SageTV Client Recommendations

[KorCar1]

How powerful does a client PC need to be? I'll be building 3 client PC because I want them to be HD compatible. So...what would you experts recommend for CPU, memory, and video card? What is the most important? Thanks.

[paulbeers]

Video card....most important. Even a decent Sempron can be enough for a client for HD, but the vid card seems to always be the bottleneck. 512mb seems to be enough for a client if all you are going to do is have the OX and Sage loaded.

[camus]

Good post, beat me to it. I am about to set up a client myself, (after spending a month with Sage in the family room, I can't watch television in any other room)

Paulbeers, did I read that correctly that your clients only have 6GB HDs? Thanks for the info BTW, my client(s) will be for HD, SD and probably have a DVD player(s) in it(them).

[paulbeers]

Yep my HD client only has a 6GB harddrive. It basically only has Windows Xp and Sage. I pulled it from an old 400mhz celeron system I had that I no longer used. You do not need much space for a client. I also recomend 5400 rpm hard drives for clients too if you can still find one. They make a lot less noise and for a client that is the most important thing when you consider the only time your client is really going to use the hard drive is when it first starts up.

[Mahoney]

I'm just building one now. I went for:

Antec NSK 1300 case
This is a nice small form factor case, bit short on airflow, but has a DVD drive cover so it looks good. Comes with a PSU.

MSI K8NGM2-FID S939
This is generally reckoned the best GeForce 6150 onboard video, which can do all the features of PureVideo in SD and has reasonable HD capabilities too. It also has a PCI-E x16 slot so you can get a better video card in there in future

Athlon XP 3000+
Cheapest S939 processor you can get

Arctic Silencer 64 ULTRA TC heatsink & fan
Well reviewed at SilentPCReview, and with this motherboard you can fit it in - the cpu socket is far enough away from the Antec's PSU.

Samsung P80 80GB HDD
SilentPCReview reckon these are the quietest HDDs, and this is the smallest you can buy new

512M DDR PC3200 (PC400) Memory

Generic DVD-ROM drive

Windows XP Home

nVidia PureVideo decoder OEM

MCE remote & receiver
I've hacked a hole in the front of the Antec to mount this internally

Total cost £333.50, including tax and shipping. Putting it together at the moment.

[mattdcknsn]

One thing that I found out about the client PC is to make sure you have a proc that has good L2 cache. When I was trying to get my client working with a duron 1300 (which only had 64K L2 cache) nothing would work right. I upgraded it to a sempron 2400 (with 256K L2 cache) and almost all of the problems went away. The speed only increased a couple of hundred megahertz, I think it was the cache that made the difference.

[blade]

Originally Posted by mattdcknsn

One thing that I found out about the client PC is to make sure you have a proc that has good L2 cache. When I was trying to get my client working with a duron 1300 (which only had 64K L2 cache) nothing would work right. I upgraded it to a sempron 2400 (with 256K L2 cache) and almost all of the problems went away. The speed only increased a couple of hundred megahertz, I think it was the cache that made the difference.

I have no idea how much cache helps with Sage, but you went from a 1300 to a 2400. That's almost double the speed regardless of how many mhz you increased. AMD doesn't measure their chip speed by mhz, but rather a performance rating.

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by Mahoney

I'm just building one now. I went for:

Let us know how it works out. I'm tempted by the 6150 mother boards but I wonder if they actually do well with HDTV. I'd hate to buy one only to need to get a new video card for it a week later.

[Mahoney]

I'd hate to buy one only to need to get a new video card for it a week later.

They are as cheap as motherboards come anyway, so I reckoned that if I did need to get a video card afterwards it would be no loss.

I'll get hold of some HD content and give it a whirl once install is completed.

[emok]

I've been using a Geforce 6150 based system as my sageserver/client for a few months now....

Configuration:
Aspire X-Qpack Case w/ Seasonic S12-380 PS
MSI K8NGM2-FID
AX2 3800+
1 GB RAM
1x PVR250, 1xPVR500
XP Pro, JRE 1.4.12
Forceware 91.31, PureVideo .223
Sage 5.0.2

My uses:
VMR9 w/FSE enabled
Sage Client HD/SD (I'm running sage as a service)
Sage Server
comskip
HD recorder through firewire
General media center (though I'm not using sage's media center capabilities)

Quick Thoughts:
Overall, I'm quite happy with the setup. Performance is pretty good. I've installed the AMD Dual Core optimizer utility, which I'm not really sure what this does. General recording tasks have no problems. So far, I've been able to record from all four tuners (including HD over firewire) with no problems. CPU usage is minimal. SD playback while recording is smooth. With Inverse Telecine disabled, HD Playback is ok, choppiness is slightly noticeable with certain content but definitely watchable. With IT enabled, I get choppiness in playback of most HD content. CPU usage is around 30-40% during playback. I've been debating getting a new video card (7600GT) but the fanless version is still kind of pricey, so I haven't. Like I said, content is definitely watchable.

Issues:
1. For some reason, with SD playback, I frequently get a weird image freeze which is usually corrected by putting sage client in and out of standby. The image freeze is hard to describe because it's not really a freeze. It's a partial freeze. For example, if you broke a 4:3 image into about 50 vertical sections, the odd sections will freeze after about 3 seconds of playback, but the even sections continue playing the content. If I press stop and then start different content, the new content starts playing but the frozen odd sections still seem to be overlayed on the new content. I'm not sure why I'm getting this issue. It's only in Sage and I imagine that it may be Java related (I don't really know). Perhaps I'll upgrade to sage 5.0.4 and see if it solves the issue. I didn't see anything in the release notes about it, though.

2. NVIDIA IDE drivers, do not install. I've heard a lot of bad things about them and although I haven't really tried them out, I don't want to. I believe the latest version of the nforce drivers don't install the nvidia sw drivers, though I believe you do need to use the nvidia sata drivers.

