What CANT the HD100 do?

[rwc]

the hd100 seems great, but is there anything it CANT do (compared to a PC running the client)?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by rwc

the hd100 seems great, but is there anything it CANT do (compared to a PC running the client)?

No DVD drive so no local DVDs (although you can play back movies from server)
No active USB port so no keyboard or usbuirt

[evilpenguin]

Yeah, the lack of DVD disc playback is a big, albeit livable, drawback. The only other one I ran into was that it can't handle the IR commands from the official MCE remotes. That was pretty big for me because I *loved* the MCE remote and getting used to a new one is taking a while.

[bastafidli]

It cannot display lots of image formats such as TIFF, PhotoCD
It doesn't support selecting audio track in a mp4 create by Nero Recode
It doesn't support selecting and displaying subtitles in a mp4 create by Nero Recode

[Addict]

Some stuff...

- The "Watch-It-Now" portion of the Netflix plugin because it requires IE.

- Click-sounds in the SageMC STV don't work on the extenders

- SlimPlayer plugin doesn't work (because it can't stream the music to the extender)

Regardless of these bummers for me, what it DOES do still far outweighs what it does NOT do.

[rwc]

What about video/audio issues?

If the server can play it, then it can be transcoded into something the extender can play?

Or are there only set audio/video formats that the extender can play? (mpeg-2 and h.264? What about avi? and those movie-jpegs that my camera makes?)

thanks again!

rwc

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by rwc

What about video/audio issues?

If the server can play it, then it can be transcoded into something the extender can play?

Or are there only set audio/video formats that the extender can play? (mpeg-2 and h.264? What about avi? and those movie-jpegs that my camera makes?)

thanks again!

rwc

Well....so far there haven't been any video formats that you can play successfully that the Extender can't natively support. At least not any that I have seen posted in these forums. But, yes, if for some reason there was a format that could play on the server (thru sage that is), it could be transcoded to play on the HD100.

[Addict]

Originally Posted by rwc

What about video/audio issues?

If the server can play it, then it can be transcoded into something the extender can play?

Or are there only set audio/video formats that the extender can play? (mpeg-2 and h.264? What about avi? and those movie-jpegs that my camera makes?)

thanks again!

rwc

A/V is outstanding. Nothing seems to break it. There's a full list of what's supported if you look at the product page for it.

[bastafidli]

I believe when they added MJPEG support in one of the patches to 6.3 it is via transcoding. Thats why I still have hope for TIFF and PhotoCD support.

[valnar]

Well, I miss some features that only a PC could do, like surf the web, but I'll live without it. I have a PC in the next room. A PC definitely has better chapter, multiple audio and subtitle support on video files. Hopefully that is coming. (All these were not necessarily in the Sage client anyway)

The only feature I really miss is Netflix Watch it now integration.

Robert

[benjamintm]

The extender supports a wide range of formats, but it can run into problems occasionally. I has a couple of "supported" files that just won't play on the he extender. I'm working with support on these.

Ben

Originally Posted by rwc

What about video/audio issues?

If the server can play it, then it can be transcoded into something the extender can play?

Or are there only set audio/video formats that the extender can play? (mpeg-2 and h.264? What about avi? and those movie-jpegs that my camera makes?)

thanks again!

rwc

[Slipshod]

It can't reliably de-interlace my SD R5000 video, or smoothly show my higher bitrate R5000 1080p H.264 video (from the HD locals - nationals work fine).

I still love it though.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

It can't reliably de-interlace my SD R5000 video, or smoothly show my higher bitrate R5000 1080p H.264 video (from the HD locals - nationals work fine).

I still love it though.

That kind of worries me with the HD-PVR coming out.....

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by Brent

That kind of worries me with the HD-PVR coming out.....

I'm pretty confident they'll be testing the Hauppage device in-house. I doubt they have an R5000. Support is looking at the de-interlacing problem, though I'm not terribly confident it will get fixed - the chip in the HD-100 is flag-based, and it looks to me like the flags are all jacked up on some (not all) of the SD shows I record. The support tech also seemed pretty surprised by the sample I sent him. I've been able to demux/reflag/remux a show and have it deinterlace successfully. Still trying to decide if I'm going to script that or just buy one of the Geffen outboard scalers coming this summer.

I haven't opened a ticket on the 1080p playback yet. The server is a bit old and decrepit, so I didn't want to blame the HD-100 until I could be more confident about where the problem is... Just got a test-install of WHS on blindingly fast new hardware, and the problem is still there. It's kind of a "blip" every second or so which causes massive blocking on the screen for a frame or two. Really darn annoying, and only happens on the locals, which are using 9mbit or higher rates for H.264. The national locals, which are more like 6mbps, playback just fine.

Also just got the DVD&BD versions of the HQV benchmark and am planning on running that to check the HD-100.

[Tikker]

Originally Posted by evilpenguin

The only other one I ran into was that it can't handle the IR commands from the official MCE remotes. That was pretty big for me because I *loved* the MCE remote and getting used to a new one is taking a while.

oh bleh, that sucks an awful lot

[bjkiller]

i have a lot of problem to play 1080p content(15% played OK), with 720p (like 90% played OK) on HD Extender.

