HD200 Extender - Is It Doing The Heavy Lifting?

[Savage1701]

I've looked around the stickies and such - if I have an HD200 hooked up to my SageTV server, is the HD200 doing the hard work of decoding HD and H.264 recordings, or is the server doing that and then streaming the "finished product" to the HD200?

I am assuming the HD200 does the hard work, but not totally sure.

Thanks.

[stanger89]

Yes, the server does nothing with the HD200, or the HD100 besides run the UI logic and feed the files.

[Savage1701]

Thanks, I appreciate your taking the time to reply and clarify that for me. I would have assumed "yes", but we all know where assumptions leads... :-)

Thanks again.

[Tikker]

this is sorta related, but does the server ever do any heavy lifting? I would assume with placeshifter it has to transcode, but in normal client/extender mode I would assume it just provides the transport stream

[stanger89]

The only time in a "local" config it ever does any heavy lifting is if you're using a MediaMVP and playing something other than SD MPEG-2, in that case the transcode the audio/video.

[Tiki]

There actually are some cases where your server must do some heavy lifting, at least indirectly. One example is if you are using the new STVi that allows you to play Hulu and Netflix via Playon. In that case, your server has another piece of software (called Playon) installed that is grabbing the video from Hulu or Netflix or wherever and transcoding it and serving it up so that Sage can then stream the feed.

So, the Sage server software isn't doing any heavy lifting, but your server still needs to be fairly powerful to handle the transcoding duties.

There may be some other similar cases. But if you are just using the standard Sage software with the HD200 extender, it's the extender that does all the work.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Tiki

There actually are some cases where your server must do some heavy lifting, at least indirectly. One example is if you are using the new STVi that allows you to play Hulu and Netflix via Playon. In that case, your server has another piece of software (called Playon) installed that is grabbing the video from Hulu or Netflix or wherever and transcoding it and serving it up so that Sage can then stream the feed.

So, the Sage server software isn't doing any heavy lifting, but your server still needs to be fairly powerful to handle the transcoding duties.

There may be some other similar cases. But if you are just using the standard Sage software with the HD200 extender, it's the extender that does all the work.

Correct. But the Playon software can be installed on any other powerful PC on your network so that it doesn't affect the performance of your Sage server.

Gerry

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Tiki

There actually are some cases where your server must do some heavy lifting, at least indirectly. One example is if you are using the new STVi that allows you to play Hulu and Netflix via Playon. In that case, your server has another piece of software (called Playon) installed that is grabbing the video from Hulu or Netflix or wherever and transcoding it and serving it up so that Sage can then stream the feed.

So, the Sage server software isn't doing any heavy lifting, but your server still needs to be fairly powerful to handle the transcoding duties.

There may be some other similar cases. But if you are just using the standard Sage software with the HD200 extender, it's the extender that does all the work.

Hold on here though, you are really muddying up the water here. You are talking about 3rd party software and that is what is requiring a powerful server. That has nothing to do with whether the HD200 is doing the "heavy lifting" or not. Technically the HD200 is still doing the "heavy lifting" as it isn't requiring the Sage Server to transcode any video for it to play. The reason the Server needs to do so much, has to do with the 3rd party software doing some transcoding. The HD200 is still playing the video exactly as it is being offered.

[Tikker]

Originally Posted by Tiki

There actually are some cases where your server must do some heavy lifting, at least indirectly.

lets talk just about sage server, not a generic file server

if all you're doing is running sage + client/extender all the sage server does is the transport

placeshifter adds transcoding to the sage server


any other stuff you add to the fileserver would of course add cpu cycles, but is neither here nor there

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Tikker

lets talk just about sage server, not a generic file server

if all you're doing is running sage + client/extender all the sage server does is the transport

placeshifter adds transcoding to the sage server


any other stuff you add to the fileserver would of course add cpu cycles, but is neither here nor there

As I said, " if you are just using the standard Sage software with the HD200 extender, it's the extender that does all the work".

