HDTV on Technotrend 3200 = Very High cpu!

[yeahman]

Hi I'm new to hdtv on a pc, i've currently got this setup:

Core 2 duo - 1.86mhz
2gb ram
Radeon X600Pro 256mb
Vista 32bit
Technotrend 3200 + CI
Using TT3200 drivers for Vista v4.4 I think,


Got HDTV working (BBC HD & Astra HD) but 2 problems

1) It was using 90%cpu and a little frame lossy!!!! especially with sport.
2) When using T-rex to decode premiere - I'd have to close the application to change channels otherwise I'd get a blank screen each time I tried to change channels!

Please could you help me ......

Is it my Graphics card that is lagging. From what I can read it has these features Which I thought would've been fine or up to speed with the ATI X1600/X1800 or NVidia 6600GT/7600GT? that was recommended by Technotrend card for assisting with HDTV:
Specification of Radeon X600 pro:
http://www.3dvelocity.com/reviews/asusax600/ax600.htm
"MPEG1/2/4 decode and encode acceleration
DXVA Support
Hardware Motion Compensation, iDCT, DCT and color space conversion
All-format DTV/HDTV decoding
YPrPb component output for direct drive of HDTV displays† "

Or is it the drivers I'm using - how do I use coreAVC? or should I just buy a Nvidia GT7600 graphics card.

[BGonaSTICK]

Really hard to diagnose, but I would suggest two things.

Firstly, I'm guessing that Vista is doing you no favours, as it's not exactly nimble and is probably putting you at a distinct disadvantage compared to XP. High Definition viewing via software decoding is always going to be a really processing-heavy task.

The other thing is the codec used, as you mention. Swapping this (assuming that you can find stuff which runs on Vista) for something like CoreAVC may well make a world of difference. You have to pay for this, and there will be instructions on how to install with it. They have specific support forums too.

We'd be interested to hear what tweaks you make to drop the CPU overhead and get it sorted.

[yeahman]

Thanks for the advise, yes apparently it's cos my card isn't doing any GPU processing of H264, I understand this and will upgrade it soon, however other users are able to get software decoding of H264 with a core 2 duo, using under 50% cpu. Their advice was this "You should make sure that you at least use a H.264 decoder filter which divides the decoding process into several threads to take advantage of both CPU cores"

Do you have any idea if CoreAVC will do this or are they talking about the codecs like CyberLink and MainConcept - how do these fit into the equation, I'm a bit confused as to how it all fits together (what are BDA drivers?) Please could you point me in the right direction to read more how the inner workings of H264 on a PC (codecs,drivers,application, GPU ect)


Also I'm considering dual booting with XP till there's enough support for softcams on vista, would you suggest 32 or 64bit XP? and should I go for MCE version?

[Gav]

The problem is your 1.86mhz chip. I mean, 1.86 Megahertz? Dodgy.

So anyway, I presume you meant gigahertz, well I have a system with dual 1.8Ghz Cores - Intel Core Duo (Not C2D).

It can JUST decode 720p with no issues & Can't do 1080i/p

Just out of interest, do you have the E6300 or the E6320 Processor?

These are the requirements from Apple for Quicktime (H.264) on Windows:

1080p
* 3.0 Ghz Intel Pentium D (dual-core) or faster processor
* At least 1GB of RAM
* 64MB or greater video card
* Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 or XP Service Pack 2

720p
* 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 or faster processor
* At least 512MB of RAM
* 64MB or greater video card
* Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 or XP Service Pack 2

[BGonaSTICK]

I'm not an expert on H.264 codecs, as my box is too lowly to run them. There are several chaps here who are well clued up, so I'll let them advise you on the detail.

I don't think that there are any advantages in going for MCE, as it doesn't even officially support sat cards IIRC!

I would go for 32-bit XP, just because there is far more support for software and drivers etc.

I think you're right about offloading processing to the GPU. I think it's much easier to do this with an Nvidia chipset, but I may be wrong.

I think that some viewer apps also have restrictions on numbers of active cores/threads, or at least options to turn these features on and off. You may want to look into this. Which viewer are you using?

[yeahman]

Thanks for the advise

Yes it's a 6300 core 2 duo, which should be more than the suggested spec advised by apple or pent D..........

I'm using the standard TT software that came with the card, however it didn't work untill i installed dvbviewer, which incidently doesn't work but not the TT software does. I'll look around for that feature that allow multiple threads.

I need to be able to record HDTV & preferrably a channel that's getting hacked by my t-rex 4.6.........

To achieve this I've gathered from yourselves and others :
- downgrade to winxp 32bit
- upgrade vid card to nvidia 8500 (supposed to have full onboard encoding)
- Try different software till it runs the cpu lower (progdvb,altdvb,dvbviewer ect)
- Overclock the CPU till it works!

I'll let you know how it goes.

[satsid]

Hi m8,for CoreAVC see if you can find on Torrent sites first before paying.
sid

[Stv]

hey dude, I'm running a tt3200 on a 6400 processor. It is fine apart from BBC HD on the bundled software, which behaves pretty similar to how you describe, with some programmes (presumably 1080p) dropping frames. Remember that we are talking two separate codecs here though: bbc hd is mpeg2 and normal HDTV is mpeg4.

Everything works fine in DVBViewer though, being able to record and playback simultaneously and without frame dropping. I would almost even recommend buying DVBviewer.

One thing to check, open up cyberlink power dvd and go into the configuration/video menu. See if hardware acceleration is/can be enabled. For some reason it wasn't turned on by default on my install.

Otherwise, I'll have another think
Steve

[Stv]

(by the way, in case I sound nuts: power dvd provides the mpeg4 codec for the BDA-app and the other directX viewer wotsits)