MediaPortal on ITX (2 Viewers)

[Kotik]

vista and evr are having problems in using the codecs. vista and vmr9 are unstable.

so unfortunately, the tsreader won't be changed in near future. i am trying to get it somehow working, but I don't see any chance to get ts files played smooth enough on ION for the next months...

XP and VMR9 is way way better than VISTA and EVR or 7, at least for ION. You should try it. I tested VISTA and EVR yesterday i still wonder how people are able to watch HDTV with ION and EVR. It stutters and there are dropped frames.

The only problem i currently have with XP is this annoying deinterlacing bug.

I thought i would give a chance to NVIDIA since from what i am reading across the net their drivers and hardware are both improved compared to how thing were some years ago, when ATI was the way to go if you intended to watch HD.

It turns out that for ION at least there is still room for improvement, don't misunderstand me, ION is a great and powerful toy to have, but like every decent piece of hardware it also needs a decent software and this is where NVIDIA needs to put more work into.

BTW. Vista and VMR9 gives you no DXVA so no point of trying it without CPU power.

 

[OnkelChris]

vista and evr is great... ION itself is capable with vista. I don't see any problems in this combination. if I get CoreAVC h264 or MPC h264 working correct with ts files, my HTPC is 100%

 

[sixgun]

I think you will find 1080i will not be possible. I hope your HDTV signal isnt in 1080i - tends to be very CPU intensive with lower-end video chipsets (see the 780g posts on this forum)

Hi,

I have a toshiba 1080i TV and use a 780g motherboard with the HD3200 graphics on board. I find that some 1080p mkv video files do not playback very well but others do perfectly. Could that be down to my TV being 1080i and my PC effectively having to interlace the video?

I'd appreciate it if you could point me at a few relevant topics on the forums.

Many Thanks.

 

[kiwijunglist]

sixgun: what is cpu useage when playing video? What does SHIFT+! tell you while playing video? what h264 codec are you using? Have you got renderer set to EVR in MP Config? Is the movie dxva compliant? Can you please run graphedit while the movie is playing a post a screenshot of the graph please.

If you answer/do all of the above then I can help you.

 

[Kotik]

MBAFF Deinterlacing is fixed on latest NVIDIA drivers.

 

[JACOB B]

KOTIK,
Does that mean you now can play 1080i on your 330/ION combo with no problems?
I have been reading up on this thread today, as I am searching for new hardware for MP clients for HDTV.

I am considering the ASROCK ION 330HT with Blu-ray - or maybe the new ZOTAC ZBOX HD-ID11 ??

Hi,

I am currently planning to build a tv-server, and two media clients. The biggest goal out of this is to create a setup that does not increase the opex costs of running our house. I have changed all the light bulbs in the house from 60w -> 8w, so I now have some power I can make use of! This power works out at roughly 270 watts... so not a massive amount, but hopefully enough! As the light bulbs where never always on, the solution also can not be always on.

My requirements are:

- Clients must consume less than 60w
- One of the clients must include a standard dvd player
- Clients must be able to handle the smooth running of MediaPortal
- Clients must be able to come out of sleep mode/boot from cold in <60secs
- Server must be able act as TV-Server and NAS
- Server must consume less than 150w
- Server must be able to handle up to four tv streams simultaneously
- Server must be able to record up to four tv streams simultaneously
- Server must be able to record up to two HD streams simultaneously
- Server must be able to serve up to two HD streams simultaneously
- Solution must be able to timeshift one HD tv stream

There are no requirements around being able to anything beyond the above.

Questions:

1) Does the server decode any of the streams, or will it dump the digitial outputs from the cards straight to disk, and then out to the clients? If so, can I assume the Server does not need much more power than the clients?

2) For the clients I am considering the ION platform the dual core 330 Atom (1.6mhz) for the clients, meaning HD decoding will be smooth, but will Media Portal (the actual interface) run smoothly on this, or will it feel slow and clunky?

3) Can the TV-Server be run without a GUI? I am considering running it on Windows Server 2008, which has a core option running without a GUI.

4) What is the thinnest OS I can run the clients on? Are we thinkin XP or Windows 7?

5) How much RAM is required (actually used), for the TV-Server, and also for the Client? And which would benefit from more?

6) Do SDD make any difference to MP clients? I know they can faster, but is it noticable (especially in low powered rigs), and do they hang?

7) Has anyone attempted to create the TV-Server on an ITX platform? I was considering a blackgold 3540 card in a socket itx board (with a pcie slot), with a core 2 duo (the lowest powered model that would work).

So how did this end?
Has anyone come up with hardware specs which will match for the TVserver?
It seams only clients have been discussed the last 13 pages..

I would like to do the same as Tinyputers above - and maybe run WHS on the server as well

I have 3 x FireDTV DVB-C tuners - and the 330 motherboard does not have firewire...

Best regards

 

[Berns]

Hello Jacob B,
My server runs both Squeezeserver (the server part for SoftSqueeze, just surf on the net for this) for music sharing and is equiped with 2 FloppyDTV-S2 satellite cards to run TV Server part.
It runs quite well when I'm only watching or recording one channel. When using both cards it sometimes runs into difficulty.
It is an old PC, Pentium 4, 1.8Ghz an 256MB RAM
So I think any recent computer should be able to handle the workload

 

[JACOB B]

Thanks.
Right now i am running a server/client setup on a laptop - hp nw8440 - with core2duo 2.0 Ghz and ati firegl v5200 gpu
I could continue using it as a dedicated server, but prefer a new setup with low power consumption, that could run whs, with mp tv server, squeeze network.
I have currently a hp mediasmart server ex475 running whs and squeezenetwork.
However, it has no firewire so no option for firedtv dvb-c...

 

[sixgun]

sixgun: what is cpu useage when playing video? What does SHIFT+! tell you while playing video? what h264 codec are you using? Have you got renderer set to EVR in MP Config? Is the movie dxva compliant? Can you please run graphedit while the movie is playing a post a screenshot of the graph please.

If you answer/do all of the above then I can help you.

Thanks for the offer of help. I'm going to upgrade to 1.10RC1/2 (depending on when I get around to it).

I'll see how things are after that. I'm also going to upgrade my server to 2008 and my clients to windows 7

 

[Kotik]

KOTIK,
Does that mean you now can play 1080i on your 330/ION combo with no problems?
I have been reading up on this thread today, as I am searching for new hardware for MP clients for HDTV.

I am considering the ASROCK ION 330HT with Blu-ray - or maybe the new ZOTAC ZBOX HD-ID11 ??

That means that currently ION will de-interlace content that is interlaced with the MBAFF method.

BUT ION wont do Advanced HD de-interlacing on 1080i, it will at best use Adaptive de-interlacing.

For more info regarding different types of de-interlacing visit this link.

That of course might change in future driver release.