enough for a 3090, at least not for my AMD 5950X. I went for a 1,000W, which is overspecced but that's how I like to build my rigs, with room to grow. I also forgot that you were thinking about a mini-itx MB. That won't work with the 3090 which is huge and needs at least the Silverstone HTPC case I have to be properly cooled.
The 1080ti is a much better option if it fits your needs. They are not very expensive and with 11GB of memory they are a good option for video editing. You can run the Puget benchmark on your rig to see how much you would benefit (I posted my scores with the 1080ti and 3090ti on my AMD 5950x rig).
JRVR RO is much better than madVR RO, but that's because the madVR build shipped by jRiver is six years old. You need to update it after install with at the very least madVR build 113 (last non time limited version), which is a bit ahead of JRVR especially on features or the latest experimental build (169, time limited until feb 24), which is singificantly ahead of JRVR RO if you have picky eyes. I'd say try JRVR RO and see if anything is missing. It's now good enough for most, and much easier to setup.
For some reason I thought you were in the UK. I wouldn't ship to the U.S., too many issues since Brexit, with parcels blocked in customs and even returned. I won't be able to help further because after the last two weeks recommissioning my HTPC I have two weeks of work to catch up on.
Good luck!

[Pauven]

I agree with the sentiment that a 3090 is overkill, needs more power than your 750w PS can reliably deliver, might be too big for your case, and you definitely wouldn't want to ship from outside the US if you don't have to.

Paul what do you think of amd gpus?

For the most part, I love both AMD and Nvidia, and I think it's hard to go wrong with either. For many years in the early 2000's, AMD was the gold standard in video quality, but time has passed and for the most part, most anything video related is going to look the same on either.

It seems like the reason to chase a high-end Nvidia for HTPC's was for the best possible madVR performance, but I think that's really only needed if you are doing serious upscaling plus tone mapping plus other enhancements. It doesn't sound like that's a main goal for you, so I think you have more leeway in your choice. Plus comments from Manni regarding Nvidia removing MVC support, and JRiver's solution being more efficient, makes it seems like this is less of a concern now.

The main reason to [possibly] avoid AMD was a lack of HDR support in PowerDVD - but I only encountered this on an iGPU, and never got around to testing a discrete AMD GPU, so it might have only affected APU's - I simply do not know. But if you aren't using PowerDVD anyway, then none of this matters.

To me, the most critical factor right now is codec support, primarily decoding. The different streaming providers are gradually transitioning over to newer codecs that reduce bandwidth (a major cost factor for them). These newer codecs, which produce amazingly small file sizes, require tons more horsepower to decode and display. YouTube seems to be on the bleeding edge, already adopting AV1 and talking about the next steps too. And like I mentioned, I was having trouble playing YouTube on my 2080 Super so I had to change some browser settings (foggy on what they were now), and I'm pretty sure I effectively turned off hardware decoding.

Codec support also affects UHD Blu-ray playback, or at least how efficiently it is played back. When hardware support is lacking, it is handled by the CPU and typically more power is used, and more heat is generated. So having hardware codec support is nice for both local media and streaming.

This chart helps illustrate the issue: Nvidia Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix

Click on Decoding, select Consumer (GeForce), and browse the chart. Be sure to scroll the chart to the right (scroll bar is at the bottom, most important columns hidden to the right).

The 1080ti cannot do H.265 (HEVC) 4:4:4, nor AV1, nor VP8. So it is kind of a poor choice for a new build in the modern climate.

A GTX1650, even though it is further down the price ladder, is actually a better choice because it uses the newer 4th gen Turing architecture and has support for VP8 and H.265 (HEVC) 4:4:4. It takes very little power (I think it doesn't even require a PCIe power cable), is very quiet and efficient, and will be much cheaper than a 1080ti. While not the best choice for video editing or gaming, from a HTPC playback perspective it beats the 1080ti hands down.

But it still doesn't have AV1 support. Same issue for my 2080 Super. For that, you need to get to the 5th gen Ampere cards, essentially a RTX 3050 or better. From that point on, it doesn't really matter which card you choose, they all have full hardware decoding support. How far up the ladder should be determined by how much extra horsepower you want for things like gaming and video editing. You may also want to pay attention to HDMI/DisplayPort revision support, as that might lead you to a newer generation chasing the latest features, though I believe both the 30x0 and 40x0 series have identical HDMI/DisplayPort versions.

It's a similar story on the AMD side. I found this chart (and you thought the Nvidia chart was hard to use... ha!): AMD Graphics Specifications

NOTE: There's a 9-square grid button on the top-left above the chart, click it and you can turn columns on/off. That will make this chart much more usable.

