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When watching video in a Windows 7 guest the edges have noticeable ridges to them. VLC player doesn't seem to lag, but Windows Media Player does. I don't really use WMP, but I'm just mentioning it if it helps with diagnosing the issue. No sound problems. Anyway, the video quality is really not that bad, but I'd like it to be on par with the host if easily possible.

I don't currently have a dedicated video card and I was wondering if that would make the video look as clean as it does on the host. If so I'd really appreciate some model suggestions. I'm looking to spend as little as possible to do this. I'm not looking to play games in the host, just watch 720p video. Oh also aero has never worked which sounds like it has to do with the HD 4000 from what I could find.

System Details:
While watching HD video: Both guest and host CPU doesn't go above 30%
-----2 GB memory usage in guest (out of 7GB allocated); 9 GB memory usage in host
Intel core i5

You are correct in almost all of your observations. The built-in Intel graphics cards have been known to have a variety of issues, mainly when dealing with graphics intensive applications. As far as which graphics card you should get, unfortunately I don't have any suggestions, but if you end up with a specific model search the forums for potential known issues. Keep in mind that your guest will not see your actual graphics card, but a virtualized one.

Thanks for the answers.

From what I've been reading lately it seems it's more of a driver problem than the actual performance capabilities of the HD 4000. Is that correct? What I'm getting at is, could I get a dedicated card comparable in performance and still get host-quality 720p video in the guest?

Also if I get a dedicated graphics card with my current setup will the integrated graphics continue to interfere with the Virtualbox video quality?

PCI Passthrough needed for direct GPU ( dedicated video card to guest ) is only available for Linux hosts and even then you must be an expert to get it to work.

ToddL wrote:Oh also aero has never worked which sounds like it has to do with the HD 4000 from what I could find.

Actually it sounds like the guest additions or at least the WDDM driver wasn't installed. Aero only works if the VirtualBox WDDM driver is installed. It may also explain your video issue.

loukingjr wrote:Actually it sounds like the guest additions or at least the WDDM driver wasn't installed.

Thank you! It works now. I did have the guest additions installed but did not have the WDDM driver. I think I'd tried to install 3d acceleration from the guest additions before but it didn't work because I didn't enable it in the settings of the virtual machine beforehand. Now aero works and the video quality is perfect with 720 and 1080 hd. Thanks everyone!

Welcome.