taking the PCI / DVB card plunge

[drhydro]

Howdy folks,
I am getting ready to try a dvb card. Here is what i have for a PC:
Celeron at 1.7 ghz
256 meg ram
MSI motherboard with shared video (sis 650 chipset) and ac '97 sound (realtek chipset)
40 meg hd (30 gig available)
19" viewsonic display

I am looking at the twinhan 102g. I am mainly setting this up to get g10 and pbs (including pbs hd). This is going to be set up in my daughters bedroom.

From what i have read, this PC system seems to meet the minimum specs for a dvb/pci card. I am going to hook it up to my p* dish (pointed at amc3) and my 76cm dish pointed at g10. I have one cable run that is about 40 feet and the other is about 60 feet. No motors are involved. From what i have seen folks saying the software that comes with the twinhan sucks, but is it workable? What other "gotcha's" should i look out for? Should i invest in a decent video card, or will the sis 650 handle the hd stream (it plays dvds with no problems).

Thanks in advance

 

[korsjs]

you are going to be really pushing it with the computer setup. i really don't think you will be able to watch hd with that. you might be ok for regular sd, but it is going to put a lot of strain on your system.

i was running a 2.9 celeron, gig of ram, pci video card, pci sound card and my system would be running at 40 - 50 percent.

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

I agree on that. I am running a 2 ghz chip with 1 meg of RAM and a Geforce 5500. I have no issues with 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 but HD is another story. Some of the HD is fine, but someimes it stutters. It seems to depend on what the program is and probably what HD format is being used. I would think the onboard video card would be your biggest bottleneck. You might want to consider a Nexus card since it has onboard decoding.

 

[drhydro]

Thanks for the replies. I kind of thought I might need to upgrade the video, but i didnt realize HD was so processor / memory intensive. What i will do is install the DVB card as the system is, then slowly upgrade starting with video, then memory, then processor.

So, some more questions.

1) Which parts of a computer does HD decoding use most? Is it mainly CPU intensive / memory intensive / video intensive? Your answers to this will help me plan my upgrade path.

2) what are the minimum video card requirements? Is there particular chipsets to lust for / stay away from? Minimum RAM?

3)For HD, what do you consider to be a minimum CPU?

4) Will this current system run standard DVB for PBS/ G10?

Thanks once again,
Thomas

 

[Wayn23]

Thanks for the replies. I kind of thought I might need to upgrade the video, but i didnt realize HD was so processor / memory intensive. What i will do is install the DVB card as the system is, then slowly upgrade starting with video, then memory, then processor.

So, some more questions.

1) Which parts of a computer does HD decoding use most? Is it mainly CPU intensive / memory intensive / video intensive? Your answers to this will help me plan my upgrade path.

2) what are the minimum video card requirements? Is there particular chipsets to lust for / stay away from? Minimum RAM?

3)For HD, what do you consider to be a minimum CPU?

4) Will this current system run standard DVB for PBS/ G10?

Thanks once again,
Thomas

To work with HD I would use an Athlon XP, Athlon 64 or P4 and
the actual clockspeed varies with the processor. I would say a 2ghz
actual speed in a Barton core (512 L2 Cache)Athlon XP or at least a P4 at 2.4ghz in some cases you might do well with less but it is important to have a good motherboard also. I use a Nforce2 mother
board with one of my HTPC's with a Mobile Athlon XP 2400+ overclocked to 2166mhz (XP3000+ speed) and it works fantastic for HD. I also have a Athlon 64 3000+ that runs at 1800mhz actual and it works very well also. All of my computers have at least 512mb of ram and a good modern video card so I can take advantage of DXVA to assist in the decoding of Mpeg2. I have used an ATI 9000 video card in my older athlon HTPC and it worked fine I now use Nvidia 6600GT's in both of my HTPC's but I also have used an ATI 9700pro.

It is very important to use software that can use DXVA(direct X video acceleration) for smooth playback of HD. The software that comes with a Twinhan card supports DXVA.
It is also very important that you have a good signal.

 

[W_Tracy_Parnell]

Thanks for the replies. I kind of thought I might need to upgrade the video, but i didnt realize HD was so processor / memory intensive. What i will do is install the DVB card as the system is, then slowly upgrade starting with video, then memory, then processor.

