In an unstable network connection, video lag may occur at lower network buffer rates. We can solve this problem by setting Windows Media Player to increase the video streaming speed. This is really good news for you. If you have the same requirement, then you can follow this article to obtain more useful information.

Part 1: What Hardware Acceleration is for

Since each computer uses different hardware, their performance varies widely. Many users always feel that the computer is very stuck when watching videos on the computer. At this time, our software accelerates the CPU while the software is accelerating, but the CPU must support not only the computer's operation but also the software. If it is calculated by it, it will greatly increase its load. Therefore, we need to enable the hardware acceleration function of the computer so that the GPU of the graphics card can be used to accelerate the video.

Users who know the computer know that hardware acceleration is the use of hardware modules instead of software algorithms to take full advantage of the fast characteristics inherent in hardware. With hardware acceleration enabled, the system's operating speed and efficiency will increase a lot. But on the other hand, if you have already turned on this function, it may cause video freeze, and when the system has graphics card hardware acceleration turned on, it will waste power, so many users, in such cases, want to turn off hardware acceleration.

Similarly, after you have turned on the hardware acceleration on your Windows, then it will bring a lot of benefits to your Windows Media Player while it is playing all kinds of digital video and audio files. Specifically, the playback will be much smoother and it will not have so many buffering issues. What’s more, asides from the hardware acceleration, in order to make your Windows Media Player much more efficient in providing excellent playback solutions, you can also set some changes to the internal video acceleration within Windows Media Player.

Part 2: How to Turn on Hardware Acceleration and Video Acceleration on Windows Media Player

Just as mentioned above, you can speed up your computer and obtain more fluent video playback on Windows Media Player via the following two parts. The first part is to turn on hardware acceleration on Windows, and the second part is to turn on video acceleration on Windows Media Player.

How to turn on hardware acceleration?

Have you ever considered that the reason for the failure of stuttering issues on Windows 10 is caused by the hardware acceleration? Actually, this is quite possible for the failure. In the circumstance, you can try to disable the hardware acceleration for another try instead of turning on. But the process is the same. First, click the “Menu” button and choose “Settings” to enter the “System” panel. You can find the “Use hardware acceleration when available” option. Then you can turn off the option to disable the hardware acceleration function. Similarly, if you prefer to turn on hardware acceleration, you only need to click on it to activate.

How to turn on video acceleration on Windows Media Player?

Once you have turned on the hardware acceleration, you can restart your computer and even your Windows Media Player to see whether the running speed has already went fast or not. Furthermore, now you can try to turn on video acceleration on Windows Media Player by following the steps below.

Step 1. Open Windows Media Player and click “Now Playing” at the top of the menu to select “More Options”.

Step 2. Click the “Performance” tab on the “More Options” panel. Then take a tick before the option “Turn on DirectX video acceleration for WMV files”.

Step 3. Click “OK” button if you have already chose the option. Finally close the panel and you had better restart the player to activate the change.

Part 3:Other Alternative Player with Hardware Acceleration Feature

While turning on the video acceleration for Windows Media Player, it is obviously that only WMV files can be accelerated after this option has been turned on. If you are playing other digital videos, it will have any effects on them. What would you turn to in such a case? Actually, besides Windows Media Player, there are some other alternative players which have the capability to enable the hardware acceleration feature or the video acceleration without so many limits. If you are interested to take a try, you can refer to the following three alternative players.

No. 1 Leawo Blu-ray Player

Leawo Blu-ray Player contains all media playback solutions you need for your leisure entertainment, including Blu-ray, DVD, CD, HD (4K), ISO file with AVI, MPEG, WMV, and other popular formats supported. With advanced image and audio processing technology, Leawo Free Blu-ray Player software could provide you quality-lossless image for even 4K video, stereo audio enjoyment, all regions free DVD decryption and user-oriented playback control. This player can free you from all region codes issue on DVDs and Blu-rays.

Besides, Leawo Blu-ray Player’s practical bonus features including useful power manager, custom skin/language/background, snap screenshots, especially virtual remote controller make it a better choice for all playback choice. Furthermore, within Leawo Blu-ray Player, you could obtain the personalized settings according to your preference and all the settings could be done automatically. Users can have the further set on the playback which includes the “allow the hardware acceleration” option. You can enable this option accordingly. It can also support all kinds of subtitle formats such as SRT.

No. 2 VLC Media Player

VLC Media Player is an open-source DVD player program that allows users to watch high-definition movies and TVs in various formats. VLC supports many audio and video decoders and file formats, and supports DVD video discs, VCD video discs and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a unicast or multicast streaming server over IPv4 or IPv6 high-speed network connections. It combines the decoder of the FFmpeg project and the libdvdcss library to make it play multimedia files and encrypted DVD video. This media player is suitable for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MP3, OGG ...) as well as DVD, VCD and various streaming media protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 over a high bandwidth network. What’s worth mentioning is that it supports the GPU acceleration of video which is able to accelerate the H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 formats. Nowadays, VLC also supports the same GPU acceleration in Linux.

No. 3 Media Player Classic HomeCinema

MPC-HC is a very simple and powerful playback software. It is a follow-up version of another classic Media Player Classic (MPC). It was originally based on Microsoft Windows Media Player 6.4. Style, there is nothing fancy, focusing on the playback of various formats of video and audio, many third-party playback software packages have also integrated it. It can directly support video files in MKV format ~ Support displaying external subtitles for RealMedia / QuickTime video files under special rendering mode. And, you can use any audio file as a new audio track for your video. The main feature is the perfect support for Windows Vista. EVR renderer is also supported. Many practical functions have been added to the original MPC. This media player also implemented GPU acceleration of video. The H.264 and VC-1 can be supported if you have an ATI video card.

Part 4: Conclusion

Nowadays, for most people, Windows Media Player is the easiest to use and has the very best support of GPU accelerated video. After all, it has been used as the default media for Windows operating systems for so many years. However, there is not a single perfect product in the world. For some people, the constant stuttering issues on Windows Media Player are quite annoying. By referring to the above recommendation, Leawo Blu-ray Player, VLC Media Player and Media Player Classic HomeCinema all implemented the video and hardware GPU acceleration of videos. What’s more, they also have simple interface and easy instructions, and they are all free. Even though the video acceleration function is limited, you can still try to turn it on to speed up your media player and computer.