Poll: How many can watch HDTV via MVP successfully?

[jjstok]

It doesn't work for me. They have me using some 6.3 beta MC that didn't help. It actually killed the conversion process completely. They said they have duplicated the problem and are working on a fix. I've been involved with numerous threads with a lot of people suffering the same experience and no resolution.

Can anyone watch HD via their MVP or the Placeshifter on another PC???

[bcjenkins]

I run linux server though.

B

[Taddeusz]

Mine works fine when my server isn't heavily loaded. Since I started being able to record HD I've discovered that my server tends to be a bit hard drive throughput limited. Most of the recordings go onto one of my drives so if it's recording on all four tuners (two PVR 150's and an HDHR) and then ShowAnalyzer is processing something I tend to get stuttery playback on the MVP. If very little is being recorded while I'm watching it's smooth as silk.

I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do about it. I'm considering going back to a RAID 0 setup but that turned into a disaster the last time when one of the hard drives died. I think if I did go back to RAID 0 I'd get a real RAID card (as opposed to a software card like a Promise or Highpoint) and install a hot spare. That way if anything started to go wrong with one of the drives I'd have an immediate replacement. I just don't have the money to spend on it right now because I recently had to get a new car. I am going to somehow find the cash to get an HD extender though.

[CarlR]

I can watch HD on the MVP pretty smoothly with the quality set to "standard". I'm not totally happy with the look of it, though - I see a lot of compression artifacts. I've been manually transcoding the HD shows overnight and watching them the next day, which seems to work pretty well (I know this can be automated but I haven't bothered setting that up). Once I pick up a couple HD extenders, I expect this to be a totally non-issue (I actually had been putting off moving to Sage because I was waiting for the HD extenders).

[Fluffdaddy]

25-30% of the time I could get it to work. But at the end of the day it not worth the effort and I give up trying.
Thank god the HD extender are just about here.

[ThePaladinTech]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

That way if anything started to go wrong with one of the drives I'd have an immediate replacement.

I could be wrong but I don't think a hot spare is an option with raid 0 ... once something 'started to go wrong' your data is already compromised (read: your logical hard drive is already corrupt) ... If you get a real controller I'd probably go raid 5, 1E (if available) or 1. Myself I intend on going JBOD for my sage server and anything I really care about will be archived on my ReadyNAS (XRAID)

[bialio]

HD works well for me on the MVP using High Quality transcode mode. Picture quality is surprisingly good. I have a very powerful server which I think is the key.

My complaints, which I can work around, with HD on the MVP are :

1) skipping / seeking around in an HD program causes lip sync to get off very frequently.
2) There's a situation where the transcoder goes from standard 2 channel stereo to a DD signal (or vica versa) which causes the audio to become "chipmunkized"

btl.

[waynedunham]

I can view HD material on my MVP transcoded in standard, but not high quality. (lowly P4 2.8ghz 1 gig ram). This also assumes that Showanalyzer isn't presently processing files.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

I can view HD material on my MVP transcoded in standard, but not high quality. (lowly P4 2.8ghz 1 meg ram). This also assumes that Showanalyzer isn't presently processing files.

Must be true.. All you'll ever need is 640k.

B

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Must be true.. All you'll ever need is 640k.

B

Ooops, I meant 1 GIG ram! I have fixed the original post.

[zoso]

Originally Posted by bialio

HD works well for me on the MVP using High Quality transcode mode. Picture quality is surprisingly good. I have a very powerful server which I think is the key.

My complaints, which I can work around, with HD on the MVP are :

1) skipping / seeking around in an HD program causes lip sync to get off very frequently.
2) There's a situation where the transcoder goes from standard 2 channel stereo to a DD signal (or vica versa) which causes the audio to become "chipmunkized"

btl.

I see the first issue listed there frequently. About the only problem I have with HD on the MVP. I find quickly skipping back twice and then forward once seems to fix it more often then not.

[jpwegas]

No "maybe" option?

I used to be able to (with 6.1.x) watch 720p shows on the MVP (the server transcoded them), but 1080i shows would be very sluggish. I'm pretty sure this is due to my server horsepower (2.2G P4).

Ditto here on the 2 points above by bialio.

Unfortunately, with 6.2.x, Sage wants to transcode 480i/p shows to the MVP (which it doesn't need to) and DOESN'T transcode 1080i shows to the MVP so I just get a blank screen.

--John

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

No "maybe" option?

I used to be able to (with 6.1.x) watch 720p shows on the MVP (the server transcoded them), but 1080i shows would be very sluggish. I'm pretty sure this is due to my server horsepower (2.2G P4).

Ditto here on the 2 points above by bialio.

Unfortunately, with 6.2.x, Sage wants to transcode 480i/p shows to the MVP (which it doesn't need to) and DOESN'T transcode 1080i shows to the MVP so I just get a blank screen.

--John

I was instrumental in getting this problem fixed. It has been fixed in the 6.3 beta.

[jjstok]

I'm using the beta now and still can't watch HD shows. The conversion functionality was broken in the beta too although George said they can reproduce the problem and they are working on a fix.

[Taddeusz]

Weird, I had a problem with 6.2 but have had no problems with the beta. All my HDHR recordings have been detected properly. It is possible that when I did the installation of the beta over my existing 6.2 that it didn't replace the splitter .ax file that support sent me. I made it available on one of my posts on the topic here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...1&postcount=23

Give it a shot and see what happens.

[doc]

My XP3200 with 1Gb can't transcode to an MVP, but only having one part time HD channel in the UK it doesn't really matter

[jpwegas]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I was instrumental in getting this problem fixed. It has been fixed in the 6.3 beta.

I briefly tried 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 and was still experiencing the same problem.

Do you know if the fix only applies to new recordings? The video format is shown correctly when I view the show info, so I would have thought existing recordings would work correctly once the problem was fixed, but it didn't work for me.

--John

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by doc

My XP3200 with 1Gb can't transcode to an MVP, but only having one part time HD channel in the UK it doesn't really matter

Yea, I don't think I'd expect an AXP 3200 to be able to transcode. My X2 4200 can manage Standard quality at 1080i. Sometimes it can do High quality at 720p but I think that's kind of dependent on the source. I've been able to play a 720p H.264 MOV at high quality. I'm not sure I've tried the 720p HDHR recordings at hight quality though. Not sure if it could be done but it would be nice if the transcoder were at least somewhat multi-threaded so it's load could be spread across both cores. As it is the process will only utilize a single core.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by jpwegas

I briefly tried 6.3.1 and 6.3.2 and was still experiencing the same problem.

Do you know if the fix only applies to new recordings? The video format is shown correctly when I view the show info, so I would have thought existing recordings would work correctly once the problem was fixed, but it didn't work for me.

--John

Yes, it only applies to new recordings. Current recordings will be stuck with whatever they were originally detected as.

[BFisher]

My situation is like Bialio above... very happy with HD on my MVPs 99% of the time. Picture quality is very good (like the full aspect ratio), no stuttering, no issues at all.

Usually about 2-3 shows per week get "chipmunk'd". Usually happens when the commercial skipping isn't working well and it returns back while the commercial is still playing. I assume the stream has some junk in it (screwing up the commskip) and causing chipmunks. Jump forward and jump back fixes it.

About 1 time every other week, I can't watch the show... it's all black. If I compress it, works fine.