However, there are some add-ons that require some work by the server.
I felt it was worth pointing out so the OP is not surprised. The Playon example I gave was not some random piece of software unrelated to Sage like a Word Processor or a video game - it is a plugin for Sage that allows you to view Hulu and other things through Sage and the HD200. This is not the only plugin that requires the server to do some work - I believe the Webfeed encoder plugin also requires the PC to do some work.

[nwboater]

I believe Comskip is another application often used with Sage that consumes lots of CPU time.

Rod

[MrFusion]

Just to be clear on the UI execution part -- where does UI logic actually get executed? What part runs on the server, and what part runs on the HD200.

For instance, suppose I write a little Java plugin which, triggered by a UI event (ie user picks a menu item), does something without using Sage API (ie writes to a com port, establishes a TCP stream, etc) -- is that done on the server or the HD200?

And is there a difference between a java plugin, and java embedded in the UI code?

Also, say you're doing file access, API allows you to access files on both the HD200 and the server -- so what is being done where?

Is this documented anywhere?

Cheers!

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by MrFusion

Just to be clear on the UI execution part -- where does UI logic actually get executed? What part runs on the server, and what part runs on the HD200.

For instance, suppose I write a little Java plugin which, triggered by a UI event (ie user picks a menu item), does something without using Sage API (ie writes to a com port, establishes a TCP stream, etc) -- is that done on the server or the HD200?

And is there a difference between a java plugin, and java embedded in the UI code?

Also, say you're doing file access, API allows you to access files on both the HD200 and the server -- so what is being done where?

Is this documented anywhere?

Cheers!

You're probably better off asking these types of questions in the Studio forum. I've done a little studio programming and can answer some of your questions, but I am by no means an expert.

If you write java code and execute in on the HD200 it is actually run on the server. There may be a way to write code that executes on the extender itself, but I don't know how.

I don't know what you mean by java embedded in the UI code. As far as I know there is no way to do that. In the UI you can only use the widgets available in Studio, but you can write java methods that are called by the UI by using Action widgets. And using some nifty wrapper code you can do the opposite - call Sage APIs from within java.

So to answer your first question last, some of the code gets executed on the server and some on the HD200. The HD200 does all of the "heavy lifting" when it comes to decoding and displaying the actual audio and video, but the server does a lot of the "heavy lifting" to execute the UI.

I hope that helps.

Tom

[MrFusion]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

You're probably better off asking these types of questions in the Studio forum. I've done a little studio programming and can answer some of your questions, but I am by no means an expert....

...I don't know what you mean by java embedded in the UI code. As far as I know there is no way to do that. In the UI you can only use the widgets available in Studio, but you can write java methods that are called by the UI by using Action widgets. And using some nifty wrapper code you can do the opposite - call Sage APIs from within java....

..I hope that helps.

Tom

Thanks Tom, that certainly helped. And, yes, I was trying in my hamfisted way to ask if calling java methods within Action widgets was handled significantly differently to java plugin execution (ie one runs on HD200 whilst other runs on server).

Cheers!

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by MrFusion

For instance, suppose I write a little Java plugin which, triggered by a UI event (ie user picks a menu item), does something without using Sage API (ie writes to a com port, establishes a TCP stream, etc) -- is that done on the server or the HD200?

That's done on the server, AFAIK all UI logic is executed on the server.

And is there a difference between a java plugin, and java embedded in the UI code?

Not that I'm aware of, though it sort of depends on how you install the plugin.

[will]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The only time in a "local" config it ever does any heavy lifting is if you're using a MediaMVP and playing something other than SD MPEG-2, in that case the transcode the audio/video.

What if you use an HD PVR to record TV at its maximum quality (13.5 Mb/s) using its h.264 codec. Would the HD200 still be doing all the "heavy lifting" or would the server need to do any transcoding?

Will

[tmiranda]

The HD200 can decode that so it will do the heavy lifting.

The MVP is a special case. It ONLY decodes MPEG2 so anything that is not MPEG2 gets transcoded.

[stanger89]

To expand, SageTV does not ever transcode anything for the HD200. Anything the HD200 plays, it plays natively.

[Savage1701]

Thanks one and all, even for the tangents. Interesting all around. :-)