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#1
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Newcomer - looking for opinions for new Sage TV PC config
Hi from a first time user of Sage TV and poster to this group. After some research I finally took the plunge and bought Sage TV to make my own PVR and I must say that I am very pleased. The PC it is currently on is an older PC from a recent upgrade and consequently it has a "not so clean" disk and OS which I need to rebuild. But before I do that, I installed everything to make sure that it would all work ok, which so far it has with v2.0 RC1. Before I go ahead and rebuild this PC for my HTPC with Sage TV, I was wondering if there are any tricks or words of wisdom as to how best go about this. Additionally what software to install and what software should be avoided, stuff like DVD player software, AV software, etc. This PC will have the primary purpose of a PVR but it will also play music and divx/xvid/dvd movies too.
PC description: Shuttle XPC SS51G 2.26GHz P4 with 533FSB 1GB DDR333 RAM 120GB 7200 8MB WDC hard disk ATI Radeon 7500 AGP video card Hauppage PVR-350 Hauppage PVR-USB2 XP Pro OS motherboard has built in USB2, sound, lan, etc. ext dvd drive The plan is to use the 350's hardware MPEG out for Sage TV and the ATI video card's S-Video out for divx/xvid. If I could use the 350's output for everything that would be great but I doubt if that is possible, at least from what I have seen thus far. a) I have seen 1 tip for formatting hard disk with 64K blocks. Any more tips? I plan on partitioning the 120GB disk into 3 partitions with p1=3GB for boot loader and swap file, p2=7GB for OS and apps and p3=remainder (110 GB) for data files and recorded Sage TV stuff. If necessary I will add an extra disk but right now this should be enough. I will be using NTFS partitions. b) Any need to upgrade the video card if I plan on using the 350's output for Sage TV? Would I gain anything for xvid/divx playback by using a different video card? c) Is there an optimal configuration for this setup? i.e. Which options to turn on or off in Sage TV? I am still sorting through all of the various options as this is all new to me. d) Anything else I need to consider? Thank in advance. |
#2
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Re: Newcomer - looking for opinions for new Sage TV PC config
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Same for MediaCenter10. When in its "Theater Mode" it works VERY well on an HTPC. Throw in myHTPC as a front end and Girder to handle the integration and this is a very common, and very powerful combination. Quote:
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partition
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#4
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sixdoubleo,
Thanks for your suggestions, I will look into them. I have a 46" Sony rear projection with S-Video in. I am looking at plasma/LCD/projector but that is still a dream at the moment, so just S-Video is fine for now. May be in 6 months time I will revisit a TV for Christmas. dvd_maniac, This is a config I normally do to optimize disk performance. Hard disks have faster data transfer rates at the start of the disk (inner most cyclinders) and slower at its end (outer most cylinders). The 1st partition I use just for booting and holding the swap file. Since this partition is at the beginning of the disk, it will get the fastest possible data transfers to & from swap for a single hd config. Additionally since this partition only holds a couple of files which are constant and the swap file, the swap file does not get fragmented and it easily has room to grow or shrink accordingly. Thus no fragmentation problems for the swap file. The 2nd partition is the next fastest space on disk and it only contains the OS and any apps. It is usually stable once built but since it is Windows, it will require a little defragmention from time to time. Finally the 3rd partition will be the slowest portion of the hd but speed is not an issue here for a dual tuner config as the hd has plenty of speed for that and everything else I want it to do. It is dedicated to file storage only. Fragmentation may be a probblem here depending on its usage and recording habits. It will probably be a weekly or bi-weekly defrag schedule for this partition. Sometimes I have a 4th partition too which I keep small (say 5-10GB) and use for a 2nd copy of the OS, to use as a backdoor into the 1st OS in case of problems with bad drivers, etc. I also use it to fully defrag the 1st OS since there are no files in use on the 1st OS when running off of the 2nd OS. It's also useful for imaging the drive of the 1st OS, plus a few other nice side affects. I have not decided if I will have a 4th partition on this HTPC as it may be a simple config and not really necessary. Plus I could use the extra GB for more recording time. Hopefully that explains it. Sorry if it was a bit long. Last edited by Dr Squish; 04-22-2004 at 08:31 PM. |
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DrSquish - I buy your justification for placing the swapfile in a partition optimized for speed - but only if you truly think you'll be swapping. However, with 1GB of DRAM, I highly doubt this will be a majority of your disk access.
Also, I really was confused by your statement "Hard disks have faster data transfer rates at the start of the disk (inner most cyclinders)...". Where did you ever hear that? In the old days where the number of sectors was the same regardless of which track, the media transfer rate was effectively the same on every track. You correctly indicate that those days are long since past, but you got it exactly backwards. The outer (i.e. longer) tracks have more sectors than the inner tracks. Hence, since every track rotates at the same rate (duh!), the OUTER tracks transfer more data in the same amount of time. And further, transfer rate really isn't what you care about for a swapfile - it's access time. And the access time is made up of track-to-track latency and rotational latency. I think it's pretty clear that rotational latency is constant regardless of which track (i.e. 50% of the rotation rate of course). So the track-to-track latency will dominate. If your drive is continually seeking, I should think you'd want your frequently accessed data somewhere in the middle of the disk (i.e. middle track), not at either extreme. For a good example of this logic, go back to the days of FAT floppies where the FAT blocks (very frequently accessed) were in the "middle" of the floppy (at least that's how I remember it). If, on the other hand, your disk is infrequently accessed, I might be able to accept your position. Most disks "rest" the heads fully retracted (i.e. inside the inner-most track). Is this what you think? But, as I said above, I believe it all is completely moot (i.e. trying to optimize disk allocation to place the swapfile in the optimum position) as I doubt you are ever swapping. |
#6
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That partitioning scheme seems overly complicated. You should never need to hit the swap file (at least in this context), especially with 1Gb of ram, you could probably disable the swap file.
