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SageTV Software Discussion related to the SageTV application produced by SageTV. Questions, issues, problems, suggestions, etc. relating to the SageTV software application should be posted here. (Check the descriptions of the other forums; all hardware related questions go in the Hardware Support forum, etc. And, post in the customizations forum instead if any customizations are active.)

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  #1  
Old 03-27-2007, 06:02 AM
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scoful scoful is offline
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SageTV HD Client Vista

I've been trying to setup a new client box. I had Vista laying around and, since I needed to become more familiar with it, decided to use it for the OS.
My hardware is an Athlon XP 2000+ CPU with 1 GB RAM and 40GB 10,000K HDD - NVIDIA FX5200 256MB AGP card. I am using the Purevideo decoder. SD Playback is fine. HD playback seems to skip every other frame and controls are slow to respond. With other decoders there was almost no control response.
Here's the real question - is it Vista or my hardware?
I have another XP client that plays back fine on HD (controls are still slow) and it is a first generation P4 with 512mb.
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  #2  
Old 03-27-2007, 07:11 AM
bcjenkins bcjenkins is offline
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Which box has the 7300GT in it? Purevideo is not Vista compatible according to NVidia. I recently set up a box with Vista Ultimate, installed Cyberlink's PowerDVD 7 trial. The PC uses a NVidia 6600, nonGT. Watched Dancing with the Stars and 24 last night without a hitch in HD.

B

P.S. Make sure you go into settings in PowerDVD and enable hardware acceleration. Not on by default.
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  #3  
Old 03-27-2007, 07:27 AM
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Jesse Jesse is offline
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Hi,

Sagetv hardware requirements specify a minimum of a P4 3.0 for HD. I don't think an XP 2000+ is going to get it done.

Jesse
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Server: Asus P5Q-EM DO, Q6600, 8 Gigs ram, WHS 2011, 1 HDHomerun(x2 OTA), 1 HD-PVR, 1 Colossus, V7.1.9 sage, 3.3 TB vid storage.
HD100 X1
HD200 X2
HD300 X1
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  #4  
Old 03-27-2007, 05:35 PM
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Wheemer Wheemer is offline
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with a system such as yours, vista is the last choice...

Also 6600gt is minimum for perfect HD playback
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  #5  
Old 03-27-2007, 09:02 PM
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scoful scoful is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesse View Post
Hi,

Sagetv hardware requirements specify a minimum of a P4 3.0 for HD. I don't think an XP 2000+ is going to get it done.

Jesse
My other client is an old Dell Dimension (Dimentia) 8100 with an NVIDIA MX440 128mb video card. It plays HD content without a hitch (UI is very slow during HD playback - but playback is pretty smooth using Purevideo Decoder). My Server is a Pentium D 2.66ghz and works great.
It's my understanding (and taskmanager seems to confirms this) that by using the Purevideo decoder, the raw stream data is simply forwarded to the GPU to do all of the decoding. As long as the system bus and OS can stream the raw data it's all GPU. The CPU load when using a software decoder is far greater - and playback suffers.
I have not yet transferred an HD file to the client's local drive to eliminate a network bottleneck.
I lean a little more towards Vista as being a problem (probably more with my hardware than Sage) but wasn't sure what other users had experienced on the client side.
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  #6  
Old 03-28-2007, 11:24 AM
emok emok is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by scoful View Post
My other client is an old Dell Dimension (Dimentia) 8100 with an NVIDIA MX440 128mb video card. It plays HD content without a hitch (UI is very slow during HD playback - but playback is pretty smooth using Purevideo Decoder). My Server is a Pentium D 2.66ghz and works great.
It's my understanding (and taskmanager seems to confirms this) that by using the Purevideo decoder, the raw stream data is simply forwarded to the GPU to do all of the decoding. As long as the system bus and OS can stream the raw data it's all GPU. The CPU load when using a software decoder is far greater - and playback suffers.
I have not yet transferred an HD file to the client's local drive to eliminate a network bottleneck.
I lean a little more towards Vista as being a problem (probably more with my hardware than Sage) but wasn't sure what other users had experienced on the client side.
Another hardware datapoint...

I put together a client box with a socket 370 MSI barebones I had lying around. It's running:
XP SP2
P3 1.2
512MB RAM
Intel 815 chipset
ATI X1300 PCI
Wireless network (netgear pre-N)
Cyberlink decoder

For the most part, this is working fine for HD playback. I get occasional wireless network hiccups which cause some issues but with a typical drag/drop filecopy test, I can get about 40-45Mbps (even with standard b/g clients connected).

From a performance standpoint, the UI IS a bit sluggish, and when playing most HD content, my CPU usage is hovering around 90%. When viewing, I don't really notice any major dropouts or stuttering.

Based on this info, I would venture to guess that this is perhaps the absolute minimum config that I could use to watch my HD content. In any case, it sounds like your hardware *should* be sufficient and your issue is probably the result of lack of driver maturity for Vista. Other driver-factors involved: video card drivers, motherboard chipset drivers, decoder compatibility.

Or I could be completely wrong and completely lucky with my setup.

E

P.S. When is that Sage HD extender coming out?
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  #7  
Old 03-28-2007, 08:52 PM
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Ryokurin Ryokurin is offline
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Have you tried it in overlay? I got a A64 3200+ with a x700 pro, and while it can do 1080i in VMR9, it still has some stutters depending on the content. Its fine in overlay and that seems to be the opposite of what just about everyone else experiences.
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  #8  
Old 03-29-2007, 09:37 AM
kltye kltye is offline
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I have a client running Vista as well, and the Purevideo decoders don't really "forward" the data to the GPU - my CPU usage goes close to 95% when playing back HD, and it looks like it's being played back at 15 FPS or so. I switched over to the PowerDVD decoder and CPU usage is down to 20-50%.

Vista seems to have slowed down Sage a little, but I've also run Longhorn Beta 2 on a P III 1GHz with an FX5200 card, and it wasn't too bad at all.

Oh, my client is running an Athlon64 3000+ and an X1600 AGP card, with 768MB of RAM.
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  #9  
Old 03-29-2007, 03:15 PM
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Wheemer Wheemer is offline
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My Vista client runs almost perfectly, with the latest beta and I had to set sage to not use the system volume.

It's amazingly snappy lately, but I am experiencing random exits of sage, but that's more of a beta thing.
My purevideo decoder works perfectly, with less than 20% CPU during HD playback.

However, Sage's FSE is not completely working. I see tearing in the top portion of the video hd and sd. And I have sage set to never loose focus, yet it does so it's easy to tell FSE ain't totally fixed yet. But there is progress!
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