Excessive hard drive usage when pulling up EPG in 3.0.5 (spinning animated cursor)

[mkanet]

I noticed that when loading SageTV and pulling up the EPG, I get MUCH more disk loading (with the spinning animated cursor). What makes things even worse is there is no apparent multi-threading support in the SageTV app. Basicaly, I can't do anything when the cursor is spinning (loading from disk). Why isn't the EPG cached by the Windows system? Or, at least have multi-threading support (this would be especially useful with Hyperthreading PC's.)

[Opus4]

SageTV is multithreaded, but if the UI is waiting for data before it can continue, it doesn't have much to do but wait. I believe some caching issues have been brought up with the developers, though.

- Andy

[GbrNole]

the spinning logo is a damn sight quicker to respond in sage than it is in mce 2005 and i only ever really notice it spinning when i use FSE anyway which itself adds another dimension in program startup time.

[mkanet]

That makes sense since I do use FSE. There seems to some issues with FSE currently with the latest Sage; even on a generic test machine with all the vanilla requirements to support FSE (Nvidia 6600GT, Latest certified Nvidia detonator drivers, Latest Nvidia mpeg2 decoders). I'm sure once it starts working on a system like the one mentioned, there will be a much better chance for it to work relably on other configurations.

[GbrNole]

one thing i can tell you about FSE is that it's very sensitive to bios settings (if your mobo supports it) disabling fast writes and side band addressing and increasing video ram settings in the mobo (for my 6600gt) from 256mb to 512mb has made a huge difference.

the only changes i made at the driver level were to set AA to 4x, aniso to 0 and vertical sync to forced on.

before making these changes i got perfext playback at 720p but it was still a little choppy at 1080i now i have perfect smooth playback for 1080i.

give it a try, i'd recommend one change at a time until you get your desired results.

[GbrNole]

ps. my setup is similar to yours except i use the 77.76 beta driver with a 6600gt agp and the _150 nvdvd codec.

[mkanet]

Yes, that is exactly what I am using! I have already set my bios settings and driver settings as close to what you have as possible. I am not getting any performance issues related to FSE, just excessive hard drive usage, which andy confirmed that there are some caching issues they are dealing with.

The only thing that seems to be a problem for me in respect to this, is loading data which has already been loaded before.

[mkanet]

BbrNole, I just thought I would let you know that your recommended setting for AA=4x can significantly/noticably make the picture look softer and less detailed *IF* your desktop res is 1920x1440 or 1920x1080; especially for ATSC.

This is what I have set for my detonator 77.76 picture quality settings:

1) AA=OFF
2) Aniso=OFF
3) Image Settings=High Quality
4) Vertical Synch=ON
5) Triple Buffering=ON (brand new feature in 77.76)

The performance for 1080i and all other material for FSE is smooth as silk in SageTV (72Hz vertical refresh rate); even with severe vertical/horizontal panning, high motion/high bandwidth scenes on my P4 2.6Ghz PC.

My 6600GT AGP comes stock with 500Mhz/1120Mhz (core/memory). I am running my Core GPU at 525; having no effect on temperature.

Originally Posted by GbrNole

one thing i can tell you about FSE is that it's very sensitive to bios settings (if your mobo supports it) disabling fast writes and side band addressing and increasing video ram settings in the mobo (for my 6600gt) from 256mb to 512mb has made a huge difference.

the only changes i made at the driver level were to set AA to 4x, aniso to 0 and vertical sync to forced on.

before making these changes i got perfext playback at 720p but it was still a little choppy at 1080i now i have perfect smooth playback for 1080i.

give it a try, i'd recommend one change at a time until you get your desired results.

[mkanet]

PS: I just changed BoostThreadPriorities=0 which seems to reduce the amount of time the spinning animated cursor shows up in certain cases. I'm not sure what adverse affect this has though.