Help set my expectations - channel changing / stability

[speedorhaste]

Area: Media Portal Program
MediaPortal Version: 0.2.0.0 RC4$CVS-25.04.2006-10:17:18,31 
 (2006-04-25)
MediaPortal Skin: MCE
Windows Version: Windows XP (SP2)
.NET CLR Version: 2.0.50727
DirectX Version: 4.09.00.0904 (9.0c)
Audio Codec: MPEG/AC3/DTS/LPCM Audio Decoder
Video Codec: CyberLink DTV Video Decoder
CPU Type: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Memory: 511 MB
Motherboard: A8V Deluxe (ASUSTeK Computer Inc.)
TV Card Model: DNTVLive LP TS Capture DVB-T
TV Card Type: DVB
TV Card Driver: 2.0.0.3
Video Card Model: Nvidia Geforce4 MX 420 (64 MB)
Video Card Driver: 8.4.2.1
Video Card Resolution: 1280x1024
Video Render Type: VMR9
Audio Card Model: Realtek AC'97 Audio for VIA (R) Audio Controller
Audio Card Driver: 5.10.0.5530
Synopsis::

I am very new to MediaPortal, but having read the dearth of problems people have with MCE, it looks like a highly worthy alternative. So, apologies for the potentially stupid question - which is - what should I expect in terms of speed of channel change and stabiliy of the RC4 release. I ask because:

Channel change typically takes around 10 seconds
Sometines the channel being selected does not display with a no signal detected message. Subsequent attempts then pick it up ok.

I have often been forced to close MP down because of it freezing. This normally happens when the CPU usage hits the ton and does not recover. Perhaps my old video card is not up to the task

Using DNTV Live directly in Windows runs fine - 1 second channel chnages and no crashes. I appreciate this is a community developed application and looks and feels great, but just wanted to benchmark reasonable performance expectations.

[eric.c.mi]

i doubt that a MX 420 is DX 9
MediaPortal works best if the video card is 100% DX9 compatable.

[Callifo]

Its not, its a DX7 card, otherwise the rest of the system looks fine.

[speedorhaste]

Thanks for that. What would be a reasonable spec GPU card that is fully compatible with DX9? Many HTPC builders seem to use 6600 cards, which seem a bit over the top for a PC that I use mostly for general work but am also using to experiment with and learn about HTPC stuff, such as MP. Would a 6200 Nvidia be fine?

[eric.c.mi]

yep, a 6200 would do just fine as far as I know.

[Velk]

Originally Posted by speedorhaste

Area: Media Portal Program
MediaPortal Version: 0.2.0.0 RC4$CVS-25.04.2006-10:17:18,31 
 (2006-04-25)
MediaPortal Skin: MCE
Windows Version: Windows XP (SP2)
.NET CLR Version: 2.0.50727
DirectX Version: 4.09.00.0904 (9.0c)
Audio Codec: MPEG/AC3/DTS/LPCM Audio Decoder
Video Codec: CyberLink DTV Video Decoder
CPU Type: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Memory: 511 MB
Motherboard: A8V Deluxe (ASUSTeK Computer Inc.)
TV Card Model: DNTVLive LP TS Capture DVB-T
TV Card Type: DVB
TV Card Driver: 2.0.0.3
Video Card Model: Nvidia Geforce4 MX 420 (64 MB)
Video Card Driver: 8.4.2.1
Video Card Resolution: 1280x1024
Video Render Type: VMR9
Audio Card Model: Realtek AC'97 Audio for VIA (R) Audio Controller
Audio Card Driver: 5.10.0.5530
Synopsis::

I am very new to MediaPortal, but having read the dearth of problems people have with MCE, it looks like a highly worthy alternative. So, apologies for the potentially stupid question - which is - what should I expect in terms of speed of channel change and stabiliy of the RC4 release. I ask because:

Channel change typically takes around 10 seconds
Sometines the channel being selected does not display with a no signal detected message. Subsequent attempts then pick it up ok.

I have often been forced to close MP down because of it freezing. This normally happens when the CPU usage hits the ton and does not recover. Perhaps my old video card is not up to the task

Using DNTV Live directly in Windows runs fine - 1 second channel chnages and no crashes. I appreciate this is a community developed application and looks and feels great, but just wanted to benchmark reasonable performance expectations.

Actually I would disagree with previous posters in that the problems you see are not necessarily hardware related.

For example, I have a X2 4800, 2GB and a 7800GTX, and with the default configuration for mediaportal I encountered frequent drops of channels with 'No Signal' error that blacked out all other channels until it was restarted, long delays, frequent lockups and painfully slow channel switching.

Fiddling with it a lot, I found that channel switching time was drastically improved by disabling timeshifting and then improved significantly again by disabling EPG grabbing from DVB.

I found I got better results from the nvidia video decoder rather than the default one, and am using that currently.

It also seems considerably more stable if you keep it fullscreen - it often crashes or locks up when using it windowed, especially when switching to fullscreen.

I do find still though that almost everything about MP is slower than I would expect - right from the configuration utility which takes 30-40 seconds to load and gives no progress feedback up to switching to TV mode from the 'My TV' menu which takes a significant amount of time even with my current settings ( which at least make channel switching timely ).

On the other hand, I saw in a support post here a suggestion to try another DBA application like MyTheatre to see if there were driver problems, and my experience with that was that mytheatre worked perfectly, quickly and in a completely stable manner with the same decoders I used in mediaportal.

Unfortunately it's not free and doesn't have the functionality of MP, but I'd recommend checking it out to see if your hardware is up to your expectations for tv watching.

[muty]

I personaly agree with Velk. I'm isong 2 NOVA-s cards and with the default codec TV was crashing after 5-6 minutes of playback (I even needed to uninstall and then install again the capture cards's drivers to get them working again). then I changed to the snapstream codec and the problem was gone

*edit
I have the snapstream codec from BTV 4 which I don't use anymore since I moved to MediaPortal . So if you don't have it just try it with the NVIDIA one

[speedorhaste]

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. Will give some of these a shot. I do have a problem watching TV with timeshift off - when it is off, the screen aspect goes wacky and I have to force it to stretch to get back to normal, and I get serious audio sync and de-interlacing noise. Turn back on timeshift and all those problems go away.

Not understanding what 95% of the log entries mean, I have found where the channel change instruction occurs, and sure enough, the log processes ten or so commands, at a second each, before the chosen channel is displayed. I'll have a prod around the log to see if any of those commands can be avoided through options etc.

And I agree with the experience with full screen versus window set up. However, when I do have a crash in full screen mode, the only way I have been able to recover is to reset the computer. Ctrl-alt-delete just does not get me to the point where I can close the application. With that sort of experience, MP is a great product to blood yourself on - but in the study, far away from the family TV where the trusty STB goes on relentlessly.

Oh, one other question- I don't have selected post processing with ffdshow. What is that all about and recommended selection?

[Velk]

Originally Posted by speedorhaste

And I agree with the experience with full screen versus window set up. However, when I do have a crash in full screen mode, the only way I have been able to recover is to reset the computer. Ctrl-alt-delete just does not get me to the point where I can close the application. With that sort of experience, MP is a great product to blood yourself on - but in the study, far away from the family TV where the trusty STB goes on relentlessly.

I find that alt-f4 works to close media portal in quite a lot of circumstances where it has become non responsive or the display is corrupted/blanked. Turning off 'force hide taskbar' and 'keep on top' in settings I would also recommend highly 8)