Asus MyCinema U3100mini Choppy

Question

I'm running an Asus MyCinema U3100mini ATSC on Windows 7 64-bit. When I play live TV in Windows Media Center, it's very choppy and uses 500+ MB of RAM, I'm guessing due to the hard drive buffering functionality. Is there any way to disable the live TV pause buffer completely? If not, can anyone recommend alternative software that:

1. Works with the MyCinema.
2. Is lightweight and not horribly bloated with features I'll never use like Windows Media Center is.

Edits:

1. This is a dual boot system. I've discovered that the tuner actually works fine on XP. It also works fine on my other computer, which has slower hardware and also runs Windows 7 64-bit.
2. The problem actually seems to be with playback at large screen sizes, not with hard drive buffering. Everything works fine below a certain window size and fails for large windows or full screens. Also, the same thing seems to happen whether playing live or recorded TV.
3. As far as the obvious stuff goes, I have the latest video drivers from ATI for my Radeon x1050.

Answer 1

Ok, I ended up figuring it out myself. My video card is pretty borderline for playing HDTV and Aero uses just enough video processing to screw everything up. Also, video overlay can't be used with Aero enabled, meaning that some other, possibly slower, back end has to be used. I tried disabling Aero when my TV tuner app was running via "disable desktop composition" in the compatibility settings solves the problem.

Answer 2

MCE Live TV Buffer Manager may help you. If it doesn't, look at the links on the page and the registry keys it references.