Choppy video, High CPU Usage

[RonLeffert]

I am in the process of setting up a PVR. I am evaluating various software packages. I have looked at Sage, BeyondTV, and Pinnacle TV Center. Sage is giving me the best video quality, except for a problem with choppy video and very high CPU usage (computer specs below). BeyondTV does the same thing, but the Pinnacle software works fine. There was a box to check for harware acceleration in the Pinnacle software. I haven't found anything like that in the Sage or BeyondTV software. I have browsed this forum on this subject, tried several things (clear out startups), but haven't solved the problem. Any suggestions.

My system is:
HP d530 Computer P4 Pentium 2.8 Ghz, 512M Ram
GeForce 6200 Video Card with 256M
Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick (801e) Planning to replace with Hauppauge 1600.
Turtle Beach Riviera Sound card
Samsung DLP HDTV connected through VGA

[RonLeffert]

Boy do I feel stupid. I did some more searching through the menus. Go to SETUP, then Detailed Setup, then Video/Audio. Set the Mpeg encoder to Sage TV MPEG Encoder, and enable the hardware accelerator. This knocked my CPU usage from 98% to 40%. That solved the choppy video problem. Both of these items were previously set to default.

[TorontoSage]

Don't feel stupid. There are probably a lot of people now changing their settings from default as a result of your post!

[APillowOfClouds]

I can tell you that I ran BeyondTV for 5 years and I just recently abandoned my $200 worth of BeyondTV licenses and came to Sage because my BTV server, once a proud box, was just swamped with cpu usage problems and other glitches and it just doesn't seem like they are doing much with it these days. The latest releases are plagued with extremely laggy clients for which there's no good solution.

I came to Sage and have not looked back. It has been, on it's worst day, 300% more solid, stable and responsive than BeyondTV. The only major issue I've had turned out to be a problem with the capture card/driver that had nothing to do with Sage.

THere are a few features I would very much like to see added to Sage and there are some quirky things that took some getting used to but in general I would highly reccomend Sage, especially over BeyondTV. I've never used Pinnacle so I can't say anything for/against that.

Originally Posted by RonLeffert

I am in the process of setting up a PVR. I am evaluating various software packages. I have looked at Sage, BeyondTV, and Pinnacle TV Center. Sage is giving me the best video quality, except for a problem with choppy video and very high CPU usage (computer specs below). BeyondTV does the same thing, but the Pinnacle software works fine. There was a box to check for harware acceleration in the Pinnacle software. I haven't found anything like that in the Sage or BeyondTV software. I have browsed this forum on this subject, tried several things (clear out startups), but haven't solved the problem. Any suggestions.

My system is:
HP d530 Computer P4 Pentium 2.8 Ghz, 512M Ram
GeForce 6200 Video Card with 256M
Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick (801e) Planning to replace with Hauppauge 1600.
Turtle Beach Riviera Sound card
Samsung DLP HDTV connected through VGA

[davephan]

You could have problems if you only have 512 meg RAM. I found that my old system was continueously caching memory to disk with only 512 meg RAM. It makes a huge difference to go to 1 gig RAM. Although two gigs RAM gives more headroom for your system. My system is normally consuming almost 1 gig of RAM 24 x 7.

If you can use a dual or quad CPU, it would make a huge difference in performance too.

Dave

[TorontoSage]

Yes to the dual, given how inexpensive they are these days, but the quad will only makes a difference if you do placeshifting, comskipping or transcoding. Recording and playback will not be affected, regardless of how many streams you have.

[RonLeffert]

I agree that Beyond TV seemed to be more difficult to get to work. I had trouble downloading their schedules, and the picture quality didn't seem to be as good. I just purchased the Sage TV Bundle with the Hauppauge TV Tuner card. Also plan to change to DVI input to the TV. Looking forward to receiving and installing the new hardware. Will consider adding memory if I have future problems.