[valnar]

Originally Posted by bjkiller

i have a lot of problem to play 1080p content(15% played OK), with 720p (like 90% played OK) on HD Extender.

I have older downloaded 1080p content that has problems, but newer content encoded correctly has no problems.

It's all in the x264 (H.264) parameters. If you use AutoMKV (my favorite), here is a profile that works for Hi-def:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<VideoProfile xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Name>_CQ_Q2_eq(crf)</Name>
  <Settings xsi:type="x264Settings">
    <EncodingMode>9</EncodingMode>
    <BitrateQuantizer>18</BitrateQuantizer>
    <KeyframeInterval>250</KeyframeInterval>
    <NbBframes>3</NbBframes>
    <MinQuantizer>10</MinQuantizer>
    <MaxQuantizer>51</MaxQuantizer>
    <Turbo>false</Turbo>
    <V4MV>false</V4MV>
    <QPel>false</QPel>
    <Trellis>1</Trellis>
    <CreditsQuantizer>40</CreditsQuantizer>
    <Logfile>.stats</Logfile>
    <CustomEncoderOptions />
    <FourCC>1</FourCC>
    <Zones />
    <MaxNumberOfPasses>3</MaxNumberOfPasses>
    <NbThreads>1</NbThreads>
    <NoDCTDecimate>false</NoDCTDecimate>
    <PSNRCalculation>false</PSNRCalculation>
    <noFastPSkip>false</noFastPSkip>
    <NoiseReduction>0</NoiseReduction>
    <MixedRefs>true</MixedRefs>
    <X264Trellis>1</X264Trellis>
    <NbRefFrames>3</NbRefFrames>
    <AlphaDeblock>-2</AlphaDeblock>
    <BetaDeblock>-1</BetaDeblock>
    <SubPelRefinement>6</SubPelRefinement>
    <MaxQuantDelta>4</MaxQuantDelta>
    <TempQuantBlur>0</TempQuantBlur>
    <BframePredictionMode>3</BframePredictionMode>
    <VBVBufferSize>-1</VBVBufferSize>
    <VBVMaxBitrate>25000</VBVMaxBitrate>
    <METype>2</METype>
    <MERange>16</MERange>
    <MinGOPSize>25</MinGOPSize>
    <Profile>2</Profile>
    <Level>4.1</Level>
    <IPFactor>1.4</IPFactor>
    <PBFactor>1.3</PBFactor>
    <ChromaQPOffset>0</ChromaQPOffset>
    <VBVInitialBuffer>0.9</VBVInitialBuffer>
    <BitrateVariance>1.0</BitrateVariance>
    <QuantCompression>0.6</QuantCompression>
    <TempComplexityBlur>20</TempComplexityBlur>
    <TempQuanBlurCC>0.5</TempQuanBlurCC>
    <SCDSensitivity>40</SCDSensitivity>
    <BframeBias>0</BframeBias>
    <Deblock>true</Deblock>
    <Cabac>true</Cabac>
    <WeightedBPrediction>true</WeightedBPrediction>
    <AdaptiveBFrames>true</AdaptiveBFrames>
    <BFramePyramid>false</BFramePyramid>
    <BRDO>true</BRDO>
    <biME>true</biME>
    <ChromaME>true</ChromaME>
    <P8x8mv>true</P8x8mv>
    <B8x8mv>true</B8x8mv>
    <I4x4mv>true</I4x4mv>
    <I8x8mv>true</I8x8mv>
    <P4x4mv>false</P4x4mv>
    <AdaptiveDCT>true</AdaptiveDCT>
    <Width>false</Width>
    <Sar>false</Sar>
    <aq-strength>false</aq-strength>
    <aq-sensitivity>false</aq-sensitivity>
    <deadzone-inter>false</deadzone-inter>
    <deadzone-intra>false</deadzone-intra>
    <fpel-cmp>false</fpel-cmp>
    <me-prepass>false</me-prepass>
    <SSIMCalculation>true</SSIMCalculation>
    <Interlaced>false</Interlaced>
    <Lossless>false</Lossless>
    <QuantizerMatrix />
    <QuantizerMatrixType>0</QuantizerMatrixType>
  </Settings>
</VideoProfile>

There are other parameters of course that are important, like make sure you also choose "--engage keep_bitstream_ar_info" on the Advanced Settings tab.

Robert

[Slipshod]

Originally Posted by valnar

I have older downloaded 1080p content that has problems, but newer content encoded correctly has no problems.

It's all in the x264 (H.264) parameters.

The problem is that I'd rather not have to transcode the content - kind takes away the point in having it captured digitally. The 1080p streams I'm having problems with are coming right off of the satellite, or off of blu-ray rips.

[valnar]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

The problem is that I'd rather not have to transcode the content - kind takes away the point in having it captured digitally. The 1080p streams I'm having problems with are coming right off of the satellite, or off of blu-ray rips.

Ouch. Yah, that's definitely a problem. I don't have satellite.

Robert

[bjkiller]

Originally Posted by Slipshod

The problem is that I'd rather not have to transcode the content - kind takes away the point in having it captured digitally. The 1080p streams I'm having problems with are coming right off of the satellite, or off of blu-ray rips.

with my SATt feed it's Good for me, but for blue ray rips are terrible!