It looks like on the AMD side, to get AV1 Decode support, you want to be in the 6xxx series at the minimum. But the newer 7xxx series adds DisplayPort 2.1 support, which may be desirable for you (Nvidia doesn't support this at all). In general, I'd recommend at least a 6700 on the AMD side.

It's worth noting that AMD is slated to finally release their Navi 32 based cards (i.e. 7800 and 7700) in the 3Q, so within the next 2 months. Not only would these be excellent cards, but they may also put downward pricing pressure on all other cards you're considering.

The last thing I'd mention is that the resale market is still fairly healthy. This means that you can buy a card, decide you don't like it, and resale it for nearly the same price, so your risk here is low.

[Pauven]

All things considered, for your use case I might suggest something in the AMD family, 6700 / 7600 or better.

The rationale being that on the Nvidia side, you need to be in the 30x0 series or newer, and Manni says there's a hardware bug affecting bitstreaming, which sounds like a potential deal-breaker for HTPC use. After all, Manni just downgraded to his 1080ti.

I would still recommend waiting for the 7700/7800 to drop, and look at reviews for Adobe Premiere (or whatever video editing software you use), and see how those perform vs. the competition.

[Jamie]

Thanks guys. This gives me a lot to think about. I really appreciate your expertise.

[Manni]

Paul did a great overview. If I feel restrained by the 1080ti, might go back to AMD to get 3D back. However, whatever you buy, be aware that cuda has much better support for Video editing (that means nvidia) so be sure that whatever you buy your software supports hardware acceleration for encoding and decoding with your GPU. It doesn’t matter for HTPC use, but for 4K editing and gaming I wouldn’t consider any GPU with less than 10GB of memory.

[Pauven]

So I've been looking at solutions again, and primarily wanted something lower cost than Deep Freeze.
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I did find a free solution that works well, Horizon DataSys' Reboot Restore Rx. For free I really can't complain, though I'm not quite sure it lives up to my desires for a pinball machine. The freeware version shows a splashscreen on bootup, which looks like branding on my pinball machine (a paid Pro version has a stealth option). You can only activate/deactivate it from an Admin account, which I guess is okay since you're freezing the PC anyway, but it would be nice to have the PC boot into a streamlined standard user account instead of full-rights Admin. And to my perception it seems to boot slower than Deep Freeze. I've downloaded a trial of Deep Freeze so I can do back to back comparisons of both solutions to decide if Deep Freeze is worth the $50. The paid version of Reboot Restore Rx Pro is also about $50, but I think the only benefit for me would be the stealth boot option.

I've completed my head-to-head testing of Faronics Deep Freeze (paid version) vs. Horizon DataSys Reboot Restore Rx (free version). I have not tested the paid version of Reboot Restore Rx Pro, since the feature chart doesn't give me any hope of addressing my main issues with the product in general.

Both Deep Freeze and Reboot Restore Rx do basically the same thing, restoring a static image on every boot, eliminating any changes that occurred to your frozen partition. For my comparison, I focused on the boot experience.

First, booting without either installed, my test PC running Win10 Ghost Spectre Superlite SE, booted to from power-on to desktop in about 28 seconds. The first 22 seconds of this is the BIOS processing, so from the time the little Windows loading circle animation begins at 22 seconds to desktop is only about 6 seconds.

Second, booting with Reboot Restore Rx, there's an ugly 1990's DOS style screen that pops up at 22 seconds with the Reboot Restore Rx branding, and it shows a progress bar as it "restores" from the static image. (Note, the paid Pro edition supposedly hides this animation/branding). This restore process takes about 13 seconds, so I see the Windows loading circle animation begin at 35 seconds. The Windows desktop appears at 45 seconds, so for some reason it takes 10 seconds instead of 6 to finish loading Windows. At 45 seconds, this is over 50% slower than stock Windows total time to boot from power on. But considering the first 22 seconds is all BIOS, loading time increased from 6 seconds to 23 seconds, so nearly 300% slower.

I also spent some time pondering what is going on with this "restore" animation. I think Reboot Restore Rx saves a static image of the main partition somewhere, and on every reboot it copies that static image back into the main boot partition. Considering this partition is tens of Gigabytes, this copy on every boot action seems like a lot of wear and tear on the drive, and may lead to premature drive failure.

Finally I tested Deep Freeze. Unlike Reboot Restore Rx, Deep Freeze does not have any ugly boot screens, it's 100% stealthy. The Windows loading circle animation begins at 22 seconds just like stock Windows, and the desktop appeared in just under 30 seconds. So Windows loaded in about 8 seconds vs. 6 seconds stock, a minimal 33% increase in Windows load time. This matched my recollection of the experience on my mother's PC, if you don't know Deep Freeze is doing anything, you would never even notice, it looks and feels completely stock.

