Jetway J7F2 Based TV Server

[keegan]

Hi Guys,

Is anyone using the J7F2 as a TV Server? Using one of these in my home server at the minute and have never had a problem from a processing point of view. As this is fanless and very low power I was hoping to get one for use as a dedicated TV server with SQL running elsewhere.
It has on board MPEG2 decoding but I am not certain if that would be of any use to TV Server.

The plan would be;

J7F2 Mainboard
Dual Tuner DVB-T PCI card (TBD)
1GB RAM
500GB WD Green Power HD


The clients (two max, rarely used together) will have a little more grunt for playback. Thoughts?

Thanks,
Keegan

[Ruud]

Hello Keegan,
At this moment I'm using the J7F3 as a server with a dual analog card. What I have read is that CPU power is double the VIA processor, but looking at tv server using both tuners only has a cpu level of appr. 40%.
Running a movie via the network on the client (same specs, only with PCI video card (see specs below) with HWXA via windvd) with a resolution of 1360x768 moves the cpu load to appr. 55%

hope this helps.
Ruud.

[keegan]

Hi Ruud,

Having seen some of your posts regarding low power systems I hoped you would respond

I think I will give this a go, at worst I will be able to find a use for the Jetway or sell it on easily enough and at best I will have a near silent low power TV server to play with. Why would watching a film increase CPU like that? Does TV server also stream recorded TV or do the clients play it direct?

Thanks,
Keegan

PS. Just reread your post and noticed the word "client" before "movies", I think I need more coffee today

[Ruud]

Hey Keegan,

I always watch recorded TV via a file share ('my movies', because watching them via the TV section gives me sometimes no sound), so the server does not stream. But processing the .ts (or .mpg) file at a resolution of 1360x768 takes some CPU. The video card that I have in my system (Sparkle 6200) is the fastest pci card available (at least that I could find) that supports (hardware) DX9 and off-loads the CPU. Without this video card, Mediaportal would make the CPU 'grind' even not playing any content ;-).
Bare in mind that when you use comskip on the TV server, that this also takes appr. 30% CPU power (with a low priority and thus not interfering with the recordings).

kind regards,
Ruud

[keegan]

Thanks for the tips, someone at work just pointed out the following card which I will be looking into;
SPARKLE Computer

Supports DX10 and is passively cooled which is nice, the power requirements I am not so certain of however and It won't fit in the custom case I am currently using but looks like it will do the job

I have a few old machines to start testing on so will be sure to post up my findings.

Thanks,
Keegan

[Ruud]

Hi, my video card is also a sparkle. When I bought it, this card you point out was not available. Just curious what the power consumption of this card will be, only have 80Watts available, that is also for 7" lcd and vga splitter / amplifier. My current card is not 'strong' enough to play hd content, this one might just do the trick.... ;-)
look forward to your findings.

regards,
Ruud.

[keegan]

Quick update, I have TV Server running on an old Dell and a VIA SP13000 as the client. I think this is too much for the onboard graphics but will be getting a pci card tomorrow to test further.

[Ruud]

Originally Posted by keegan

Quick update, I have TV Server running on an old Dell and a VIA SP13000 as the client. I think this is too much for the onboard graphics but will be getting a pci card tomorrow to test further.

Hello Keegan,
I'm looking forward to your test results. In te meantime I have emailed Sparkle the power consumption question for their 8500 PCI card but did not receive any sign of life....
Currently the RC1 has some performance issues when it comes to rendering fonts on the screen: resulting in high CPU loads. Please keep this in mind when testing as this is not representative (I hope it will be fixed) for previous versions.
k.r.
Ruud.

[keegan]

Hi Ruud,

Can't wait to hear the consumption on that board, I think it will be quite high though. I've got a PCI card in the SP13000 and can get quite a good picture though I think my reception needs some tweaking!

So far I'm quite impressed by the GUI for watching TV but on my client it runs a little sluggish. That is likely related to the font rendering issues you mention though so may fix itself with the next update. My work laptop it runs very nicely though so I at least know the TV server is working quite well. I can't watch recorded TV though which is a problem but I am going to try your suggestion of accessing the recordings direct.

I also think that the 512MB of RAM in my client is way under spec, will be sorting that out next week though so hopefully that will speed things up nicely as it won't spend so much time paging.

This has at least proved to me that MP is up to the task, saves me buying an expensive PVR at least

[Ruud]

Hi,

just got word (mail) from the Sparkle tech support department.

--------------
Answer:
Dear sir,
The power consumption list:
1. SF-PC44dh256 -20W,
2. SF-pc85Gt256u2 -30W,
thanks.
--------------

Let's do the math ;-)

k.r.
Ruud.