Does the HD-100 Suffer Slow Response & Pixilation

[TXVike]

Does the HD-100 suffer from slow response and pixilation like the mvp does? On my MVP, when I change channels, or skip forward or backwards, I get about 1 second of pixilation on the screen and changing menus and such is very sluggish. If I do it from my PC (not the server) with the SageTV client, it is quite snappy. From what I have read, the HD-100 seems to be better quality, but I haven't seen anybody say if it responds more quickly than the MVP to skipping, etc. Thanks.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by TXVike

Does the HD-100 suffer from slow response and pixilation like the mvp does?

No it doesnt.

On my MVP, when I change channels, or skip forward or backwards, I get about 1 second of pixilation on the screen and changing menus and such is very sluggish. If I do it from my PC (not the server) with the SageTV client, it is quite snappy. From what I have read, the HD-100 seems to be better quality, but I haven't seen anybody say if it responds more quickly than the MVP to skipping, etc. Thanks.

The HD100 works better than many HTPC PC's imho

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by TXVike

If I do it from my PC (not the server) with the SageTV client, it is quite snappy. From what I have read, the HD-100 seems to be better quality, but I haven't seen anybody say if it responds more quickly than the MVP to skipping, etc. Thanks.

Your network speed has a lot to do with the response. If you are running on a 100 Mbps network, you should disable animation. I normally use a Gbps network but noticed a major slowdown when I limited my network to 100 Mbps. This may only be an issue when you have a network with multiple devices, but you should take it into consideration.

[Addict]

Originally Posted by carlgar

Your network speed has a lot to do with the response. If you are running on a 100 Mbps network, you should disable animation. I normally use a Gbps network but noticed a major slowdown when I limited my network to 100 Mbps. This may only be an issue when you have a network with multiple devices, but you should take it into consideration.

I'm curious to understand how animation has anything to do with the network speed for an extender. My understanding is that while the server drives the interface, the animation and what's displayed is still rendered by the extender. Am I missing something?

I've been running animation on a 100MB network and two extenders with no issues. It's very rarely sluggish, and way better than my PC client ever was.

[carlgar]

It has been quite a while since I ran my network that slow. At the time, I had the impression that each frame of the animation was being sent across the network. I recall that when I ran the client it was even slower. If you run that way then I guess your experience is more current than. I have no intention of going back to a 100 MB network. I don't think I even brothered to turn animation back on.

[dagar]

That is an apples to tires comparison. Furthermore, the HD extender has a 100bT PHY not a GbE PHY. Actually running in a mixed frame speed environment will induce latency, in the form of frame serialization (queuing) which is a non-trivial issue in dealing with small datagrams; haven't bothered to sniff the extender traffic to check datagram sizes that requires additional work

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by carlgar

Your network speed has a lot to do with the response. If you are running on a 100 Mbps network, you should disable animation. I normally use a Gbps network but noticed a major slowdown when I limited my network to 100 Mbps. This may only be an issue when you have a network with multiple devices, but you should take it into consideration.

Are you sure it has to do with switching to GBE or could it have just been a poor hub/switch you were using? Both the HD-100 and MVP use a 100mb network connection so anything more than 100mb connection would technically be overkill for them. However, not all switches (and especially not hubs) are equal. As dagar stated, running 100mb devices on a GB network could actually increase your latency. I run my extenders on my 100mb 24 port hub (that has 2 - GB ports to act as a "backbone") and have no problems.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by dagar

That is an apples to tires comparison. Furthermore, the HD extender has a 100bT PHY not a GbE PHY. Actually running in a mixed frame speed environment will induce latency, in the form of frame serialization (queuing) which is a non-trivial issue in dealing with small datagrams; haven't bothered to sniff the extender traffic to check datagram sizes that requires additional work

Would this mean that one's server should be throttled down to 100mbps if using the HD100 as a client?

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by carlgar

If you are running on a 100 Mbps network, you should disable animation.

I completely disagree with this recommendation. The animations work perfectly on a 100Mbit network. If you're having slowdown issues w/ them then you may be suffering from the AMD multi-core CPU bug (a fix is posted in the hardware forums) or you could have other network issues.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by salsbst

Would this mean that one's server should be throttled down to 100mbps if using the HD100 as a client?

Yes and No. Obviously the information flowing to the HD100 would be only at 100mbps because that is all the HD100 could accept. However, if you have multiple clients (combination of HD100's, MPV's, Full Clients, etc) then it should be able to take advantage of its additional bandwidth created by using GB ethernet. However, there can be additional latency due to the various speeds of the devices on your network. It would be great if everything had GB connectors (as far as latency is concerned), but is actually overkill for extenders as even a stream of 1080i MPEG2 wouldn't use more than 20mbps.

Edit: This is exactly why all of my clients use my 100mbps ports and my server is connected to the GB ports of my big 26 port switch. This way I know my server has plenty of bandwidth to send and receive and the rest of my clients aren't using up the more expensive GB ports (try taking a look at an unmanaged switch with 24 10/100 ports and 2 GB and compare than to the switches with 24 GB ports, big price difference).