Trials and tribulations of a 780G based rebuild

[scavenge]

Hi all

In case it helps anyone else attempting a similar task I thought I'd relate the tale of my recent HTPC rebuild.

My old machine was a P4 2.5ghz, 1GB Ram, 7600GS machine running XP SP2 using an HVR1600 & a PVR150. QAM HD perfromance was patchy to say the least.

The new components I picked up initially were:

HDHomeRun
GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H
AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz
CORSAIR XMS2 2GB
Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EACS 1TB SATA
LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray DVD-ROM SATA Model DH-4O1S-11

I also ended up having to pick up:

Seasonic S12 II 500W
6 x1 cable splitter from http://www.cabletvamps.com/
WinDVD9

Fresh install of XP SP3 & Sage 6.4. Machine is basically a standalone (I run one placeshifter license for occasional remote laptop use) client/server and doubles as 2nd PC it all runs through a Viewsonic N3260W at 1280x720.

Today it all mostly works but I came across quite a number of issues along the way. They're not all Sage related but at least tangentially relevant...
I can't remember the exact order of issues so I'll just relate them as they come to mind as problem/solution.

P: wouldn't boot
S: my very old 370W Noisetaker just wasn't cutting it - with the board, two digitizing cards, three big hard drives and two optical drives it just wouldn't work. Maybe it was down to aged capacitors or just crappy sata power adapters but I decided to pick up the S12 II and my power issues went away. (I worked this out by unplugging everything except the bare essentials getting a good boot then adding devices one at a time)

P:hanging on CDrom boot seek
S:my older DVD+RW IDE drive started hanging the machine on boot sometimes. Not sure if it was the cable or the IDE port/channel on the MB but I ended up just removing it.

P: Blue ray movies hard crashed machine
S: PowerDVD 7 + bluray OEM software that comes with the Liteon drive sucks. Uninstalling this and installing a full version of WinDVD9 solved that problem and I've watched a couple of Bluray movies so far with no problems. PowerDVD also screwed up my HD playback in Sage (likely because it was the most recent encoder/decoder installed and sage was set to "default" -- see FAQ)

P: HD playback in Sage was patchy and would hang the machine
S: This happened after the PowerDVD debacle so I'm not sure whether the culprit was bad direct show "graphs" or that the WinDVD encoder/decoder was now the preferred encoder/decoder and wasn't cutting it. Anyway installing ffdshow solved my HD playback problems.

P: Hauppage 45 button remote not sleeping Sage
S: I'd copied across my irremote.ini from old machine. This file refers to the sage .exe as in the ../Frey Technologies/Sage TV/ directory. New installs of Sage actually default to ../Sage TV/Sage TV/. Editing the .ini to change the paths solved the problems (mostly, see below)

P: pixel for pixel 1280x720 image on Viewsonic N3260W wasn't filling screen
S: in the monitor's set-up menu there's a "fill all" option. Monitor is actually 1366 X 768, a resolution the latest ATI drivers wouldn't offer and the monitor's own profile didn't list!

P: HDMI connector
S: stuck with VGA connection at 1280x720 -- I had all manner of problems trying to use a direct HDMI connection to the monitor. Blu Ray movies suddenly invoked HDCP errors, MB refused to boot. etc. etc.

P: 1080i HD shows played audio but no picture
S: I'd scaled sage to 103% in what I thought was a clever way to rid myself of that annoying top of the screen interference line on analog cable channels. The onboard 3200HD clearly couldn't handle this scaling, going back to 100% restored the picture.

All in all a lot of but hopefully now plenty if &

A few other random insights to remember:
-did you turn off windows auto-restore for your media drives?
-did you exclude your media drives from your virus scanner?
-did you load the optimized defaults in the BIOS?

I can't say enough good stuff about the HDhomerun. Having made the mistake myself ... please don't even consider a HVR1600 for QAM. I'm just using mine as a secondary analog cable tuner these days.

Also ffdshow saved my ass.

