FreeviewHD - NZ - Hardware Acceleration

[Glazza]

Guys

I am currently trying to come up with a workable Media Centre PC solution. Ultimately I would like to be able to utilise SageTV as I require Media Extenders (although currently the extenders do not support HE-ACC audio, which is required for the New Zealand environment).

So assuming that support for HE-ACC audio is forthcoming, the plan is to have a Media Centre PC installed in the lounge alongside the main TV, with extenders to other TV’s in the house.

However, before jumping the gun, I need to get a workable Media Centre PC up and running. I am currently using the following hardware:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
RAM: 8GB
VIDEO: Nvidia 8500GT

With the following codecs:

H.264: Cyberlink Powerdvd 8 (configured within the application for Hardware Acceleration)
HE-ACC: Monogram

The Operating System was originally Windows Vista x64, but due to the issues I experienced I have also tried Windows XP, and now Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit – all with the same result.

The problem I am having is that it appears that SageTV is NOT taking advantage of the Hardware Acceleration that it available to it via the Nvidia 8500GT graphics card. When viewing TV3 the CPU usage on the machine is around 60%, TV1, somewhere around 50% and others between 40 – 50%. Opening the guide or anything like that will cause TV to completely fall apart.

Having not been able to find any bench mark for SageTV, I begun to wonder if the issue was something to do with the hardware – ie for some reason Hardware Acceleration was not available. To test this I installed Media Portal, as there were many benchmarks around for FreeviewHD (NZ).

The result, when using MediaPortal, configured to use the same H.264 and HE-ACC codecs proves that Hard Acceleration is available. When decoding the TV3 stream in Media Portal CPU utilization floats between 16 and 27%, other channels can have the CPU down as low as 9%.

Any one got any ideas what I have done wrong in the SageTV configuration...

Cheers
David

[cychou]

Originally Posted by Glazza

Guys

I am currently trying to come up with a workable Media Centre PC solution. Ultimately I would like to be able to utilise SageTV as I require Media Extenders (although currently the extenders do not support HE-ACC audio, which is required for the New Zealand environment).

So assuming that support for HE-ACC audio is forthcoming, the plan is to have a Media Centre PC installed in the lounge alongside the main TV, with extenders to other TV’s in the house.

However, before jumping the gun, I need to get a workable Media Centre PC up and running. I am currently using the following hardware:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
RAM: 8GB
VIDEO: Nvidia 8500GT

With the following codecs:

H.264: Cyberlink Powerdvd 8 (configured within the application for Hardware Acceleration)
HE-ACC: Monogram

The Operating System was originally Windows Vista x64, but due to the issues I experienced I have also tried Windows XP, and now Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit – all with the same result.

The problem I am having is that it appears that SageTV is NOT taking advantage of the Hardware Acceleration that it available to it via the Nvidia 8500GT graphics card. When viewing TV3 the CPU usage on the machine is around 60%, TV1, somewhere around 50% and others between 40 – 50%. Opening the guide or anything like that will cause TV to completely fall apart.

Having not been able to find any bench mark for SageTV, I begun to wonder if the issue was something to do with the hardware – ie for some reason Hardware Acceleration was not available. To test this I installed Media Portal, as there were many benchmarks around for FreeviewHD (NZ).

The result, when using MediaPortal, configured to use the same H.264 and HE-ACC codecs proves that Hard Acceleration is available. When decoding the TV3 stream in Media Portal CPU utilization floats between 16 and 27%, other channels can have the CPU down as low as 9%.

Any one got any ideas what I have done wrong in the SageTV configuration...

Cheers
David

Since DXVA is working for you in MediaPortal on the same machine, I will suggest you to enable the debug logging and see what filters Sage actually uses for you. My guess is that Sage is not using the filters you configure it to use.

[Glazza]

By filters - codecs??

If so, I only have one codec installed, and therefore as I get a picture SageTV must be using that codec...

Cheers
David