Is It Worth It??

[jethro]

Hi, I recently received my single-tuner bundle with SageTV, PVR-150, and remote for an old computer I had laying around. I thought this might be more functional and cheaper than buying a standalone DVR w/ DVD Burner to replace my aging VCR. But it seem to have a lot of limitations (at least initially).

- So I will go pour through the manual for tips/trics, but I'd really appreciate some good experienced advice as to whether I'm expecting too much from too little before I spend all the time & resources figuring stuff out.

Here's my hardware specs:
AMD Athlon 850, 768MB Ram, 2nd internal 7200rpm 75GB media drive, Matrox G400 dual-head vid card, SoundBlaster audio card, clean and completely updated WinXP Home SP2 install, all latest drivers, etc.
TV: Older Sony Trinitron Component TV (no tuner or speakers) 32" I believe. Has composite video input (as well as some old 30-pin RGB input interface - don't use)

Initial Issues
- Response is INCREDIBLY sluggish, especially when video is running. Almost unusable.
- Picture quality is not great initially, whether using DVDMax or Clone. Sometimes very pixelated. I'm using antenna, so some stations tune better than others (no desire for cable).
- Less than half of the remote buttons actually work initially.
- Interface not nearly as intuitive as MCE (tried in a store).

So I'm wondering if I'm expecting something that's not possible for me. I basically just want something that's at least as good of quality as my VCR (right now it looks much better) and is smooth and easy to use.

- Is my system too old/slow or my video card not high quality enough to do this well?
- Is the overall technology not quite there yet? (I was reading that quality in MCE is not good enough yet, thought this might be better).
- Should I cut my losses and just get a $400 DVR w/ DVD Burner?

I don't want to put much more than $400-500 into this. It's just not worth it to me. Thanks a bunch in advance!

[mlbdude]

For faster response, try different video renderers with and without 3D Acceleration turned on. Could be video card related.

So many reasons why PQ is not good you will have to use the forums and prepare for tweaking to fix that.

If you don't want to mess with something too much I would just get a STB. You will have similar issues with MCE plus MCE won't work with your hardware so you would need lots of upgrades. If you don't mind putting some time into it you should be able to get some better results.

[blade]

When I first installed Sage I was very disappointed with the PQ; however, after a lot of tweaking I'm pretty satisfied now. The picture quality is actually better than straight cable to the TV. It just takes time and a little trial and error to get things just right. I imagine this is true for most PVR software.

Before you do anything else, get the cleanest signal possible to your tuner. If you have garbage going in you'll have garbage going out.

- Less than half of the remote buttons actually work initially.

None of the buttons worked on my remote until I linked the IR codes to Sage commands.

- Interface not nearly as intuitive as MCE (tried in a store).

Once you get everything configured and the PQ looking good then you might want to try out some of the other STV's. There is a MCE STV for Sage that is very intuitive. IMO it's much nicer than the standard one that comes with Sage.

Setting Sage up isn't as simple as installing the software. It is very customizable and takes a good bit of time to get setup properly.

[nielm]

> - Is my system too old/slow

An athlon 850 is quite a slow system, which would mean that a lot of the complex menus will be slow to render/navigate (such as TV Guide), and video playback would use a lot of CPU (making OSD slow as well)

You might be able to improve cpu usage on video playback by using a mpeg2 decoder that supports hardware video acceleration (eg PowerDVD or WinDVD, or maybe Dscaler. The default sage one does not), but I have no idea if your video card is young enough to have MPEG2 accelleration though.

Also Make sure Overlay renderer is used (you probably wont be able to use VMR9 at all with your hardware) -- it should be the least CPU intensive and most likely to support mpeg2 hardware accelleration.

(PS: you mention MCE: the lowest powered MCE system I have seen is a 2.8Ghz Celeron)

[jethro]

Thanks for the replies! I actually tried recording a show tonight (NBA finals). It was on my clearest station (ABC-7 in Los Angeles). The video playback stuttered pretty regularly. Even when it was playing smooth, it looked like a different frame rate or something, like an older-style recorded film or something. And it's amplified by the pixelization. The audio also occassionally cuts out as well, though not too frequently.

