HD Extender: Server-Client Advice Needed

[skyeclad]

Hey guys,

After playing with the HD Extender a few days I've come to the conclusion that the performance of the Extender is highly dependent on having a decent resource overhead available at the Server.

Well, my Server is also my primary HTPC so it is also tasked with playing back recorded shows, running comskip, viewing pictures, transcoding, etc. The problem is that this isn't a beefy PC, it's just an A64 3200+ so there is really no further overhead when running comskip, transcoding or even the photo slide show screen saver. That has resulted in VERY sluggish UI performance on the Extender, not playback mind you but the UI is slowed down considerably.

So here's my question, I have another PC with a Quad Core Q6600 that I could use as a server and relegate the current HTPC as a Client. I would think this would provide plenty of power to drive both the HTPC and the HD Extender. The cost of this would be another $30 for the client.

OR I could purchase an 3800+X2 CPU for my HTPC and that should also add some much needed overhead. Of course, how much overhead is unknown but this would come at a cost of about $60.

Any advice on these options?

[ecoolman]

Originally Posted by skyeclad

Hey guys,

After playing with the HD Extender a few days I've come to the conclusion that the performance of the Extender is highly dependent on having a decent resource overhead available at the Server.

The HD extender should result in much less resources required on the server, compared to the SD extender at least, since the server is not required to transcode content to sent to the extender. Have you considered just offloading the comskip process to a separate machine?

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by ecoolman

The HD extender should result in much less resources required on the server, compared to the SD extender at least, since the server is not required to transcode content to sent to the extender. Have you considered just offloading the comskip process to a separate machine?

I have but I also had to turn off the slide show screen saver as this sent the Sagetv UI program into the 80%+ range in CPU usage. The net result was horrible extender UI performance. Why the UI should be so effected when it is still capable of displaying HD video is odd to me.

[electronics4lif]

My server has an Athlon XP 2500+ cpu. It does fine with the HD extender, HDHomerun, 3 SD tuners, and Showanaylzer/Dirmon2. It however, does not do any transcoding. Are you sure that your server isn't adequate using the HD extender? No transcoding should be happening when using the HD extender.