HDTV playback with SageClientv4

[Skydive199]

I am hving problems getting HD streams to play back well on my Sage client system. I have a feeling that the hardware just doesn't have enough umph for playing back hd streams, but I'm having trouble admitting it to myself. Here is my setup:

VIA EPIA MII10000 Mini-ITX MB
512mg ram
40 gb laptop hd
Us robotics "suger g wifi" card
Windows XP sp2
Sageclient 4
girder
Poweredvd 6 delux

I can get them to play, but they are a little jittery and the system bogs down. My board has a mpeg hardware "Accellerator". If I turn on hardware acceleration in powerdvd, the cpu usages goes down quit a bit, but the hd stream looks garbled. All the while, SD stuff and dvds over-the-network look great and plays really smooth. I tried it with a 100mb wired lan connection and the performance is the same. I have an ATI HDTV card in the server (looks great on the server btw).
Any ideas, recomendations, or harsh realities for me?

[Kanati]

You don't mention what cpu you have... but that's most likely the cause. Just not enough horsepower. Not a certainly but most likely.

[Bohica]

Just went through this on 4 clients. It is video card first -- cpu second. A good video card will work wonders -- and should be tried first. geforce 6600 or ATI 9x00 are good options.

[JasonJoel]

No chance in hell you will be able to play HD recordings reliably on a VIA EPIA chip. 0%.

Just my $0.02.

Jason

Originally Posted by Kanati

You don't mention what cpu you have... but that's most likely the cause. Just not enough horsepower. Not a certainly but most likely.

[Skydive199]

the board has an embedded VIA C3 1GHZ NEHEMIAH proccessor. I should know better. I guess I just wanted it to be possible
It almost does it! Oh well, its still a good SD client.

[JasonJoel]

Sure! Those make a great SD client (as long as you don't want to watch a lot of DIVX).

They just don't seem to have quite enough oomph to play back HD.

Jason

Originally Posted by Skydive199

the board has an embedded VIA C3 1GHZ NEHEMIAH proccessor. I should know better. I guess I just wanted it to be possible
It almost does it! Oh well, its still a good SD client.

[jchiso]

It's not the processor, per se, rather the fact that you don't have an AGP slot. The on-board decoder of the Nehemiah is not sufficient for HD streams. I have an 800Mhz Eden on a system that does double duty as a Sage system and client which uses a PCI-based Radeon 9200SE (128MB DDR) which is similarly incapable of HD playback.

I don't know for sure, and you could certainly try a PCI-based video card, but I imagine your results would still fall short.

[JasonJoel]

I find that hard to believe, but I'll take your word for it.

With either a current Nvidia or ATI video card in my 'real' desktop machines I still see high enough CPU loads on 1080i/720p playback that I would be surprised if any of the VIA CPUs could handle it.

But I;ve been wrong before.

Jason

[gplasky]

It takes both pieces of the puzzle to play HD streams. Look at the spec requirements for HD streams. You need a speedy processor (P4-3GHz and above) and a speedy video card. Fall short in either area and you COULD have problems. I know of people who have a P4-2.8 that can play HD, but their video card is a 7800GT. Even if you have a video card with a fast GPU some of the work is still done by the CPU. Your mini-ITX VIA mb have 2 strikes against. 1. CPU is crap. Even your 1GHz models Nehemiah is not a core that’s known for producing strong performance even when compared against P3-class Celeron or Duron processors of equivalent speed. 2. Your built-in video uses a AGP interface built into the motherboard but just doesn't have the horsepower. Even with the builtin mpeg accelerator some have it dosen't really help for HD streams.

I would steer clear of the mini-ITX boards if you plan on any type of HD.

Gerry

Gerry

[jchiso]

Originally Posted by jchiso

...

I don't know for sure, and you could certainly try a PCI-based video card,...

I should quantify that by mentioning that I have not tried a DirectX 9-grade card in this system. I doubt that it would make a difference but I cannot say for sure.

I should also mention that I can play full HD streams on a client with a 1GHz Duron with an AGP Radeon 128MB 9200SE video card on a system with 500MB of PC100 RAM. This is on an old 4X AGP motherboard. I am using PowerDVD 5.0's decoders in overlay mode.