I tried playing with some of the settings in the Detailed Setup area.

- Tried different video rendering (there were only two choices - Sage Default and InterSomething... The Sage looked much worse).
- I do have to use video overlay.
- I tried changing some of the mpeg settings, they made minimal difference in playback.

So I could probably spend hours and hours researching, trying things, debugging, etc. etc. I was just trying to find out in advance if this would be futile. Is the fact that I use antenna/broadcast just not going to work for this? Any noise becomes intollerable when it's all pixelated.

Are there any posts or areas I could look for that might give me a fairly concise set of things to try, collected from the numerous people that have already done the hours and hours of debugging? What are the key areas to look for? I'm sure there must be a few best standards agreed on by now.

Thanks all for your help. I won't sell it or send it back quite yet.

[Mahoney]

Looks like you have a similar issue to me - I'm using the SCART output on a digital set top box, with a SCART to composite converter. As you say, for sport it's as if the frame rate is a little lower. Watchable, but a bit too noticeable for my liking.

[Mahoney]

Just had a browse around and found a thread with possibly rrelated issues... I'm going to have a look at this bit of software:
http://reclock.free.fr/

[heffe2001]

I woudln't count out his hardware for MCE just yet, I have a friend running it on a 866 Xeon machine, only main difference is it has much more memory (it's either 1g or 2g, not sure), and a faster video card (nvidia 5600 I think). MCE runs quite well no the system. He's had to do almost NO tweaking (with the exception of having to downgrade video drivers, the current ones break MCE fairly badly on that system).

Originally Posted by mlbdude

For faster response, try different video renderers with and without 3D Acceleration turned on. Could be video card related.

So many reasons why PQ is not good you will have to use the forums and prepare for tweaking to fix that.

If you don't want to mess with something too much I would just get a STB. You will have similar issues with MCE plus MCE won't work with your hardware so you would need lots of upgrades. If you don't mind putting some time into it you should be able to get some better results.

[hmca]

With an older TV I would try the Nvidia DVD Decoder. Go into its properties and set to VMR7. It should produce a sharper picture on an older set.

[jethro]

Hmmm, I tried some more tonight. Installed the nVidia decoder and played with all the settings. Didn't make too much of a difference. I mainly notice the pixelization. Is this always going to be a problem? DVDs seem to display much better without the noticeable pixelization.

But I think my system may be just too slow, which bums me out as I specifically asked SageTV about this before making the purchase. They said it should work fine. But I turned on the CPU meter tonight and anytime video is being played back, it jumps between about 80% and 100%. Nothing else is running. When I tried to play back a DVD, it hovered around 100%. I also tried WMP9, and it still had the high CPU, but seemed to play back smoother.

So I'm a bit torn. I don't want to keep dumping time and money into this thing hoping to get it right someday if that's not really possible.

- Could someone point me to GOOD, SOLID, KNOWN realistic minimum system requirements (including video card) for smooth, high quality video?
- Would a somewhat recent P4 (not the latest/greatest) be enough? Or do I also need the best video card? What would that be if so?
- Would the PVR-350 card solve any of these issues and give me the best playback quality? If so, I may fight to exchange.

Thanks agian everyone. I sure wish it would just work. Seems like fun.

[mlbdude]

The main bottleneck in your system is your video card. You are not able to use hardware acceleration with that. Good news is you can gets something like an nVidia 5200 for like $50 to take care of that. I ran Sage on a 733 for a few months and it was a great performer (had to use Overlay though).

The 350 will get you good video but could also introduce so many hassles it is not worth it. Plus only SageTV recordings can be played back from it.

Pixelation suggests bad video card, bad decoder, or bad input signal.

[Grey_Goose]

just out of curiosity, is your media drive formatted @ 64k? that could be a part of the stuttering problem...

[Crazedz]

Another thing to try if you haven't is the tip in this thread.

