Help with new Sandy Bridge Build

[dcardellini]

Sorry for long post!!

Due to losing the ability to get smooth mkv AVC and VC-1 on my aging 785g iGPU PC Client systems when I upgraded to V7.1.9 (think Haali Splitter is broken with V7).....

....decided it is time to invest money and time to make some big changes on my two main PC Clients. Besides the broken MKV playback:

..... they are loud (everything running with DXVA disabled on these 785g's for smooth playback).

..... they are too big....want to move to mini-ITX's

.....I have been a long-time holdout to use the HTPC as an audio Pre/Pro direct to Power Amps.....ready to throw the towel in on this one finally, and dump my X-Fi Elite Pro's....so just bought an Emotiva UMC-1 processor....and need to get HDMI audio in all forms going.

.....Need to future proof and dump WinXP, and get on with
upgrade to Windows 7 finally.

****************************

Thought I would do this incrementally by doing a fresh Sagetv build on the 785g system with Windows 7. After a couple of days pulling hair out, abandoning this effort. Slight stuttering on 1080i mpeg2 material with built-in Sagetv decoder and external Microsoft DTV-DVD was an irritant, but the killer was getting the HMDI audio to work properly....took a long time just to get DD/DTS streaming out of HDMI unaltered/unprocessed in PC, and was impossible to get 2-channel PCM passed out at untouched at 44.1 kHz in JRiver w/WASAPI (Windows Sound HDMI Audio properties will only show 48 kHz as supported format)

So, I took my i7-2620M (Elitebook 2560p) laptop and did a build on this as a test before investing in iTX sandy bridge hardware.

I am amazed. HDMI just worked with DD/DTD unaltered passthrough; JRiver passed unaltered 44.1 kHz PCM with WASAPI; 1080i, 720p mpeg and AVC/264 mkv's played stutter free and with DXVA enabled (needed to chose the MS DVR-DTV decoder).

At this point, my only problem appears to be playing VC-1 mkv's. They stutter terribly.

1)*****>> Is there a magic bullet for VC-1 MKV's???? Would prefer to get this working BEFORE deciding on a commercial Blu-Ray player (TMT or PowerDVD), and would hate to be tied to one or the other's codec for playback within Sagetv. Is there a non-TMT/PDVD solution here?

2)*****>> I had been using using PowerDVD in these older builds, but the family would only rent SD-DVD's as the WAF factor on this was just too high with the separate Cyberlink app. I am lazy, and hope to hear a few comments on which player and best integration launching from Sagetv, and best 10' UI with a Harmony remote from someone already down that path.

3)*****>> Can't seem to get music to stream out untouched at 44.1kHz from SageTV. Is there a filter that I can use with Sagetv to get WASAPI 44.1 kHz PCM bit perfect output over HDMI?

(as an aside, I did do an A/B comparison with between two PC's hooked up via HDMI to my audio pre/pro.....one streaming (ripped CD) 44.1kHz PCM over HDMI from WASAPI JRiver, and the other streaming resampled at 48Khz from Sagetv over HDMI. The untouched 44.1kHz was noticeably crisper. Yeah...not a blind test, but I really wanted the 48 kHz to be "good enough," as I don' need perfection. Mid-Fi setup--CD was digitally mastered Chick Corea- Akoustic Band, UMC-1 processor, Parasound 220w x5, B&W 605s2's.)

As I loaded J.River to be able to listen to the WASAPI sound, I was blown away at what a great application this is for music.....the theater mode 10'UI was fantastic.....and the image pulls over internet for the artist that produce a slideshow are mesmerizing. I stopped screwing around tinkering and sat there listening and watching these slideshows for five hours yesterday (amidst a mess of pulled apart PC's, boxes/cables/wires/tools and high volume.....to my wife's chagrin).

....not to mention that I could now put a CD into my HTPC and either play it or rip it with JRiver (a feature I loved in MCE2005, but which has eluded SageTV forever).

4)*****>>> So the question......is there a way to launch JRiver from Sagetv, and how do I integrate my Harmony into this, as there are common button commands between these two apps? (my Harmony is used as an MCE Remote).

5)*****>>> If I want to play BluRay rips from within SageTV (not MKV, but ISO or Folder), what is the best setup that allows bitstreaming HD Audio? Not sure I will go there, as I do like menus, but....... I also have three HD300's plus one HD100, and it would be good to do this in a way that gives me some blu-ray support in these extenders.

Thx in advance for any help here, as I am convinced that there will be NO similar options to SageTV in the near (or far) future. The content providers are winning this war.....and I am determined to keep this Sage going for a long time.

[will]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

Due to losing the ability to get smooth mkv AVC and VC-1 on my aging 785g iGPU PC Client systems when I upgraded to V7.1.9 (think Haali Splitter is broken with V7).....

Before spending the money to upgrade have you tried using CoreAVC 3 for decoding MKVs? I am using that on a virtualized client with no graphics card and it works very well with 7.1.9 and my Blu-ray rips.

Just a thought.

[dcardellini]

Two years ago I tried CoreAVC, but it did not have DXVA at the time. Will it do VC-1 too?

Assume that the new version gives me this.....I will still need to find a better codec than the Sagetv or the MS DTR-DVD for my 1080i stuff. Current 785g on winXP uses cyberlink decoder for this -no DXVA. Could try this again.

However, still left with a forced resample to 48 kHz for my music stuff as the 785g's HDMI out will not do PCM 44.1kHz.....then the size, noise may still be the driver for change.

thx for input!

[will]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

Two years ago I tried CoreAVC, but it did not have DXVA at the time. Will it do VC-1 too?

I don't believe it does VC-1. I'm running my sage client on Windows 7 so I'm just using the native VC-1 codec built into Windows7/Vista.

I'm only using CoreAVC for my MKVs and HD-PVR recordings which it does a great job with (highly recommend it).

[dcardellini]

Was hoping that the Win7 native codecs would do VC-1.... but they stutter (major) for me

What processor/MB, GPU are you using?

[will]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

Was hoping that the Win7 native codecs would do VC-1.... but they stutter (major) for me

What processor/MB, GPU are you using?

The OS is virtualized and is running on a Core i5. The system is a 2011 iMac and I am using Parallels 7 to run Windows 7. The virtual OS is setup with a dual core single processor and 1.5 gigs.

[dcardellini]

...and the gpu is i5 integrated or discrete card?

[will]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

...and the gpu is i5 integrated or discrete card?

The system has the AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory. However, since everything is virtualized I am not using the GPU for CoreAVC.