[DexterF]

HP N54L Microserver 2x2.2GHz AMD Turion, 2GB RAM ECC, Gigabyte GeForce 210, Technotrend TT-connect S2-4600 on USB2, Win 7/64 home premium installed from scratch.

TV (LG 60PK250 Plasma) attached via HDMI, using TV speakers for testing so using HDMI for audio. Audio set to HDMI/Direct sound. (Tried WASAPI as well, tried analog, all the same, disabled all fancy decoders)
No extra syncing options like change display refresh, adapt audio or so.

xbmc: plenty framedrops. unwatchable, 1-3 notable drops per second I guess. Funny: 1080p mkv from disk is all fine.
I noticed the CPU load to be spiking towards 80%, sometimes a bit more when TV is on, so I suspect WMCserver burning a lot of CPU handing xbmc the DVB stream (that 4600 has BDA drivers).
I never used DVB backends on Windows before so I configured WMCserver at best guess. Might not have done too well.

Pointers appreciated.

[krustyreturns]

What version of xbmc are you running? Are these European broadcasts?

[DexterF]

German channels on Astra 19.2E, xbmc 12.3

[krustyreturns]

There is a problem with ffmpeg and h264 and wtv and some European broadcasts. It was fixed in Gotham. Try a Gotham nightly and see if the problem goes away.

[DexterF]

oh, good. I'll try that.

[DexterF]

Awesome, works! THANKS!

[scarecrow420]

Glad that the Gotham fix is working, just as a side note I have found that DirectSound causes me major video stuttering issues on cdertain content (not LiveTV admittedly, this is more downloaded/ripped movies), so I always have to use WASAPI

[DexterF]

WASAPI no good?

[scarecrow420]

No, WASAPI is good... infact it's the only configuration that works for me without causing video stutter on high bitrate files. I believe it is newer than directsound and allows for applications to either share the digital output device or take exclusive control of it etc.

Sorry if I confused the matter, I was simply picking up on the fact you said you are using DirectSound, and chiming in with my experience that using WASAPI is best. I have also helped others on this forum who had stutter problems, by telling htem to change their audio from DirectSound to WASAPI

[TechLife]

I can confirm that as well. DirectSound was a bloody nightmare for me.