In search of HD quality playback

[garyellis]

We've made a lot of progress in the last 6 months...I was looking for better picture quality 6 months ago and now that is very good...

So now, I am trying to figure out how to iron out the problems with HD.

I have a Anthlon 3200+ 1GB memory, SATA drives on Raid 0 and 6200TC video card. (I know a better video card will help)

I'm using the HDHR. It was very simple to set up and worked right away.

Problem seems to be with High CPU usage.

Now I have noticed that the CPU will run at about 40% with 1 HD program viewing. If its just recording, the cpu only runs at about 8 to 10%..2 recording HD's run about 15 to 20%...However, if I turn off watching a show and then bring it back on, about 50% of the time, the CPU usage while watching 1 HD show goes to 100% and obviously starts to stutter.

I noticed that sometimes this happened when comskip was running. So, I shut that off, but the cpu continued at 100% while viewing HD.

I shut everything off and rebooted...worked fine...viewing HD...quit watching and then turned it back on and the CPU goes to 100% again...

I look at processes and SageTV is using about 120MB...

I also noticed that when I use the MVP to watch HD, the CPU goes to 100%, which I expected because of the transcoding. But, when I stop the HD vieiwing on the MVP, the cpu stays at 100%...and I notice that the sagetranscoder.exe is still running. Thus, I can't watch HD through the main server.

Bottomline...the CPU seems to be going to 100% at odd times and staying there...sometimes I expect it...but others, I do not...

So, sometimes I can watch HD and sometimes just the sound comes through..and that's odd, because the HD is recording and I can watch the playback, later...


So, this is my new quest to figure this stuff out..

Any comments are very welcome...Thanks...

Gary Ellis