Question about PVR-350 performance

[Steve525]

I've been using the PVR-350 with the TV-out and UI enable, with (mostly) good results. I recently upgraded from a Celeron 466 to a Semperon 2200. The primary reason for the upgrade was that the OSD on the old computer was so sluggish that it pretty much made FF and RR impossible to control. The upgrade did improve things dramatically, but it's still not as good as I hoped. The biggest issue is that if you watch a video for a while (5 to 10 minutes) and then bring up the OSD (by say FF or RR) it takes a while (5 seconds or so) for the OSD to pop up. This isn't horrible, but it would be nice to fix.

So, my question is, is this standard for the UI on the 350, or is this unique to me? What is your experience?

I'm running Win98 with only 256 MB of RAM, so I am wondering if upgrading these might help. Anyway, before I search for a cure, I want to know if there is any hope, or if this is just the way it is.

Thanks!

[Crashless]

Mine's actually quite snappy on a athlon 2600 w/ 1gb ram. Though I can say one thing, before I upgraded to 1gb it was slower. With my sage process taking as much as 150mb of memory at times, it wouldn't surprise me if your computer is doing a lot of HD swapping. During the scenario you described, does the HD light go crazy during those 5 seconds?

I'd consider upping things to 512mb. The only reason I had to up to 1gb was because I'm running Sage, a sage client for my MVP, and Meedio all at once. Those programs totaled were taking all available 512mb, so upping it made a huge difference. Not to mention being able to put my memory in dual-channel mode. Those two things really sped up my system.

Check your memory usage. A 2200+ should be pretty usable.

[mls]

Are you running SageTV v2.0 or v2.1? From what I've seen in my own testing, v2.1 is pretty much pointless to try and run under Win98. Also, if you try an run any clients machines off SageTV running under Win98 on the server machine they will crash. This was a bug in v2.0 that was not fixed in v2.1 either.

Anyway, v2.1 just doesn't run very well under Win98 even on a fast computer (v2.0 was reasonable though except for the client/server problem).

I don't know why Frey just doesn't remove Win98 from the list of OS'es it will run with since the direction they are headed with additions isn't going to run correctly under Win98 in the future anyway. I've mentioned this in e-mails to them several times. Would be far more reasonable on their part to just plain say Win98 is not longer supported and get it over with. Would save a lot of hassles for everyone all the way around.

[Steve525]

Thanks for the replies...

Crashless,
Following your suggestion, I did some quick tests last night. It appears I am using about 350 MB of memory for everything. (I don't know how to monitor individual processes under 98). So I am eating into the HD for virtual memory. However, during those 5 seconds, the HD light doesn't come on at all! It isn't even blinking like it typically does every second or so while I am watching a video. However, the CPU is pinned at 100%. I'm not sure what this means, although it's good to know that it works fine for others (and therefore should be fixable).

MLS,
I did indeed upgrade to 2.1. (That bug where it would delete things on you if you changed favorite status got me a couple times). However, I first installed 2.0 and then upgraded, and I didn't notice any large performance differences between the two versions. I'm not 100% sure I ever ran with 350's TV-out enabled with 2.0 on the new computer, but I think I did. (Next time I need to take notes. ). Maybe I'll try 2.0 again.

I've been pretty happy with Sage under win98, or at least I thought I was. It might be that this problem is OS related, but I'd hate to shell out $100, just to find out. Thanks again for your help.

[Blackwell15]

I was holding out until the linux version came out since I figured linux would be more efficent.
Asus Cusl2 MB
PIII 900 MHZ
256 Meg. Memory
Maxtor ATA HD that claims its running DMA100.
PVR-350
Old ATI Rage Pro Video.

Initially I got very good video playback using the TV out. When I got the remote working I started getting hangs when accessing control functions both from the remote and from the PC menu. I have been scanning the threads for info and found many reasons why this could happen. This thread is the first to mention Win98. I too hate to cough up 100+ to Uncle Bill for XP. So I guess Ill work with 98 a while longer.
Thanks for the info.
Mike

[Crashless]

What are you using to interpret the IR signals? The 350's remote port, or a usbirt, or something else?

Do you still have speed problems if you keep the remote active, but use the keyboard?

Most people who switch to a remote, after using the keyboard for some time notice a slowdown in response. Though after a while, it becomes less noticable - it's more of a perception type thing. Mine still is sub-one second using a USBUIRT.

The TV out will also have noticably slower response times that simply using the monitor display. This is a result of the system having to compress the rendered GUI out through the 350.

Basically, I'm trying to find out what kind of hangs you are getting.

Also, AFAIK, the linux version is only planned as an integrated system,(meaning you can't buy just the software) but I could be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. To be honest - Frey hasn't said a whole lot about this.

[Blackwell15]

Im using the Hauppauge Remote port.

I checked a few things on my pc.. memory is maxed when viewing or recording,
So I reduced the recording quality to "Good", that seems to have done the trick.
This is with "hardware encoding only" enabled. I just switched "U/I on Tv out" back on so we will see how that works.


Remote and Menu response is excellent. I'll add more memory as thats the cheapest upgrade and do some system monitoring. I have to dig up one of my
system spy utilities

I'l also look into what else I can unload in windows.. that might be productive as
this is the only thing thats going to run on this computer.

Thanks
Mike