System requirements for HDTV with MediaPortal (2 Viewers)

[Commodore 64]

Fantastic post Tech Geek!

Get it in the wiki!

 

[Tech Geek]

Ok, I made some additional changes and I think it's ready for Wiki.
If anyone sees misinformation, spelling errors or whatever you want to criticise... speak now or don't blame me! :lol:

 

[dman_lfc]

Tech Geek, good post.

Working HDTV spec for your benchmark...

Intel P4 3.0GHz (530 Prescott)
Intel 945 GTP chipset
XFX 7600GS Extreme Edition PCIe GFX card (256mb)
512MB DDR2 memory (PC4300)
2x Samsung SATA 150 drives.

With the rig above I can easily decode H.264 720p streams.
However with 1080p the CPU struggles and sits in the late 80's early 90's.

BBC HDTV World Cup coverage struggled as according to my understanding it's 1080i High 10 Profile with MBAFF at level 4 so 20Mb/s - some serious broadcasting bandwidth.

Note: On all H.264 tests I used the Cybelink H.264 decoder which uses the Nvidia PureVideo technology. Any other codec, even CoreAVC causes the CPU to constanly be at 100% on 1080p and unwatchable.

You may want to mention Nvidia's PureVideo technology in your post which does help.
Also that in some HDTV braodcasts are MPEG-2 and require less resources compared to an equivalent H.264 stream. HDTV H.264 decoding is the killer.

As for decoding HDTV Satellite streams a good guide to available European HDTV streams is available here...
http://en.kingofsat.net/hdtv.php
So for example to decode Sky HD on 28.2 degrees East you would need a Twinhan DVB-S2 card with a CI interface. Then a Dragon CAM and Sky HDTV subscription card to get a working solution. People can forget 2x cards and recording of these streams ;-)

On another note you may want to highlight the case will need serious airflow. I've got that all packed into a SilverStoneTek LC11M and the CPU cooler sounds like a vacum cleaner. Not ideal at all.

I have some HDTV samples which might be beneficial in peoples rig testing however I have no web space to host them. Let me know if you want them.

DMAN

 

[Tech Geek]

Ok, I was reading through this info on the new intel integrated video and based on some comments in it I'm guessing the current intel graphics will require much more CPU power for deinterlacing and since some features were implemented in software rather than hardware there's a good chance it might not work at all.

BTW, here is the page I was reading:
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=2837

It looks like a major improvement but there's no H.264 support.
Just remember that the current H.264 support from ATi and NVidia is by using the GPU. It's not the same as MPEG2 where there is an actual onboard decoder.

 

[dman_lfc]

Just remember that the current H.264 support from ATi and NVidia is by using the GPU. It's not the same as MPEG2 where there is an actual onboard decoder.

Just clarifying that statement. MPEG-2 acceleration is still done by the GPU from both of these manufacturers. They don't do hardware decoding. Hence why you still need a software decoder.

Nvidia's PureVideo technology as an example uses a discrete, programmable video processing core in the GPU that provides the picture quality & smoothness features at a lower CPU utilization. This can be used for WMV, VC-1, MPEG-2 & H.264 if the software decoder supports it.

ATI is no different ;-)

MediaPortal currently does not support any MPEG-2 / H.264 hardware decoders.

While i remember it VC-1 is used on most Blue Ray discs today and requires significantly less CPU power to decode versus H.264. Some say it can decode twice as fast.

DMAN

 

[wiak]

2. CPU

Faster is better. You will probably need a CPU of 3GHz/3000+ or better if the first generation HD-DVD or Blue Ray cpu choice is any indicator. Microsoft actually recommends a P4 at 3.2GHz but I have heard claims of HD video working on as low as a Sempron 64 2500+ CPU. However, after reading followup posts I have my doubts it works with all HD video formats.

I think it's safe to say that the required speed is just a guess at this point and is going to vary with what graphics card, tuner card(s) and drivers/codecs you use. As the add-on hardware improves CPU requirements may drop a little. Actually, I thought 3GHz was a high guess just to be safe but since an AMD Sempron 64 2500+ can be overclocked to that level why suggest less? I'm sure we'll eventually have people saying they have it running everything on a lower GHz CPU but attempting it is a risk. The other factor that is a huge unknown (with MediaPortal anyway) is the H.264 compression which depends heavily on you're CPU, graphics card or tuner cards. More is better.

check out coreavc.com

 

[dman_lfc]

It's good wiak but for high profile 1080 broadcasts it struggles to keep the CPU utilisation down.
I get a 15-20% reduction in CPU usage using CyberLink's H.264 decoder vs CoreAVC in most cases.

DMAN

 

[Tech Geek]

I just made some minor updates... some of which are temporary until I can expand on the information. I won't be able to make additional updates for a week or so.

 

[Commodore 64]

My HTPC is down at the moment, but last night I was using CoreAVC to play an 720p .h264 (MKV) with graphedit.

It was Lord oF the Rings: Return of the King.

CPU usage was usually between 40-60% but there were several spikes of 100% which caused stuttering or Audio/Video Sync problems.

This was with:

A64 3200+
nV 7800 GTX
1GB RAM

I will try to get ahold of the cyberlink decoders and see what happens.

 

[Eeyore]

today was a great day

I got my new Dell PC running and my new Samsung 32: LCD turned up

I got it all up and running tonight and the onboard video card plays HDTV fine...i am a happy man!