S-Video Out on EPIA MII 1000

[bartley9]

I have tried everything I can think of but can ot get any s-video out from my machine.

the RCS signal works but I would like better quality.

Does anyone else use the s-video out and how did you do it?

[1972]

I have an Epia M-10000 and I tried its S-video out. I ran into three things:
1. After a videodriver update (!) I could not fit the videopicture right onto the TV screen; black bars on the left and top which could not be moved away. With the videodrivers that came with the driver CD it fitted allright.
2. The videoquality is not great if you compare it with the TV-out of the PVR-350 (I see you have one ;-). The contrast and sharpness of the picture is very bad in my opinion.
3. My M10000 used almost all CPU load when playing videofiles causing missing frames (stuttering). Therefor I'm (trying) to use the output of my PVR-350.

Also the M10000 does not have a real MPEG decoder onboard (!!!!). It is just a chip that has some special MPEG instructions in it to decrease the processorload (by 10%) when playing an MPEG file. AND the player you use must support these special instructions. SageTV does not do this, like most players don't. The only one I know is PowerDVD version 4 and 5 (not 6 and up).
I don't know if you can run into simular problems with the MII, if so, you are warned

[bartley9]

I agree the picture quality is much better on the 350 but I have had enough of the eof lockups and crashes.

I adjusted the colour setting in the video driver and got much better output by increasing the amount of blue.

As for the stuttering I down loaded powerDVD 6 and enabled hardware decoding in there , I also loaded all the latest drivers from the via arena website not via embedded which has much older drivers. Then I selected powerDVD(CSS Video) as the video decoder in Sage and my CPU runs 40-60% and doesn't miss any frames.

I can not get any output from DVDs in sage though so I may have to re-install.

<soap box>
The output of the 350 is second to none but with young children watching short 10 minute shows it is just too unstable to use.
</soap box>

[jchiso]

bartley9:
I notice you are using a CD player for a case, so this may be moot, but would it be possible for you to add a PCI-based graphics card? I used to use a PVR-350 in a system with a PCI Radeon 9220SE. This system was built on an old EPIA 800. For the desktop I used the SVHS out of the PCI card with PowerDVD 6 decoders. This configuration lets me use the DXVA modes and also handles DVD playback flawlessly (locally and streamed).

I've looked at building a client on the M1000, but always came to the conclusion that the onboard MPEG hardware would not be used effectively by Sage; by sticking with a Radeon- or GeForce-based PCI graphics board you could eliminate such uncertainty.

[Menehune]

My Eden client works well using onboard video, full screen composite out. CPU is typically at 90-100% during playback of files from the server. DVD playback is typically 75% cpu usage.

Personally, I would use the machine as a client or a recorder, but not both. Video playback is very CPU intensive since the onboard video is not DX9 capable.

[bartley9]

Originally Posted by jchiso

I notice you are using a CD player for a case, so this may be moot, but would it be possible for you to add a PCI-based graphics card?

There is not much space left and I only have a single slot PCI riser but it is worth a try. I will get a two slot riser and give it a go.

Thanks.