HDHomeRun Question!

[Strudlemaster]

Hi first off I want to thank yall for any information you can give me.
Basically I already own Sagetv 5.0 and am considering the $30 upgrade to 6.0 if I could get HDhomerun working on it. My only concern is my HTPC is a XP 1800 Athlon with 512 MB RAM and nvidia 5200 and every once in a while I hear a mention of the processing power needed to display HD resolutions. Since HDHomeRun is streaming will my weak computer be able to display my HD channels or am I stuck with looking at some pricey upgrades.

[carlgar]

I am not familar with the AMD processors but I can tell what I see on my 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 Hyper threaded CPU. I saw a big increase in CPU usage when I brought my HomeRun on line. Last night I spent a lot of time trying to find out where the usage was. the increase in mostly in system usage and is in relation to the LAN usage. I must believe that it is a combination of the LAN and additional disk IO. During the test I did have 3 other tuners in use but theie usage is trival. The viewing of a HD show is the biggest user of the CPU.
With no recording on the HomeRun and viewing of a 1080i show with client shows 43% server CPU usage.
With no recording on the HomeRun and Viewing of a 720p show with client shows 39% server CPU usage.
With no recording on the HomeRun and viewing of a SD show with client shows 22% server CPU usage.
With recording of 2 1080i shows on the HomeRun and viewing of SD show with client shows 87% server CPU usage.
With recording of 2 720p shows on the HomeRun and viewing of SD show with client shows 80% server CPU usage.
With recording of a 720p show on the Homerun and viewing of SD show with client shows 48% server CPU usage.

I cannot view a HD show, while recording 2 HD shows will max out my system.

This should give you some idea how much power is needed for HD.

[Goodspike]

Originally Posted by carlgar

I am not familar with the AMD processors but I can tell what I see on my 2.6 GHz Pentium 4 Hyper threaded CPU. I saw a big increase in CPU usage when I brought my HomeRun on line. Last night I spent a lot of time trying to find out where the usage was. the increase in mostly in system usage and is in relation to the LAN usage. I must believe that it is a combination of the LAN and additional disk IO. During the test I did have 3 other tuners in use but theie usage is trival. The viewing of a HD show is the biggest user of the CPU.
With no recording on the HomeRun and viewing of a 1080i show with client shows 43% server CPU usage.
With no recording on the HomeRun and Viewing of a 720p show with client shows 39% server CPU usage.
With no recording on the HomeRun and viewing of a SD show with client shows 22% server CPU usage.
With recording of 2 1080i shows on the HomeRun and viewing of SD show with client shows 87% server CPU usage.
With recording of 2 720p shows on the HomeRun and viewing of SD show with client shows 80% server CPU usage.
With recording of a 720p show on the Homerun and viewing of SD show with client shows 48% server CPU usage.

I cannot view a HD show, while recording 2 HD shows will max out my system.

This should give you some idea how much power is needed for HD.

I have an Athlon 3000, and it's okay recording 3 HD shows and watching one, as long as none of the recordings are over about 1.5 hours. Once the files get too big I get stuttering, mainly noticeable during sports.

If you're running Zonealarm and SageService, that tends to make your CPU usage higher for some reason, than just running Zonealarm and Sage without the service.

[thatdude90210]

You will be able to record. But the xp1800 with nv5200 will likely be borderline for playback of HD. If you are lucky, you might find a decoder config that gives adequate playback. It will definitely not have enough power to watch live-HD, where it's recording and playing at the same time.