HTPC and Plasma HDTV

[flavius]

Finally, my ancient GE is giving up on me, and I'm getting a Plasma HDTV tomorrow. The HTPC (P4 2.8, 1 Gig Ram, running the client) has a cheap FX5200 which has served us well. But I'm thinking, I may have to upgrade that box, too? How about the 6600 GT? I'm not thinking about HD content yet. It's about the DVD quality stuff I have been recording for some time now - not always with Sage, but that has changed recently.

Any other recommendations?

I have no idea what my recordings are going to look like on the new TV.
Anybody else doing something similar? What's your Mbps that's makes you feel comfortable? My server is five years old (P3 933, 512 Ram) - I'd like to avoid replacing that box, right now.. Looks like, I can't go much higher than DVD SP if I insist on smooth timeshifting.

[blade]

Your server should be fine, as long as you have enough hard drive space. It should easily be able to handle any bitrate you throw at it. You shouldn't be limited to DVD SP, at least not by your server.

I use 7mbit for my bitrate and my sage server is running a Celeron 366, 512 mb of ram, 400 gigs of storage, 4 tuners, and is running comskip, and it handles it without any problems.

[flavius]

Smooth timeshifting with that kind of box? I tried 6.8 and then went to try 12Mbps (just for fun). I guess, it's worth a try putting in some custom qualities.

[blade]

The capture cards are hardware encoders, and I'm using a PCI IDE controller so there is virtually no cpu usage involved in capturing, writing to the disk, and streaming the content across the network. The only real overhead is the OS and the Sage service. It doesn't take much power to run a simple Sage Server.

I'm sure the quality and type of hardware involved will have alot to do with it as well. For example I can run HDTach on my Athlon XP1700 and I get 10% CPU usage, I run it on my Celeron 366 using a PCI IDE controller and get the same throughput, but with 0% cpu usage.

What kind of hard drive do you have? Also do you have it formated to 64k clusters?

You might try setting a higher bitrate, record on all of your tuners at once, and stream to your clients. Then check the cpu, memory, and network usage of the server.

As for your other questions, I don't have a plasma, but I do have a 57" Hitachi HDTV and the picture looks fine using the Best setting. It may not to someone else, it's all subjective.

[flavius]

Thanks, blade.
Hm, just occurred to me that I might be calling for trouble with one of my hd's: it's a fat32 USB 2.0 drive. Since I don't have much control in Sage over where the recordings actually go (other than by the order of directories in the setup menu, correct?) - what does Sage do when a movie (>2gig) is supposed to get recorded to a fat32 drive? Maybe, I don't want to find out.

I'm aware of the impact of a higher cluster size. Since I have no place to store my 200 gig's of recordings, I have been defragging the thing on a regular basis. Is the impact that dramatic?

How is your HDTV connected to your pc?

[ke6guj]

Have you tried to repartition the USB driver to NTFS if you are concerned about the >2GB file limit.

In WinXP, you can right-click on MY Computer and select Manage. From there, you can go to Storage>Disk Management and delete the old partition on the USB drive and then repartion and format it as a NTFS drive. You can also set it up for 64k blocks at the same time to minimize fragmentation.

[flavius]

Yes, I know.

[gplasky]

It will split the file off. You'll get a xxxx-0 file, then a xxxx-1 file. Sage will play it back seamlessly.

Gerry

[blade]

Originally Posted by flavius

Thanks, blade.
Hm, just occurred to me that I might be calling for trouble with one of my hd's: it's a fat32 USB 2.0 drive.

This may be a silly question, but is your USB drive connected to a USB 2.0 port? I noticed your server was a P3, I know my old BX board only has USB 1.1 which has a limit of 12Mbps.

How is your HDTV connected to your pc?

I have a 6600GT and am using the component dongle that came with the card. It took quite awhile to get all of the settings tweaked just right (I'm still tinkering with a few of them).

[flavius]

Originally Posted by blade

This may be a silly question, but is your USB drive connected to a USB 2.0 port? I noticed your server was a P3, I know my old BX board only has USB 1.1 which has a limit of 12Mbps.

Not silly at all - since I'm new here. I upgraded the box a little bit over the years.

I have a 6600GT and am using the component dongle that came with the card. It took quite awhile to get all of the settings tweaked just right (I'm still tinkering with a few of them).

So far, I've heard only good things about the 6600GT - at least as far as PQ is concerned. I also read that some people are quite happy with RGB. Personally, I think, I definitely will try to get a digital signal working, since the plasma has HDMI and DVI(-?) inputs (as well as component, RGB and RCA). But don't ask me what all those acronyms actually mean.-

I'm going to be in California for most of June but after that - well, just have to leave my family with something that does not look too bad.