Easy Performance Increase for Hauppauge Users

Im not sure if it will work or not on a pvr 150 as i haven't got one and haven't heard or read of any who have them that have used this so i can't say if it will help at all but it might be worth trying. This is for the hauppauge intervideo decoders so you'd need to use them for it to work or get some other decoders that have hardware acceleration support in them just about all the commercial video decoders have this support(I don't believe sage's decoder has this though i haven't checked so i could be wrong) in them just look in the player preferences for it. Oh you'll need a better video card though one with hardware video acceleration most now days do have this. I used a Geforce 4 MX previously and use a FX 5900 now and both had hardware assisted video playback and so do i belive the newer ATI cards. Of course i don't have my video going out to a TV so i can't vouch for it's video looks via TV out. The hardware assist though will help take some of the load off your cpu though and you should see a bit of a drop in useage while playing back video so it's worth getting a video card with it.

I would see what people tend to like the best before buying a card though i understand price is a concern so you might wanna try a lower end card and see how it works for you. Try to get one with a vivo cable or maybe even a HDTV out cable if cheap enough if you can as it will probably provide better results when output to a TV.

Also if you're system can handle it i would use higher video recording levels not sure what recording settings your useing but try DVD standard quality recording setting or play around with different recording qualities to see how it effects results. The lower quality settings are going to give poorer video that will look more pixelated as well so bear that in mind.

Good video playback on a lower end system can be done it just takes some work tweaking the system and some changes to some hardware to get their.

[Surtr]

Ya, video card upgrade and reformat your drive with 64k clusters are the first two things I would try. I traded my matrox dual head up to a radeon 7000 (~20 bucks from newegg) and it made a world of difference.

[blade]

I run Sage on an xp mobile processor underclocked to 1400 mhz, 1 gig of ram (way overkill), and a 6600GT and my cpu usage is only around 30-40% using VMR9 and running at 720p resolutions.

[jethro]

OK, so most agree that it's my video card (Matrox G400) that's the bottleneck (no hardware acceleration)?

Of the cards mentioned above (or any new ones in general) which would be the best for TV output? I thought I read somewhere that my G400 w/ dvdMax was supposed to be pretty good TV out quality. I have no desire for watching video on my video screen, this is only for the TV in the living room. I have a small monitor off to the side for menus and the user interface.

And my video storage HD is recently formatted with 64k clusters. It is used only for the video recordings.

[flashbacck]

I don't think you mentioned what recording quality you were using? When I first tried Sage, I remember thinking the default recording quality was horrible. If you haven't try one of the higher ones.

[Surtr]

Jethro -

I get pretty good TV-out results with the radeon 7000. Wife agrees that it's a better quality picture on our 36" STV than we had with our ReplayTV. For 20 bucks, it can't be beat.

-Surtr

[mayamaniac]

I would test the recordings with windows media player to see how it looks first. If WMP can play it smoothly, then it should play fine in SageTV with overlay settings. Definitely don't use VMR unless full transparent menus are that important to you. If thats the case, get any of the Geforce 5xxx series up or ATI radeon 7xxx series and up.

[jethro]

Thanks for all the replies! I think I've decided to return it, though. Seems like I'm expecting too much Ferari out of an old Pinto. I called SageTV and they were very helpful. He agreed that my system may just not be able to cut it. I just can't spend hours and hours trying every possible option to only gain a bit of performance/quality.

I may end up buying a second-hand newer Media Center PC. I can probably get something pretty new and powerful for $500-$750. Then I may jump back in and get the PVR card again (I know I'd have to get a MCE version anyways.). I just want to get something that works pretty well out of the box.

One quick parting question, though...

- I read on a review of Windows Media Center 2005 that the quality is just not spectacular yet. Is that due to software encoding vs. the hardware encoding that the Hauppauge cards do with SageTV?
- If so, could a PVR card give great quality on a MCE computer?
- Anyone know if any of the major brand Media Center computers come with a hardware encoding card (as opposed to just a tuner card)? Dell, HP, Sony, Gateway are preferred.

Thanks again!!