Lirk

Ok, I tested it with older drivers. The latest version of WHQL drivers, which support Direct3D without BSOD - is 83.40. Aero doesn't work with any of older drivers (need graphics card with Pixel Shader 2.0), but works Direct3D apps and 3D screensavers. Also, I have little problems with drivers for TV-tuner, so doesn't want to do anything yet and will recovery from backup XP with worked Supermium browser.

I read about older versions in that topic, but can't to test it now. Also, I guess, that control panel settings will still be unavailable. I thought, that exists some modified drivers, not just older versions.

Sadly. I found the similar topic here: https://www.sevenforums.com/graphic-cards/11517-help-driver-geforce-4-mx-440-agp8x.html .

This topic not about CUDA advantages over DirectX. It about using an old hardware with the most compatible output video modules.

I have an old graphics card (Nvidia MX-440) and the latest drivers for it was for Windows XP (ForceWare Release 90 93.71 - Thu Nov 02, 2006; ForceWare Release 90 93.81 - Tue Nov 28, 2006). I was installed those drivers on Windows 7, but it works partially - doesn't work 3D acceleration and doesn't work control panel settings. Works only video playback acceleration and possibility to set highest monitor refresh rate. Is there some modified drivers for such cases?

And what? DirectX engine is needing only for supporting old graphics card and CUDA was introduced in 2007, which is more compatible with Vista/7.

For old hardware this is a worse solution, than using old version of MPV. But even old MPV version works worse, than MPlayer with DirectX module.

Maybe it possible to build with gcc and set "march" parameter, such as: "generic32, i386, i486, i586, i686, pentium, pentiumpro, pentiumii, pentiumiii"? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/77120328/are-there-any-alternatives-to-pyinstaller-for-making-standalone-python-executabl

Looks like it work properly on most videos, but gives an error on restricted videos with "Viewer Discretion advised" message even with enabled cookies: "ERROR: The following content may contain graphic or violent imagery; Viewer discretion is advised", yt-dlp works properly with those videos. It was an old problem in youtube-dl: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/4016 . What a problem to build yt-dlp without sse2 requirements? The newer versions of Python doesn't support CPU optimization parameters?

SMPlayer with MPV engine for XP (last version - mpv-i686-20151029, with opengl-old support - mpv-i686-20150120) works now with XP versions of youtube-dl and renamed yt-dlp.exe to youtube-dl.exe natively. But the main problem is bad support of the output video modules in this engine, it doesn't support DirectX module, only Direct3D, in my case I can get playback only with frame dropping issues, in other cases, such as older videocards it even doesn't run and will give error about not supporting. The main it advantage is natively supporting DASH streams. Without DASH for now playback is available only in 360p and it can be used with batch script, look like this: @echo off :BEGIN set /p LINK=YOUTUBE LINK: for /F "delims=" %%a in ('youtube-dl -g -f "best[height<=720][height>360][vcodec^=avc1]/best[height<=720][vcodec^=avc1]" "%LINK%"') do set "VIDEOLINK=%%~a" "%programfiles%\SMPlayer\smplayer" "%VIDEOLINK%" goto :BEGIN SMPlayer doesn't support passing of the MPlayer parameters from Command Line, so DASH support I have only in MPlayer without GUI, which is less convenient: @echo off :BEGIN set /p LINK=YOUTUBE LINK: for /F "delims=" %%a in ('youtube-dl -g -f "bestvideo[ext=mp4][height<=720][fps<=30][vcodec^=avc]" "%LINK%"') do set "VIDEOLINK=%%~a" for /F "delims=" %%a in ('youtube-dl -g -f "bestaudio[ext=m4a][acodec^=mp4a]" "%LINK%"') do set "AUDIOLINK=%%~a" "%programfiles%\SMPlayer\mplayer\mplayer" -aspect 4:3 -xy 800 -vo directx -ao dsound "%VIDEOLINK%" -audiofile "%AUDIOLINK%" goto :BEGIN Is there GUI frontend for MPlayer, which support passing of the MPlayer parameters in CLI? Or maybe this could be implemented differently? Would better to use some GUI for pasting links instead CLI.

Youtube-DL has own UA, I mean to use the same UA for FFmpeg, but I tried and it gives the same 403 error, so problem not in this. I found an old issue in yt-dlp like this and it was fixed in version 2023.07.06. Maybe it possible to use extractors from yt-dlp in youtube-dl? Maybe here fix?

Bad idea to use vp9 codec on the old hardware, replace it to avc. I just tried an old mpv build for XP and it works with renamed XP version yt-dlp.exe to youtube-dl.exe, but youtube-dl SSE build gives 403 error. The main problem for me in the mpv player is missing DirectX output module, one alternative - using Direct3D with frame dropping and it doesn't work on older videocards, instead of DirectX. So, I used the batch script for using standard mplayer with separated video and audio stream, received from youtube-dl -g command, it works good and play videos up to 720p on Athlon XP with MX440 videocard, but console mplayer has too simple controls, available mostly from keyboard shortcuts. Another way - using vlc with youtube-dl.luac, but with it video too often hang, so this variant is worst.

Does youtube-dl passed UA parameter to FFmpeg? Maybe it must be the same as in youtube-dl?