For a dedicated HTPC I would recommend about 5Gb (I'm currently using 3.8 of my 4Gb) for OS/apps, something for your media files (however much you need), and the rest for Sage formatted to 64k. Don't even bother defraging the partition for Sage, I've been running Sage for at least a year and have never had any fragmentation problems, in fact I've seen a number of times where defraging has caused problems. As for what software to install, I'd just get Sonic Cineplayer decoders and use them with Sage for all the TV an DVD, probably the cheapest way to go with the same quality at TT (it uses Sonic decoders). If you already have DVD software, I'd just use that for now (you can play DVDs with Sage), and wait for Forceware Multimedia, it's the best decoder I've seen for TV recordings (haven't tried DVDs with it yet). As for other things, only install what you NEED, ie no "codec packs." |
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edmc,
D'oh! I stand corrected. I always seem to mix up CD-ROMS with hard disks, CDs start accessing at the inner most tracks and hard disks at the outer. With 1GB of RAM, it's unlikely that the swap will be frequently accessed but I do plan on using this machine for DVD authoring and re-encoding of files which can be memory intensive at times. Perhaps it may be better to make the 1st partition bigger and install the OS there, and then make the 2nd partition small and just contain the swap? Probably not much difference since both partitions will be small compared to the total disk size. In any case, I would like to keep the swap file just in case I need the PC for one of my simulations for work... |
#8
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Um, actually, Dr. Squish, the first part of the drive = the slowest.....it spins the slowest - the further out on the hard drive you go, the faster it can transfer data. Hard drives do not store data from the outside towards the inside...not sure where you got that from. If you're curious and bored, remove the cover from your hard drive, and watch what it does when you access data You would want to make your Windows partition first, then the big one for storage, then swap at the end.
DVD Maniac - if Windows stores the swap file on the same partition that Windows is installed on, the space it takes up will become very fragmented, and performance will go down by large margins, eventually. You can get around this, if you want, by making the swap file the same minimum and maximum size, so Windows keeps this permanent file that can't be split up for your swap file.....but you'll get better performance from it if it's at the end of your drive. Last edited by RageFury; 11-03-2004 at 12:29 PM. |
#9
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Actually drives are fastest at the beginning (which is probably the outside of the disk? not sure):
http://www.storagereview.com/article...300S0-2_2.html |
#10
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That is not a very accurate benchmark, and here is why - they are testing a SINGLE SECTOR read and write. This means they are working with a tiny piece of data. When a hard drive is idle, the read/write head stays at the inside (beginning) of the drive. So if you are doing a lot of really tiny reads or writes, you're going to see a slightly faster response time at the beginning of the drive. If they did that test copying 10 megabyte files that span hundreds of sectors, the best performance would be by far at the end/outside of the drive. That is a misleading benchmark........if you're in an environment where you work with a lot of tiny files, then that is one thing. HTPC-related stuff works with small numbers of very large files, which is quite the opposite. Get it?
P.S., notice the name of that part of the review is "low-level results"......... Last edited by RageFury; 11-03-2004 at 01:02 PM. |
#11
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Sounds good, but I'll still make the point that the page file, and page file performance are irrelevant for an HTPC, and if they aren't then you don't have enough RAM (512 should be plenty for an HTPC).
And FWIW, if you read the caption: Quote:
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#12
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Depends on what you do with your HTPC A lot of benchmarks out there are very misleading.......it's an often misunderstood area, because you see one thing that looks like something, but in reality means something else, a lot. Having a high-performing page file isn't a very big requirement for HTPC's, though, for most If you want to have a separate partition for it and you're formatting anyways, might as well make the most of it, though.
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#13
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I was addressing HTPCs specifically where you will rarely (never probably) commit more than your available physical memory. In fact I've completely disabled the Pagefile on my HTPCs. I wouldn't do it on a multipurpose PC where your memory usage can be quite dynamic, but on an dedicated HTPC it's generally pretty static, so there's little/no risk of running out of memory (if you have enough).
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#14
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Well, it depends - Windows itself takes up ~250 MB of RAM just to run, give or take some, so not a whole lot is left over. I should check my RAM usage while I record at a high quality setting and see what happens......I have an Avermedia Ultra TV 1500 MCE tuner, so CPU usage remains at virtually nothing, and I have the page file disabled but I also have 1GB of RAM. I tested the 250 and the 1500 in three different computers (each of them in a different computer from the other one at the time, but using identical monitors so as to compare image quality the most accurately) and the 1500 won every time. Not to mention it comes with a remote AND it's $50 cheaper than the friggin Hauppauge.....
The Avermedia tuner has the better picture quality (slightly) and it does NOT have that inherent half-second or slightly more delay that the Hauppauage tuner has....the only delay you experience for menus/channels is the time shifting one. Hauppauage is now banned! :P (Hauppauge didn't have updated MCE drivers until just last week, Avermedia has had them for months) |
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