Hardware requirements for HD

[PixelMaven]

From casual reading here it looked to me like a P4 3.2 GHz had enough horsepower to run SageTV, so I made a clean XP PRO / SageTV install on a Dell GX280 Optiplex mini-tower (1GB Memory).

SageTV newbe with no idea what to expect, but found the interface to be spastic / slippery / awkward / verging on unusable (via keyboard/mouse). OS and Java is up-to-date.

Seems to record OTA HD (using HDHomeRun) okay, but HD play back locks up the machine. When I finally got Ctrl-Alt-Del to respond, it showed 100% CPU.

Guessing video card is the bottleneck, device manager shows two "Intel(R) 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family".

GX280 power supply is 250 watts, and supports one PCI Express x16 card and one PCI Express x1 card. I was going to replace the native video card with one that has h.264 acceleration, but the ones I've looked at so far all recommend minimum power supply higher than 250 watts. ( I'd use a different machine before upgrading the power supply in this one.) Not a gamer, just need reliable HDTV recording and playback.

Suggestions / guidance please.

[JetreL]

Originally Posted by PixelMaven

Seems to record OTA HD (using HDHomeRun) okay, but HD play back locks up the machine. When I finally got Ctrl-Alt-Del to respond, it showed 100% CPU.

Guessing video card is the bottleneck, device manager shows two "Intel(R) 82915G/GV/910GL Express Chipset Family".

GX280 power supply is 250 watts, and supports one PCI Express x16 card and one PCI Express x1 card.

Replacing the video card is a step in the right direction. You can get on that has more than enough processing power for sub $40. You really can't break much by under powering your card. If you don't have a god awful amout of Drives or Fans I would try it to see what happens. Who knows you may be pleasantly surprised.

[PixelMaven]

Thanks. Do you think an older "PCI Express 1" card is the way to go -- or a newer "PCI Express 2" card that I understand is backward compatible with the type 1 slot? I'm guessing newer cards would have better acceleration but might be compromised somehow in the type 1 slot? Dell machine is circa 2004. Any specific suggestions / or any consensus on preferred video chip sets?

[Clift]

Our second desktop PC is still on the original Dell power supply and it's 250W IIRC, and I have a GeForce 8400GS in there. You should be fine with a GeForce 9 series or Radeon HDxxxx series, as long as you get one that is designed for multimedia and not gaming. For example, something like this would be okay:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121310

while something like this may not be:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161334

[JetreL]

Thanks Clift! What he said...

[PixelMaven]

Thanks for these valuable comments. I've ordered the ASUS EAH4350.

[pjpjpjpj]

You could always order an HD200 and not have to worry about it.

/obligatory

[PixelMaven]

A media extender is five times the cost of this card. I see the value of an extender in its intended purpose, but not as a primary video processor when the serving computer is within cabling distance of the display. Are there other benefits?

[blade]

Originally Posted by PixelMaven

A media extender is five times the cost of this card. I see the value of an extender in its intended purpose, but not as a primary video processor when the serving computer is within cabling distance of the display. Are there other benefits?

Well for one you don't have to worry about codecs and struggling with getting smooth playback. It just works. Another and probably the biggest benefit for me is that it's completely silent. When I'm watching TV I don't want any noise being generated from my components.

Also the less you're doing on the server the more stable and less likely it is to crash or have a hiccup. I've always ran a separate server/client even before there were extenders. I'd be really upset if I was watching TV and my client crapped out due to a problem with playback and I missed some recordings.

There's nothing wrong with running a PC client if that's your preference. I've used PC clients and extenders and personally will never go back to a PC client unless there is a must have feature added that is only available on PC clients. It would have to be a huge feature though.

[PixelMaven]

Mmmm. For that very reason I chose to run WHS on a separate box, while many here extol the benefits of WHS+SageTV. I plan to purchase an extender, just not right away. FWIW the ASUS EAH4350 claims to be silent.

[SWKerr]

I use WHS as the SageTV server so the Clients are separate from the Server. This has proved very stable.

Even when I used the Server for playback as long as the Server was setup to run as a service I never had problems with a client corrupting a recoding. I did on occasion have problems with Killing the GUI and not being able to restart it without a reboot. This would mean that I could not watch anything until I rebooted once the recording stopped. It sucked but I didn't lose anything. That was in the old XP days. I really think with Window7-64 this is no longer a problem. My current Client machines go for weeks without a reboot and I never have a problem that is not fixed by restarting the GUI. Even this is rare.

My problem with the Extender is that I can't surf the web, I cant watch a BluRay with a menu and online content is not as good with Playon as Boxee or Hulu or Netflix directly. I would definitly consider the extender for a secondary set but I would I think I will always want a HTPC for my main HDTV. It does cost more and it is more work to setup but it does everything I want to do. Also the setup\codec problems are overblown especially on new hardware and Windows7.

[blade]

Originally Posted by PixelMaven

FWIW the ASUS EAH4350 claims to be silent.

That's just 1 piece of hardware. You still typically have a fan in the power supply, cpu fan and hard drives. Trying to choose quiet hardware to get noise down to an acceptable level for a client PC can be difficult and expensive. For a "server" it's going to be next to impossible. SSD Drives have made it easier to get the noise from clients down, but aren't much help for a server. The only way I could use a server for playback would be if it was in an adjacent closet or something and I could run the wires through the wall or floor.

When it comes to placing a PC in an area such as my living room or den any noise is too much. If I can tell if the PC is on just by listening then it's too loud. I'm much more tolerant if the PC is in a bedroom or office.

Of course some people don't mind noise.