So, some more questions.

1) Which parts of a computer does HD decoding use most? Is it mainly CPU intensive / memory intensive / video intensive? Your answers to this will help me plan my upgrade path.

2) what are the minimum video card requirements? Is there particular chipsets to lust for / stay away from? Minimum RAM?

3)For HD, what do you consider to be a minimum CPU?

4) Will this current system run standard DVB for PBS/ G10?

Thanks once again,
Thomas

Don't know which computer parts are used most for sure. I have heard of folks using a CPU about in the range of yours with a good video card with good results. I would just say buy the best video card you can afford-something like a Geforce 6600 or better. I don't think you will have any problems running normal 4:2:0 video even with your current setup. Only thing I ever had trouble with was HD. As I mentioned, some of it was beautiful, and other things jerked badly. Minimum CPU for HD is realistically about a 2.4 I would guess.

 

[drhydro]

Thanks for the input folks, you have helped me out quite a bit. Looks like i will try the current setup, then upgrade in this order: video, memory, then processor.
Hopefully with this approach i can figure out which component makes the most difference :-D

 

[korsjs]

Thanks for the input folks, you have helped me out quite a bit. Looks like i will try the current setup, then upgrade in this order: video, memory, then processor.
Hopefully with this approach i can figure out which component makes the most difference :-D

i was in the same boat as you. started to upgrade my old cpu. before you start to upgrade, look at how much you plan on spending on everything, then compare it to what you would spend on a new computer. i wish i would have never upgraded my old one and just got the new one which i did anyway.

i spent around 900 on a amd 3800x2 (301), asus motherboard (109), gig ram (80), nvidia 6600 video card (119), sata II 160 gig (80), antec case and power supply (80), sound card (30) and other misc stuff.

i have not been able to view fta hd yet as i still have to buy a fta dish. however, i have viewed hd on the web and my system is running between 20 - 40 percent and runs great. my old celeron d would stay at 100 percent.

 

[Larry1]

To start off with, you might be a little short on memory. Windows likes lots of memory. If you plan on recording any of the progaming, then your hard disk will fill up quickly. Your processor should be fast enough to start out with for regular programing. I have not tried HD programing, but have read that it takes an lot of computer power to decode the high bit rates. You should look at the diffent forums for the different DVB programs to see what others are using in hardware to view HD.

 

[korsjs]

i would say one gig to be say. however, he should get by on 512mb.

 

[drhydro]

Korsjs, thanks for the good advice on upgrading. I did look around quite a bit at upgrading my current system, it seems like it would be cheaper to build a new system for HD than it is to upgrade what i have. Unfortunately my system needs a northwood processor for upgrading, very pricey and hard to find :-(

For under the price of a processor ($214), i can buy a barebones system with 3.0 GHZ celeron / 512 meg ram/ integrated ac'97 audio ($169). All i need to do is add a decent hard drive and video card and im off to the races :-D

Soooooo since i need a decent video card anyways, no matter what i do, i guess i will pick up one of those as my first upgrade option.

Once again, thanks for the advice, mucho appreciated.

 

[korsjs]

i would look to see if the motherboard comes with a pci express or agp slot. pci express is the way to go if you are going to be doing alot of hd. apg will give you better performance then a pci video card.

also, how much more would the barebones kit be if you upgraded to a p4 processor?

 

[drhydro]

This comes with an AGP 4/8x slot. They dont offer the option for a p4 upgrade unfortunately :-(

You can see the specs here
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=1178021&sku=TC3J-4002

This looks like it will be a nice start for a HTPC. The form factor on the case is not as small as i would like, but all the small form factor cases seem to have airflow issues.

 

[greyskies]

Software Program Crucial

If you are going to purchase a Hauppauge Nexus-S Card (which I highly recommend), then note that you will not be able to use RitzDVB and some other apps. ProgDVB has been a champ with this card, however, a relatively new program, AltDVB is providing great quality in both SD and HD, and new version yesterday, 2.1, provides more stability. Also, seems to provide least CPU drain of any programs I have found thus far for PCI-DVB ops.

greyskies in sunny South Florida

 

[drhydro]

Thanks for the input greyskies. I am going to use a twinhan card for the simple reason of price.