New toy: Asrock ION 330 (5 Viewers)

[alexeix]

So what's the general opinion on this machine?

How does it perform if you're recording say two programmes at the same time, or watching one and recording another?

Likewise, with HD TV (DVB-S/S2), can you record one channel and watch another, or is the Atom not powerful enough?

Resuming from standby, Wake on LAN...?

 

[worto03]

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So what's the general opinion on this machine?
How does it perform if you're recording say two programmes at the same time, or watching one and recording another?
Likewise, with HD TV (DVB-S/S2), can you record one channel and watch another, or is the Atom not powerful enough?
Resuming from standby, Wake on LAN...?

I'm very happy with it but it doesn't sound like I'm taxing it as much as you would be, I'm not using it for recording, just playback & I've only had it 3 days so far so havn't had chance to play with wake on LAN ect. It's taken me 3 days to get an OS on it (win7) with media portal and a load of media.

It certainly playes back HD content with no problems anyway - no stuttering ect on a 9gig file.

There is a big thread going on avforums about it if your a member there too - there are defo people on there using it more like you want to.

ASRock ION 330 - AVForums.com

Hope it's OK to post links to another forum in here - feel free to remove it if it's not & I won't do it again!

 

[tomoqv]

I have just installed an MP client on an ASRock ION 330 BD with Win 7 Home Premium 32-bit. I am struggling with the codecs to get smooth playback of live HDTV. I have CoreAVC with CUDA preferred, and the tray icon turns green as it is supposed to, but audio/video is out of sync and also stutters at times. CPU usage is between 25-40%. After browsing countless forums on the issue, I am even more confused. I somehow get the impression, though, that CoreAVC is not yet Win 7 compatible. I have tried other codecs as well, e.g. PowerDVD9 and MPC-HC with DXVA, but nothing gives me smooth playback and really low CPU usage. I have also tried to play WMV HD 1080p content downloaded from MSFT, but can't get stutterfree playback there either. SAF seems to be compatible only with US/EN Win 7 versions, but as I have had limited success with SAF before I am now using the Win7Codecs Pack from Shark007. Does anyone have a working codec setup with Win 7 on this machine?

 

[Domini0n]

I use the SAF codec pack and have MPC-HC video codec for playback of HD content. As SAF is not for you language, you can try downloading the filters from MPC-HC and register them with regsvr32. You can then select those codecs in MP and should give you proper playback. For audio I use ffdshow to passthrough on my SPDIF to my speakers. I do have some issues myself with getting everything to work, but that has more to do with the fact that I haven't been working with MP for a while, until I bought this new machine.

You can get MPC-HC filter here.

 

[tinabeatr]

I've been using my ASRock 330 for a few weeks now, and I'm in love. This is exactly what I was looking for when I first set out to put together a media PC for my HDTV many months ago. Along with MediaPortal and my favorite OneForAll remote it's the perfect home theater media center.

I have Windows 7 Pro 64-bit installed on mine, and it works perfectly with MediaPortal 1.1 Beta. Also, I have CCCP and CoreAVC installed to handle the various video formats. HD playback from WMV, MKV, etc is perfect. Besides the remote control, I also have an Adesso wireless combo keyboard-trackball for when I need to flip into web browser mode and type.

There's really nothing I can complain about with the 330. I highly recommend it as a perfect HTPC solution.

 

[tomoqv]

Thanks for the input.
What kind of CPU utilization do you have during video playback, both HD and other? The MPC-HC codec is included in the Win7Codecs pack I use and I have tried that one for HDTV playback as well with no luck.

@ tinabeatr: I also firmly believe that this is the optimal MP client for my needs, but I must be doing something wrong. I guess there isn't any difference between Win 7 HP and Pro in the way they handle video playback. Have you tried live HDTV using CoreAVC? With WMV I get smooth playback of 720p, but not 1080p. Do you get 1080p to work as well?

 

[Domini0n]

Thanks for the input.
What kind of CPU utilization do you have during video playback, both HD and other? The MPC-HC codec is included in the Win7Codecs pack I use and I have tried that one for HDTV playback as well with no luck.

My CPU usage is around 10% with sometimes a small peak up to 15% if something on the background happens in Windows. I have played .mkv files of 16GB size with no stuttering. Playing back Live HDTV is something different then playing back .mkv as it has to deinterlace 1080i to 1080p. It will stress the graphics card more. Hope you can get this to work, we all have good hardware accelerated playback on this ION machine. So it should be possible for you by using MPC-HC. Have you tied playback in MPC-HC itself? Manually, to check if it works fine that way?

 

[tomoqv]

I can't figure out what's wrong and starting to wonder if something is really messed up on my system. Even with SDTV playback my CPU usage is 15-20%. I tried MPC-HC as suggested, but that made MP Live TV crash.

 

[Domini0n]

I can't figure out what's wrong and starting to wonder if something is really messed up on my system. Even with SDTV playback my CPU usage is 15-20%. I tried MPC-HC as suggested, but that made MP Live TV crash.

Try playing a movie using the MPC-HC player itself.

Download Media Player Classic Home Cinema, Free Video Player Download

So not just use the codecs, but use the player. Run an .mkv file and see what the CPU usage is. If that doesn't work, then there is something else wrong.

 

[tomoqv]

I can't figure out what's wrong and starting to wonder if something is really messed up on my system. Even with SDTV playback my CPU usage is 15-20%. I tried MPC-HC as suggested, but that made MP Live TV crash.

Try playing a movie using the MPC-HC player itself.

Download Media Player Classic Home Cinema, Free Video Player Download

So not just use the codecs, but use the player. Run an .mkv file and see what the CPU usage is. If that doesn't work, then there is something else wrong.

Thanks for the help. I have done some further testing now, here are some of my readings:
With MPC Player
mkv 1080p, smooth, cpu 35-40%, dxva
mp4 1080p, smooth, cpu 35-40%, dxva
hdmov 1080p, smooth, cpu 35-40%, dxva
wmv 1080p, stutter, cpu 60+%
wmv 720p, smooth, cpu 55-60%

Mediaportal with MPC-HC codec
mkv 1080p, smooth, cpu 10-15%, dxva (I guess)
mp4 1080p, smooth, cpu 12-20%, dxva (I guess)
wmv 720p, smooth, cpu 35-40%

Mediaportal with CoreAVC codec
mkv 1080p, smooth, cpu 15-25%, cuda
mp4 1080p, smooth, cpu 12-20%, cuda
hdmov 1080p, smooth, cpu 25-35%, no cuda


Also interesting to note that MP with MSFT MPEG2 codec:
Live TV, smooth, cpu 15-20%
However, every channel change adds another instance of ffdshow audio decoder in the sys tray

Haven't managed to get HDTV playback to work again, MP just freezes when I try. It worked before I started testing different codec setups, but with significant audio/video sync issues or stutter.