MediaPortal minimum hardware: my experience (1 Viewer)

[karhill]

Just a datapoint to let people know my experience with TV streaming with Mediaportal 1.3.0 Final:

I'm running a client/server setup, with the MP TV server (windows 7) running on a 2 core Intel Pentium E2180, 2Ghz. This is a rather old and slow Core2 processor. The Server is grabbing video from Hauppauge HD-PVR boxes hooked to my cable provider.

I'm running MP clients on AMD E-350 boxes (windows 7). This is AMD's first Atom-level processor with an integrated GPU (Radeaon 61xx series). These processors are not fast, but they are dual core. The network is a gigabit Ethernet.

I get smooth HD video on 3 clients right now. The load on the server is quite minimal. I was not getting smooth video with version 13.1 of the AMD catalyst drivers. The video would stutter every 5 seconds or so. With version 11-12 (much older) of the catalyst drivers, the video is quite smooth. CPU load factor runs about 20-30% on the clients.

 

[gonzo90017]

Interesting about the Catalyst driver version. So the version that works for you is 11.12? I had to upgrade one of my clients from an integrated Radeon HD 3200 to a stand alone 5450 in order to be able to watch tv at 1080.

 

[kiwijunglist]

The difference in hardware requirements between HD video (720P/1080P) and HD tv (1080i) is huge.

For example an onboard HD3200 would be fine for DXVA compliant HD video, but would not cope with hardware decoding of live TV.

 

[karhill]

I should clarify that the integrated GPU in the AMD E-350 is a 6310, not a 61xx. The client boxes are streaming live TV from a Mediaportal server which is grabbing video from an HD-PVR hooked to my cable boxes. The cable boxes are configured to output 1080i over component video. I had 2 clients working fine, but a third was having stuttering problems. The only real difference between the 3 clients was the catalyst driver version. The box that stuttered had catalyst version 13.1, but when I dropped it back to 11.12 (like the other 2), it worked fine. I didn't really investigate much beyond that...perhaps the 13.1 version was configured differently...not using hardware acceleration or something...