Help a newbie w/ video problems...

[mbahr]

Hello gurus!

I'm in the trial period for SageTv. I'm having some difficulty getting the client app. to work on my mini pc. When I have the video rendered set to default mode, I have a black screen. When I set it to overlay or the other mode, I get two or three images spread across the viewing area and very jerky playing.

My mini pc is a VIA C3 Samual2 based machine, runing at 1ghz. It uses a VIA VT133 chipset with "integrated 3D Graphics Accelerator." The motherboard is supplied by evem.

So... Am I going to have any success with this setup? If possible... Can someone suggest what settings to tweak to merge the images into one? (it almost looks like it is displaying separate frames from each image).

Any suggestions?

-MIke

[mbahr]

I've done some more research on my motherboard. It is an ECS P6VEM2 with "Trident Video Accelerator Blade 3D/Promedcia (8mb)" and it separately lists the 3D Accelerator as a "trident CyberBlade-i7".

Diagnostics report:

Video Adapter Trident CyberBlade-i7
GPU Code Name CyberBlade-i7
PCI Device 1023-8500 / 1019-0984
Bus Type AGP 4x @ 4x
GPU Clock 130 MHz
RAMDAC Clock 230 MHz
Pixel Pipelines 1
TMU Per Pipeline 2
Vertex Shaders Not Supported
Pixel Shaders Not Supported
DirectX Hardware Support DirectX v6.0
Pixel Fillrate 130 MPixel/s


I suspect that the graphics controller is just not up to the task for running a SageTV Client. But, I'm hoping that there is some (magical) setting in the SageTV setup that can get more performance.

Can anyone assist me with this?

Thanks in advance...

-Mike

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by mbahr

I've done some more research on my motherboard. It is an ECS P6VEM2 with "Trident Video Accelerator Blade 3D/Promedcia (8mb)" and it separately lists the 3D Accelerator as a "trident CyberBlade-i7".

Diagnostics report:

Video Adapter Trident CyberBlade-i7
GPU Code Name CyberBlade-i7
PCI Device 1023-8500 / 1019-0984
Bus Type AGP 4x @ 4x
GPU Clock 130 MHz
RAMDAC Clock 230 MHz
Pixel Pipelines 1
TMU Per Pipeline 2
Vertex Shaders Not Supported
Pixel Shaders Not Supported
DirectX Hardware Support DirectX v6.0
Pixel Fillrate 130 MPixel/s


I suspect that the graphics controller is just not up to the task for running a SageTV Client. But, I'm hoping that there is some (magical) setting in the SageTV setup that can get more performance.

Can anyone assist me with this?

Thanks in advance...

-Mike

No magical setting in Sage or any other app that will help a graphic solution as weak as that. VMR7 requires at east DirectX 7 support. With only 8MB of memory it looks like even overlay isn't going to help. You'll need a seperate video card or a more modern VIA motherboard solution.

Gerry

[mbahr]

Thanks Gerry, I had come to suspect that I was s.o.l.

Is it realistic of me to hope to find a new motherboard with onboard graphics capabile of running sagetv client w/ high def content?

-Mike

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by mbahr

Thanks Gerry, I had come to suspect that I was s.o.l.

Is it realistic of me to hope to find a new motherboard with onboard graphics capabile of running sagetv client w/ high def content?

-Mike

I just picked this up at Newegg.
BIOSTAR TForce TF7050-M2 Socket AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 7050PV Micro ATX AMD Motherboard with HDMI
So far I haven't found any HD material I record that it can't play. I put 2 GB RAM, AMD 64 x 2 5200 and configured the onboard video with 256 MB RAM. It's actually pretty sweet but so new there are some growing pains. For instance the HDMI wont power the HDTV after switching the TV off then on. A fix is on the way with some other updates in the BIOS. I just got iy running over the weekend but thoroughly impressed with performance and picture quality. The onboad video is basically GeForce 7 but is the only nVidia onboard that nVidia qualified as supporting HD video playback. (Check their website. The older 6100/6150 does NOT support HD playback according to nVidia.) Tech Specs And it's not a bad deal for $75.

Gerry

[mbahr]

Very interesting!

I'll be interested in hearing how things go over the next week or so... Keep us all posted!

-Mike