Toshiba Encore 2 10" as SageTV Client

[KryptoNyte]

I picked up the Windows 8.1 tablet mentioned in the title to see if it would run SageTV Client. I figured that by now, Windows 8 would be capable of smooth mpeg2 at on a 1.55 ghz processor.

Of course, I've made this same mistake a couple years ago with an earlier Atom processor, and yeah, the video is not smooth.

Are there any tips to get smooth video performance on what would appear to be an underpowered machine? Seems like a nice little tablet otherwise for the sub $300 arena.

[texneus]

IME it's not the speed of the CPU but rather the capabilities of the GPU. Does the GPU of the tablet support hardware MPG2 decoding? MPG2 is becoming increasingly irrelevant in portable devices so many no longer feature it. A 1.5 Ghz CPU may or may not cut it depending on source bit rate, resolution, and CPU type. All that I can suggest is to try differrnt decoders...The simpler and lighter probably the better. Tablet also implies a wifi connection which is often a problem in of itself. You should try getting a file to play locally before messing with all the variables wifi networking brings.

[Evil_Attorney]

I have an HP Omni and, after trying a bunch of different filters, was only able to get smooth playback by using the LAV filters. But even with that, I only get a short amount of playback time (maybe an hour or so).

[KryptoNyte]

Same problem with the local file, stutters badly.

I did notice on page 104 of the PDF file linked to below that the video engine does provide hardware acceleration for all my major file encoding types. I wonder what codec might take advantage of those?

https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/da...heet-vol-1.pdf

I'll give the LAV filters a shot.

[xred]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

I picked up the Windows 8.1 tablet mentioned in the title to see if it would run SageTV Client. I figured that by now, Windows 8 would be capable of smooth mpeg2 at on a 1.55 ghz processor.

Of course, I've made this same mistake a couple years ago with an earlier Atom processor, and yeah, the video is not smooth.

Are there any tips to get smooth video performance on what would appear to be an underpowered machine? Seems like a nice little tablet otherwise for the sub $300 arena.

As per above MPEG2 decode is usually an afterthought these days. As counter intuitive as it sounds try transcoding the files to MPEG4 in Sage and see if you get better performance. It helped on my Samsung ATIV Tablet PC.

[KryptoNyte]

I was hoping to use the tablet to watch live television.

[texneus]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Same problem with the local file, stutters badly.

I did notice on page 104 of the PDF file linked to below that the video engine does provide hardware acceleration for all my major file encoding types. I wonder what codec might take advantage of those?

https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/da...heet-vol-1.pdf.

Tablets et al are an entirely different animal. The chipset might do hardware decoding but the tablet OEM may not have paid for the license too use it. Iow, to cut costs Toshiba may have disabled MPG2 decoding. You need to see what the Toshiba specs say.

Lav does offer software, DXVA, and Quicksync decoding though, so you may have your answer soon enough.

[KryptoNyte]

It's looking like the LAV video decoder is going to work!

Thanks to everyone who came in to add some advice, very helpful.

[Evil_Attorney]

Good to hear. Let us know what kind of battery life you get while watching.

[KryptoNyte]

Testing that right now EA. One thing that I find a bit strange, when I go full screen there seems to be some kind of time warp that takes me back to the start of the TV show, the timeline just isn't quite right it seems.

I have the unit's CPU locked to 100%, and it's getting very warm on the left side.

[Evil_Attorney]

Sounds like it isn't taking advantage of hardware acceleration. Do you have the LAV filters set for that? I think there are guides somewhere on this forum about how to set them up for that.

[KryptoNyte]

It ran for about 3 hours last night before the battery got to 10% or so, watching live TV with no issue that I can see, except that it got fairly warm. I'll look into the hardware acceleration (I believe I have DXVA checked in the LAV decoder, it was available as I recall).

Before you mentioned LAV, EA, I actually used a command prompt to lock down the CPU speed to 100%, as the min/max settings are not available in the normal power settings control panel (even in the advanced power settings) on this unit (strange?), so I probably need to dial that back at this point and see how long it will run Sage and if there are any persistent heat issues.

I have a feeling that the limiting factor will probably be the 1GB onboard memory limit more than anything else.

[KryptoNyte]

This is working - there is just barely enough horsepower there to pull it off. The problem that I doubt I can overcome is the unfortunate lack of wireless range, so you can pretty much forget trying to get this thing working a room or two away from the router.

I suppose some wireless extenders or a better router might help, but the unit hardware sure struggles when the signal gets weak.

[Evil_Attorney]

I have mostly stopped using Sage on my Windows tablet because of battery life and weak wireless signals, as well. The latest version of Air Video for the iPad does a much better job of transcoding and streaming shows. Previous versions sucked for deinterlacing video, but the latest version works very well with little CPU usage on my server. Since Air Video can be setup to be accessed from outside my network, I use it frequently when I am at the gym.

[wayner]

But I guess the downside to this is shows that are currently recording. I never use LiveTV but I often watch shows in near realtime. Those probably won't work properly in Air Video - they may play but then they will likely stop when you hit the file end at the time you starting watching. For example, if you start watching a hockey game 60 mins into the game using Air Video it will probably stop at the 60 minute mark, even though the file now has more content.

When using Air Video for sports I miss the SkipFwd and SkipFwdX2 buttons although the 30 sec skip in Air Video isn't bad.

The other hassle is that (usually) all of your recordings are in the SageTV recordings folder so it can be tricky to find a show if you have hundreds of recordings in your SageTV recording folder like I do. Or even worse - if you have multiple folders for RecordedTV it may not be obvious which folder the file is contained in.