Any Successful Dell Mini 9 Setups Out There?

[heatvent]

Is anyone successfully using the Dell Mini 9 as a SageTV client? If so, can you give your setup:

Windows Version:
RAM:
HD GB:
HD Upgraded? (Runcore):
Network Connection (wireless, g, etc.):
SD Work OK?:
HD Work OK?:


I get OK SD but can't seem to get it to churn out HD well. I am using Vista Premium and I think when I was using XP I got better results. Here is my current setup:

Windows Version: Vista Premium
RAM: 2GB
HD GB: 16 GB
HD Upgraded? (Runcore): Yes, but using Super Talent
Network Connection (wireless, g, etc.): Wireless - G
SD Work OK?: Yes
HD Work OK?: No, choppy, poor sound.


Thanks!

[tchapin]

You would probably be better off using Placeshifter on a Dell Mini 9 if you want to be able to view HD content. That would place the transcoding burden on your server. With Client, the Mini 9 is the one doing the heavy lifting, and it's not that powerful.

I don't have a separate client license, but my wife has a mini 9 and we use placeshifter on it successfully.

[heatvent]

Originally Posted by tchapin

You would probably be better off using Placeshifter on a Dell Mini 9 if you want to be able to view HD content. That would place the transcoding burden on your server. With Client, the Mini 9 is the one doing the heavy lifting, and it's not that powerful.

I don't have a separate client license, but my wife has a mini 9 and we use placeshifter on it successfully.

Can you give my the specs of your mini 9? I did try placeshifter with similar results. Perhaps its my network.

[tchapin]

They're all pretty much the same except for RAM and HD. It's got 1GB RAM and a 16GB SSD.

[Chriscic]

I think you're going to need Ion to play HD.

There's also a Crystal HD mini-card for I think the HP netbook as well, which I heard (maybe on here) also works.

I don't think any of the Intel graphics are going to cut it.

[SWKerr]

I have a dell Mini with 1gb of RAM and a 16GB SSD.

I have played with it some and the SD content will play fine as do my *.mpg OTA 1080i recording. What does not work well are h.264 files.

By default if you are on your own LAN it will not transcode the files. I think you can probably get h.264 to work by forcing it to transcode manually.

I have not played with Placeshifter much and can't seem to get smooth playback of h.264 files even on a machine that has no problems playing them directly. I suspect this is a server issue since I do not have a stout cpu in it but when I look at it during the transcoding it seldom goes past 80%.

I will have to play with this more but I would think if it will play back OTA HD that if I get the server part working smoothly I would be able find a Placeshifter trans-coding setting that worked on the Dell mini.

(Tested on wired connection. have not tried it wireless yet.)

Any ideas?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I have a dell Mini with 1gb of RAM and a 16GB SSD.

I have played with it some and the SD content will play fine as do my *.mpg OTA 1080i recording. What does not work well are h.264 files.

By default if you are on your own LAN it will not transcode the files. I think you can probably get h.264 to work by forcing it to transcode manually.

I have not played with Placeshifter much and can't seem to get smooth playback of h.264 files even on a machine that has no problems playing them directly. I suspect this is a server issue since I do not have a stout cpu in it but when I look at it during the transcoding it seldom goes past 80%.

I will have to play with this more but I would think if it will play back OTA HD that if I get the server part working smoothly I would be able find a Placeshifter trans-coding setting that worked on the Dell mini.

(Tested on wired connection. have not tried it wireless yet.)

Any ideas?

Google for Broadcom Crystal HD mini-card. That's about your only chance for playing h.264 files on your Dell mini9.

Gerry

[Chriscic]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I have played with it some and the SD content will play fine as do my *.mpg OTA 1080i recording. What does not work well are h.264 files.

Yes I forgot that you can play MPEG2 files with much less horsepower. Obviously HD-PVR users need not apply.

[SWKerr]

I have not been able to find a lot on the forums about placeshifter. Since I have not really tried to use it to date I figured that I should make sure I can get it to work on decent hardware before blaming anything on the Dell mini.

I am skipping the Dell mini for now and using Placeshifter on a box I know will work as a Sage Client because I have used it that way in the past. It is an early Core2Duo 1.8ghz with an nVidia 8500GT video card running WIndows7 64 bit.

Running Placeshifter with the default setup over my LAN works great. From my reading I believe that it will work much like a client in this setup and will let the local PC do all the hard work of rendering the video. This worked on the Mini for everything except for h.264 files.

I assumed that by making the server do the transcoding that I might have a shot at getting the HD-PVR files to play on the mini. I overrode the defaults to force the sever to transcode the stream. I can get decent results using SD and OTA HD but still can not get it to play a h.264 file smoothly either on the mini or the CoreDuo. I have tried a lot of different options in Placeshifter but I have had no luck.

One thing I have noticed is that the movies I transcoded using Megui\x264 play back better than the HD-PVR files. Both are 1280x720 but the Megui files are almost acceptable.

The server appears to be stressed but not maxed out.

Has anyone got Placeshifter to transcode HD-PVR files smoothly. I could swap out cpu or even overclock the sever a little if I thought it would help.

I think that if I could get it working on the stronger machine that it would work on the Dell Mini 9. The transcoding should be downgrading the vido to something that the Mini could handle.

Has anyone got smooth playback with Placeshifter on HD-PVR files (Using Transcoding)? I could not find an instance in the forum that indicates this is even possible.

Also: can someone tell me what setting might work if I wanted to use Placeshifter over the Internet with DSL. I have always assumed my upload speed would be to low for decent quality video.