Because Deep Freeze is so fast, I don't think it employs the same process of copying from a static image on every boot. Instead, I think Deep Freeze makes sure all writes while Windows is running go to a discarded area, and the static image is booted from directly each time without any copy process. This seems much wiser, not only being quicker but also minimizing drive wear and tear.

Another benefit of Deep Freeze is that I can use it with non-Admin accounts, and it's settings can be secured with a password. Reboot Restore Rx can only be toggled on/off while logged in as Administrator. My preference is to boot to desktop without the login screen, using a standard Windows account without any Admin privileges.

Even though Deep Freeze is going to cost me nearly $50, to me it is the hands down winner, and definitely worth it for my personal needs. If you just want a free solution and don't mind the drawbacks, Reboot Restore Rx may fit the bill. Both solutions can be uninstalled, and Deep Freeze has a 30-day trial period so you can evaluate if it meets your needs.

Something else I'm starting to experiment with for my pinball machines is lightweight Windows installs.
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I settled on Ghost Spectre Win10 Superlite, which significantly reduces the bloat without breaking much.
...
This has all been in the past week, so I've yet to do any real testing with it. I haven't even loaded up my pinball software, nor tried any HTPC software, so for all I know it doesn't work well. But from what I've seen so far, I really like it, and I fully expect it to work.

While this PC is slated to become the core of one of my Pinball machines, as long as I was testing this functionality, I did some HTPC testing with it. One cool feature of Deep Freeze/Reboot Restore Rx is that it allowed me to install lots of HTPC software, like CMC, MPC-BE, VLC, etc., do some testing, and then simply reboot to uninstall everything. This allows me to do much better "new CMC user experience" validation.

I loaded up CMC and it works perfectly on Ghost Spectre Win10 Superlite. It seems no different than before as best as I can tell, which is nice. I also installed MPC-BE (NOTE, I had to use the SourceForge page for MPC-BE, as the Windows Store is completely missing from Ghost Spectre). MPC-BE also worked perfectly, and I was able to play DVD, Blu-ray and UHD 4K material, including HDR content, without any issues.

While certainly not an exhaustive test, it certainly seems like Ghost Spectre could be the basis for a really nice HTPC build. If you've never used a modified Win10 install, note that it's very similar to installing standard Win10/11, only that you grab the USB image from the Ghost Spectre repository. And it's actually easier to install than stock Windows, as those annoying online user account creation demands have been removed. The only real caveat is that Windows Update and Windows Store are both missing, so you'll have to manually download and install all drivers for your PC.

[Pauven]

I don't know much of anything about JRiver or RO JRVR or even madVR - I just haven't had the downtime to really dig in.

I've got a 2080 Super, and while for the most part it seems fine, I'm not really pushing it. I did have to turn off some advanced features in Chrome/Edge/Firefox that was causing YouTube, of all things, to stutter horribly - don't remember what they were exactly. I think if I was in the market, I'd be sticking with Nvidia, 3080 or better, mainly because some of the advanced scaling/tone mapping available these days can make use of the horsepower.

But like I said, I don't have one nor do I make use of those features anyway, so what do I know.

Personally, what I want is to have Windows HDR flipped On/Off automatically when playing back a 4K UHD HDR title. But I guess that is on me...

While testing MPC-BE on my pinball PC yesterday (see previous post from a few minutes ago), I made an amazing discovery.

First, in a default MPC-BE install, I couldn't get HDR to work at all. It was probably possible if I configured filters and such, but out of the box it was like HDR just didn't exist, even if I turned HDR on in Windows.

While googling solutions, I learned that MPC-BE is much more capable than I realized. When installing MPC-BE, you need to include the MPC Video Renderer option, which is not included by default. Then in MPC-BE's settings, you need to make sure that MPC Video Renderer is selected as the output engine. Finally, there's an option (and it's enabled by default) to have MPC-BE toggle Windows HDR on/off as needed.

And it works!

So now I can have HDR turned off in Windows, and from CMC simply play a 4K UHD HDR disc with MPC-BE, and instantly HDR is turned on (my projector reports this change immediately), and the video plays correctly with HDR. As soon as I close MPC-BE, HDR is turned back off as I return to CMC. Perfection!

I don't think MPC-BE supports disc menus, which is a real problem. But otherwise the 4K UHD material looked as good as I've ever seen on my projector. Probably not as good as what you're achieving with madVR/JRVR, but for less than a minute of setup effort, I have no complaints.

This MPC-BE capability to auto-enable HDR might also be available in other players, so be on the lookout. This also suggests it might be possible for me to toggle this in CMC as well.