I think there is a plugin for nero to demux mkv somewhere... not having any luck googling for it, too much other junk comes up instead. But thats for reencoding only...
Demuxing is for reencoding. You are just looking for a way to make it play it. All you need is a splitter, once there any video player that uses splitters (practically all) will play MKV files for you.
Not sure about showtime built in capabilities.
But for an mkv splitter:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Lazy_Man_MKV.htm
Where does it say that showtime supports GPU acceleration for HD?
Your best bet is to first try remuxing it to a transport stream using the software auric mentioned. there is a slim chance of it working (since the mkv is almost certainly a reencoded 264 and not just remuxed. I don't know how flexible the HD decode capabilities are, and I doubt that the file is in the HD-DVD or Blu-ray encoding.. well i don't know what word to use. its not format because they are both x264.
Heck who knows, it might work. I got a DVD player that can play divx and it plays xvid files fine too...
Nvidia's PureVideo decoder package has not been relevant this millennium, precisely because the video portion is limited to ye olde timey MPEG-2. As for promotion of decoding HD disc formats, well, that does not exclude the obvious fact that they in turn must rely upon A/V standards -in this case AVC. So of course if the GPU's can decode HD disc formats they can decode AVC (as well as VC-1 and MPEG-2), regardless of the container.
Ofcourse the HARDWARE is capable of decoding it regardless of container. Heck it should be able to decode similar codecs too from the same standard (h264 vs x264 for example).
EDIT: yap, this confirms it, x264 is also an option.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthr...kv+acceleration&page=6 thanks TroubleM
The point I was making is that the driver, software, and hardware are all build with interlocking DRM. And I wasn't aware that it has been bypassed.
I looked up the AMD tech specs and they too go on about HDCP.
I was under the mistaken assumption that to bypass the DRM you would have to AT LEAST modify the drivers (or maybe even use a modchip) to remove said DRM, but apperantly you can access the decoding functions of the GPU with open source software without molesting the drivers at all.
Meaning they either flat out lied about DRM being a requirement and hoped nobody will notice.
Or just put up some token DRM into the drivers which is extremely easy to bypass.