3. Recent Stability with VCDs (not sage related). I tried inserting a VCD yesterday and the machine BSODed with a MACHINE_CHECK_EXCEPTION. DVD's work fine. I didn't have a chance to try an audio CD. I need to examine this further.

Summary:
Overall I'm happy with the 6150 setup. But I don't believe it has enough video horsepower to get completely smooth HD content. Disabling Inverse Telecine helps with this. I'm also running VMR9 w/FSE enabled, which may tax the video subsystem further. That being said, I still use it to watch my HD content because I'm not super picky and the choppiness is hardly noticeable. I'm a little bit wary of using an Nforce4 chipset because of perceived stability issues, though I'm not sure if anything else would be better.

If I had to do it again in the same situation (5 months ago), I would. If I had to do it now, I would consider waiting a month or so for a Core 2 Duo (even though I'm an AMD fanboy).

[garyellis]

I just installed 2 MVP's in the house....My server PC outputs to a receiver then to the TV via S-video. I've always complained that the picture was not as good as coming through the cable set top box using S-video and I have blamed it on the Hauppauge PVR 150.

Now, with the MVP's using S-video, the picture is much better on the 2 tv's using the MVP's output... Thus, that kills the theory of the Hauppauge card being the problem...Thus, I conclude that it may be my video out card.


I went cheap when I built this last year just to make sure things worked..I bought a G-force 6200.

But, what's confusing me is that a ripped DVD plays beautifully through the server PC and video card..

So, I'm confused...

Live TV through Server to MVP is much better than live TV through server output to video card to tv..

But, video not from PVR card is very good quality through both, which would say its not the video card..

Thoughts???

Gary Ellis

[emok]

I believe there are two big differences between the MVP playback and the PC playback.

1. Different TV encoders (MVP versus Geforce 6200)
2. Different mpeg decoders (MVP versus whatever you are using)

So because you are able to get good quality from both encoders (when you playback DVD), it would seem that the issue is #2.

It sounds like you your mpeg decoders are handling the different sources differently..

I would try to use a different mpeg decoder than the one you are using now.

Which are you using?

[garyellis]

On my server, Sage tells me for a MPEG2 video decoder filter I am using Nvidia video decoder....

for the same on DVD it says "default"...

I also have Nvidia Pure Gold decoder installed...

Gary

[emok]

hmmm... I've had weird issues before where even though I had the purevideo decoder selected, it wasn't being used. Not sure why. I would use the Microsoft Decoder Checkup utility http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en to make sure that the Nvidia Decoder is the preferred one and then set sage to "Default".

Also, can you verify that when playing video, that the nvidia icon appears?

Also, are you using VMR9 or overlay? FSE enabled?

[blade]

Originally Posted by emok

Also, can you verify that when playing video, that the nvidia icon appears?

The tray icon doesn't always appear when using the Nvidia Decoder. When you select it by name it sometimes won't show up in the tray. If it does you normally can't click on it to change the properties anyway.

[Mahoney]

1. For some reason, with SD playback, I frequently get a weird image freeze which is usually corrected by putting sage client in and out of standby. The image freeze is hard to describe because it's not really a freeze. It's a partial freeze. For example, if you broke a 4:3 image into about 50 vertical sections, the odd sections will freeze after about 3 seconds of playback, but the even sections continue playing the content. If I press stop and then start different content, the new content starts playing but the frozen odd sections still seem to be overlayed on the new content. I'm not sure why I'm getting this issue. It's only in Sage and I imagine that it may be Java related (I don't really know). Perhaps I'll upgrade to sage 5.0.4 and see if it solves the issue. I didn't see anything in the release notes about it, though.

That's my problem! So it's not just me... perhaps another driver combo will fix it?

[cord]

I'm using geforce 6150 motherboards in both of my clients, and I can play back HD and SD content with no trouble at all, as long as I don't try to use VMR9. Every once in a great while, I'll see a tiny stutter in HD playback, but it averages less than one per hour of playback, I believe. If I try to user VMR9, the stuttering happens once every 10-15 seconds. I'm going to try fiddling with it again soon though, because the colors are so much better with it.

I'm using an Athlon 64 3200+ in one client and a 3000+ in the other. Neither CPU is ever remotely close to 100%. I play ripped DVDs, SD, HD, and divx files, all with no problem at all.

As far as software goes, there's nothing on the boxes really except for XP Pro, SageTV, the purevideo codec, and the divx pro codec.

[wheelrandolph]

Hi All,
Good Thread--I am a little confused on the cpu. I have been running Sage 1.5 years in single box setup and am currently getting ready to build a server/client setup. I have an Athlon64x2 3800+ (dual core) which is my Sage box. I just bought an Athlon64 3500+ (single core) and the cheapest pci-e video card I could find (for the server). I thought the dual core should go in the client pc with the 6600gt video card to do the HD viewing. I will have 6 tuners (HD and Sd) in the server.

Should I put the dual core cpu in the server? Thanks for your help.

Randy

[emok]

It really depends where you're going to do most of your "multi-processing". For most people, this will be on their server. The server will need to use multiple tuners and record to multiple hard drives simultaneously. In addition, it will need to do post processing (comskip/showanalyzer) and streaming to multiple clients.

As for the client, I would imagine that while you are watching your content, you won't be doing much else with the machine. So the processing can be dedicated to decoding content smoothly. I believe that this will be handled better by a faster, single core processor (instead of a slower dual-core). The client definitely needs the better video card.

[wheelrandolph]

Thanks Emok--that makes sense the way you describe it. I will be doing a LOT of processing on the server with several tuners, etc. while the client should be a lean, thin machine JUST for Sage.

Randy