Remaining issues:
-remote focus still occasionally problematic as the machine is used as a computer too (i.e. mouse and keyboard & remote operation)
-that scan line at the top of the screen on analog tuned cable channels
-no remote control in WinDVD9
-currently no optical disc writer in machine
-I'm gonna have to tackle setting tuner priorities at some point

What I wish Sage could do:
-launch and control WinDVD9 for bluray playback
-intelligently scale TV images. Lots of shows seem to come in already letterboxed at source and I wish Sage could "intelligently" look at these streams and blow up the actual TV part of the image so it filled as much of the screen as possible. As it is only a few HD channels really use the full screen


Ah well that was cathartic

[thatdude90210]

Interesting. I have the same mobo coming monday, along with a x2 5400. I opted for the 65W instead of the 45W X2's. It's only a 20W difference and my server is usually on standby anyway. Plus I bought the "black edition," on which the multiplier is unlocked so underclocking to save energy is an easy option.

It'll mostly be a Sage server, no bluray and likely very little DVD uses.

[bhyman1]

I'm considering a 780G build.

Thanks for the info.

[steven017]

Hey scavenge,

Thanks for the interesting info. It seems you had a rough time. Glad to see though that you got them mostly worked out.

About your remaining issues, I've got a suggestion:

Okay, so, I feel like I'm part of Eventghost's official booster club, but have you tried it? If you want to eliminate the problem you mentioned about focus and control WinDVD from your remote, Eventghost can do it. I use it to control Sage, my surround sound system, Slingplayer, VLC, and my STB.

Here's what I'd do:

1. Ditch the Hauppauge remote.
2. Get yourself a universal remote that offers you the ability to control multiple devices.
3. Use each device button for each "device" you want to control (1 for Sage, 1 for WinDVD, 1 for you TV, yada, yada, yada).
4. Install the Eventghost beta.
5. Configure it the way you like. Use the SageTV plugin. For WinDVD, you probably need to play around a bit, but you should be able to get it working via finding the correct window and sending keystrokes.
6. If you want to launch WinDVD from Sage, I think you need SageMC. It has that ability. I'm not sure about the default. However, you could just launch it from your remote, right? You did set up one of the "devices" as WinDVD.
7. Sit back and enjoy it.

I don't see any reason why you can't have eveything you want.

Best of luck,

Steven

[scavenge]

STEVE: Event ghost sounds like an option ... not ready for another $ and time investment just yet but I'll make a note of it, thanks -- it'd also be great to be able to control the other stuff, DVD player, VCR (yeah I know), xbox etc. all from one place... what universal remote do you use/recommend?

As an update on the BluRay ... I'm having problems with the "Red Belt" disc - not sure if it's the drive, that disc, or the software, or the onboard graphics chip.

Also I have an annoying issue with the MB ... it won't restart or reset. Doing an OS restart just shuts the machine down. Grrrr

[steven017]

Hey scavenge,

Yeah, it occurred to me after I posted that my suggestion would cost a bit. You'd have to invest in a IR blaster/receiver such as a USB-UIRT and get yourself a universal remote. There might be some other combination that would work, but I don't really know about that.

I don't have any specific suggestions about a universal remote. In my opinion, anything would do as long as it has enough buttons and to suit your needs and as long as it supports control of the number of devices you wish to control independently. Obviously with EventGhost, you could set it up to control much more than five devices.

Personally, I'm just using an old Sony universal remote I had lying around. It's not optimal for my needs now, but it works just fine. I'll probably get something with the ability to control more devices at some point in the future though.

Best of luck with the board. I notice that quite a few people are having the same "restart" problem.

Steven

[thatdude90210]

About Sage being able to scale image, I find Sage auto aspect plugin pretty useful.

I finally have my system built:

GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H
AMD x2 5400
2GB Kingston DDR2 800
250GB ide Harddrive
750GB Sata Harddrive
DVD ide writer
2x ATI 650 tuner (+ 2 HDhomeruns for HD)

I have no problem using all that with an Enermax 320w mATX powersupply.

I also saw the stuttery HD playback in Sage, but only with the ATI's decoder. Using Sage's own decoder or WinDVD's intervideo decoder, I have no problem with scaling over 100%. With the ATI avivo decoder, I see stutters regardless of %. (outputing 1920x1080 to lcd)

So far, I'm pretty happy with the performance of the system. It has enough power to record 3 HD channels while watching one of them with no issues. That was my target.