HDHomeRun CPU Usage?

[Taddeusz]

I've been planning on getting one of these soon. I've read a couple posts that seem to indicate that CPU usage is rather high while SageTV is recording from the HDHR.

My current Sage server is an X2 3800 with 2GB of RAM and two analog tuners (PVR150 and a PVR250) already in it. I'd like to keep the two analog tuners.

Does anyone know if there would be any problems using this configuration? I'd like to get as much information as possible before I invest $170 in it.

BTW, my network adapter is a PCI connected Intel PRO/1000 GT desktop adapter. Gigabit is so sweet.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

I've been planning on getting one of these soon. I've read a couple posts that seem to indicate that CPU usage is rather high while SageTV is recording from the HDHR.

My current Sage server is an X2 3800 with 2GB of RAM and two analog tuners (PVR150 and a PVR250) already in it. I'd like to keep the two analog tuners.

Does anyone know if there would be any problems using this configuration? I'd like to get as much information as possible before I invest $170 in it.

BTW, my network adapter is a PCI connected Intel PRO/1000 GT desktop adapter. Gigabit is so sweet.

I have one and I see no such thing. It's a network device that streams the recording to the server directly with no encoding needed. It's an mpeg stream. You may have a high CPU usage playing/watching the recording but not just recording it. Server is a P4-3.2GHz and 1GB RAM.

Gerry

[heffe2001]

Just checked on my server, and it appears that while recording (actually watching, but in Sage it's the same thing), the HDHR app used about 3% processor, and sage's usage was negligable. Not sure why you'd see massive CPU usage with the HDHR, since the hardware box does all the decoding and all, and the app just dumps the resultant transport stream to disk, with no processing on the PC end at all.

I don't see why your existing setup woudln't work just fine with the HDHR, I would think you wouldn't have any problems at all...

[Taddeusz]

Cool, that confirms what I had thought. It seemed to me the other couple people that were having problems had either kind of low end configurations or probably had other issues apart from Sage.

I can't wait till I can get the money for one. I have to worry about taxes this pay period though.

[mechling-burgh]

I had very high CPU usage with my at one point but was that McAfee anti virus was scanning the stream. I had it stop checking the stream and everything runs fine now. I have an AMD 3000+ and have no problem with HDHomerun. I have HD studder in VRM 9 like a lot of people. If I use overlay everything works fine.

[Taddeusz]

I don't even have antivirus installed on my SageTV server. That's all it get's used for so I don't really worry about it getting infected. Plus it will run a little bit faster because that extra check isn't there.

[phelme]

with the HDHR all you really have to worry about is disk and network speed on your server, not CPU. any SATA or SCSI setup should be fine for disk.

It sounds like you already have gigabit Ethernet so you're set there. don't mess around with 10/100 and an HDHR like I did. I was getting corrupted HD recordings whenever 4 tuners were going at once (an HDHR + 2 SD net encoders). I thought the disk couldn't keep up at first and went don't that rat hole for a while. I just confirmed today that it wasn't the disk at all but the network was getting saturated. I was above the 35-40 mbps tipping-point for a loaded 100 megabit network when the server was receiving 2 SD + 2 HD streams.

I unfortunately have 3 switches between my server and the HDHR due to the placement of the OTA antenna which exacerbated the problem. Now that I have gigabit switches in place of the 10/100's all is happy once again.