Minimum edition of Vista for Sage and EVR

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by toricred

My thinking on 64-bit was to help with transcoding. I'm transcoding up to 3 HD streams while recording up to 2 HD streams and have 4 HD100s for clients. I want to give the transcoding processes as much memory as possible to help with the speed. I believe that HandBrake works as a 64-bit app if given the chance.

I've never used Handbrake, but it would be strange for it to need > 2GB of memory (or even an amount where it would create memory stress on a 3.2GB box).

Based on my experience with other applications (mencoder, dvrmstowmvhd, and others) transcoding is bound by CPU and then I/O; unless your machine has 8 cores and RAID 0 (or similar), adding more memory to mix won't help much. If on the other hand, you do have that sort of beast; x64 would be a reasonable choice (although I'd probably go with a w2k8 variant).

[bthurber]

Just wanted to say that I went to 64-bit Home Premium and this motherboard (Intel DG45ID) works MUCH better on Vista than XP. HD-PVR content through Cyberlink 8 ultra uses about 15-30% processor vs the 50-80% I was seeing with XP. Admitedly this XP install had about every codec known to man installed and uninstalled on it - so probably not a fair comparison. My feeling though is that Intel should have designated this as a Vista-only board!

I ran into a rather large nuisance that I still need to overcome. XP Professional supports "dynamic" disks and Vista Home Premium doesn't . Guess what type of disk my sage recordings are stored on?

What gives? Apparently, "dynamic" disk is classed as a business technology - and is available only in "business" and Ultimate editions of Vista only. The partition manager offers to convert it back to a "basic" disk - and erase everything on it in the process! Not good. After Googling, it appears that a "dynamic" disk can be changed back to "basic" without data loss by changing a single byte on the drive - and an open source program called "Test Disk" can help me through this process - including backing up my files first.

Just something for others to be aware of if they choose the Home Premium path.

Brad

[Wheemer]

Originally Posted by babgvant

If you can record to a PC with w2k3, and cannot to a PC with Vista it doesn't necessarily mean that Vista is the problem.

Even if you installed Vista on the same HW config as your w2k3 box, you would still have to eliminate other variables (like drivers and configuration) before you could claim with any veracity that Vista was the root cause.

I don't have a HDHR, but I have been able to record content using firewire on a Vista machine which would eliminate Vista as the root cause (at least on some hardware configurations) for that issue.

There was a time when Vista deserved some of the bad press that it got (although even then it was mostly driver problems), but post sp1 that's not true.

My problems are not a hardware configuration error... There is hard any configuration possile when it comes to Sata drives... So what exactly could you mean? Also my drivers are all the latest ones available as well...

You may have the standpoint that Vista is just fine now, it's your choice. But don't belittle my complaints, it sounds like you are a Vista spokesperson.

The simple fact is that I have many more hurdles to jump and much worse performance from my vista machine when compared to my Win2K3 rig.

So far the only thing that's good about Vista for me, has been EVR. And thanks to sage my playback looks better than on XP.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Most of the bad publicity still going around about Vista is simply FUD.

I have to agree. I have Vista Ultimate boxes that are just fine. I've ran the Sage server on XP, Vista and WHS (I prefer WHS so far) and the client on XP and Vista (no preference) with no problems. I'll probably be going from XP to Vista64 on my last XP box soon. That said, I've ran the Windows7 beta and it's not bad either. I don't know if I'll upgrade to it right away though. All of my machines run fine as they are.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

My problems are not a hardware configuration error... There is hard any configuration possile when it comes to Sata drives... So what exactly could you mean? Also my drivers are all the latest ones available as well...

Having a config that doesn't work the way you want doesn't necessarily mean you did something wrong. It can be a symptom of faulty hardware, hardware that doesn't work in the configuration that you have, bad drivers (and I don't mean just the newest ones; my m780 causes a BSOD regularly on the newest drivers, so I use the .19 drivers) or something else. Some components don't play nice with other components even if they are working by themselves.

I'm not saying that you're not having problems, or that you are the problem. What I am saying is that your bad experience with a machine that has Vista, doesn't mean the platform is fundamentally flawed.

Originally Posted by Wheemer

You may have the standpoint that Vista is just fine now, it's your choice. But don't belittle my complaints, it sounds like you are a Vista spokesperson.

Having a positive experience, and relaying it doesn't make a fanboi.

Originally Posted by Wheemer

The simple fact is that I have many more hurdles to jump and much worse performance from my vista machine when compared to my Win2K3 rig.

So far the only thing that's good about Vista for me, has been EVR. And thanks to sage my playback looks better than on XP.

You've haven't done a great job of explaining why Vista should shoulder the blame for those hurdles.

certis paribus

[Ryokurin]

Originally Posted by Wheemer

My problems are not a hardware configuration error... There is hard any configuration possile when it comes to Sata drives... So what exactly could you mean? Also my drivers are all the latest ones available as well...

Uh. It could be a hardware problem, or something else you are doing. I'm running SageTV and Vista just fine (and have been for months) on a all sata drive system running AHCI mode and without. And it ran fine on a mixed drive system for several months before that. The point he was making was that because going to XP fixed it, does not always say that its Vista's fault. It can be anything.

Edit: it seemed to help my occasional stutter. I'm going to have to wait till after primetime to see if I can get rid of ffdshow post processing however.