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[antenna]

Warning!  This post is by a rank amateur on the video side of things.  Be kind.   

I have a PC in the entertainment center that functions as a MC client.  I recently "upgraded" that PC from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

The PC has a circa 2010 Intel integrated graphics, which worked quite well under Windows 7.

However, after the upgrade to Windows 10, I noticed some, let's call it, jerkiness in video playback of DVD-quality and 1080i-quality video streams.

Poking around I discovered that Intel supplied drivers for that video hardware for Windows 7, but did not do the same for Windows 10.  So I was running on default Windows 10 video code.  That was less than optimum (understatement).

Long story short (probably too late for that...)  I purchased a Zotac video card (with a Nvidia GT 710 GPU) becase it would work in the ~ancient~ PCIe x1 bus in the PC.

Longer story shorter...

The default driver that Windows 10 downloads for the card works better than the driver than came on the Zotac CD that came with the card, or the latest driver that i downloaded from the NVidia site.

YMMV and all that.

Bottom line ---

MC is showing video quite well once again.

[antenna]

Another artifact of the Windows 7 to Windows 10 "upgrade" that I ran into.  Sort of video-related, maybe....

Under Windows 7, JR Media Center ran quite well on the MC client in the entertainment center.  Playback was flawless, movement around the MC menus in theater view was smooth.

The PC had 2GB of memory.

When I "upgraded" to Windows 10, in addition to the problem I mentioned in the prior message above (that was fixed with the new video card, as noted above), I also have noticed that moving round the menus in theater view was a bt jerky.  Screen refreshes stuttered, though they always went to completion.  I recognized this symptom from previous Windows memory-starved PCs that I had worked on.

I bumped the memory for the MC client up to 8GB, and now movement around the MC menus in theater view is as smooth as can be.  No jerkiness at all.

8GB of memory.  Wow.   My first home computer (IMSAI 8080) had 64KB of memory....

 

[Awesome Donkey]

8GB of RAM isn't really that much anymore. If anything, due to trends like gaming, streaming and video editing becoming more common along with 4K and higher video content and apps like web browsers using lots of system resources 16GB of RAM has started to become the minimum for any modern PC, and I don't see that trend stopping at all. Eventually 32GB will be, then 64GB, etc. as time passes.

As for the Intel video thing, I seem to recall Intel didn't bother releasing/updating their drivers of older integrated graphics to work well on Windows 10. For example, I think OpenGL support is more-or-less missing on integrated graphics pre-Haswell.

[antenna]

> 8GB of RAM isn't really that much anymore.

Agreed.  That 8GB cost me $55.   Back on the IMSAI 8080, 64KB cost me $200.   

I had never upgraded the MC client PC from the 2GB because under Windows 7 it worked quite well.  I am a huge fan of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

After the "upgrade" to Windows 10, the menu navigation stuttering was annoying but not enough to, ummm, encourage me to buy memory and dig into the entertainment cabinet to install it. 

I eventually decided to take the plunge....

 

[antenna]

under Windows 7 it worked quite well.  I am a huge fan of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Note that I realize the inherent contradiction in that comment and my "upgrading" to Windows 10.

But I suspect comments on that topic are a whole different thread.