New Link HTPC

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by ZetaVu

Could also be the video settings on the H.264 files, are they default or did you boost up the bitrate? Last I tried on my machine BTV did not have HW acceleration with the arcsoft decoder and BTV, but on a dual core atom maybe you are ok.

Honestly I haven't messed with any settings as far as h.264 goes - whatever BTV defaults to is what I'm using!

[ZetaVu]

What's your cpu utilization when playing back an HD PVR recording in BTV, and what settings was that recorded in (1080i? default BTV bitrate?)

[Wolfie351]

Originally Posted by ZetaVu

but on a dual core atom maybe you are ok.

My Acer is a dual core Atom 330, still not enough juice to play h.264 for me.

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by ZetaVu

What's your cpu utilization when playing back an HD PVR recording in BTV, and what settings was that recorded in (1080i? default BTV bitrate?)

Last night I measured 16% CPU, recorded at 720p (locked from my cable box).

[ZetaVu]

Then you are definitely getting hardware acceleration. Ok, now my curiosity is peaked. Can you please share as much detail as possible, I want to try and duplicate this on my W7 machine with my 8500 card (don't have an ion yet, but it'll be my next toy)

I'm using W7 home pro, I tested on RC1 (ultimate) and installed TME (did not upgrade TME version) and BTV, assigned BTV to use the arcsoft decoder, and got no hardware acceleration with my 8500 card. All my recordings are 1080i locked and at the default bitrate. I used the default W7 nvidia driver, should I have installed it myself from nvidia?

So, what did you do on you ion system, specifically what TME version did you install, anything else special? Which W7 version (home pro, ultimate, 32 or 64?) Is playback different in BTV vs otehr programs? What is your video driver? (W7 default or did you do something special) Any overclocking, any GPU tweaking? I assume you are running overlay and only one monitor (not cloned or anything). If you change the decoder from arcsoft to snapstream, what happens to your cpu? Anything else you can think of that's important?

[Rich A]

Originally Posted by Nick Burns

I'm seriously considering getting this $200 nettop, since all I would need to do is install Link. It would definitely be an improvement over the 'small' PC I have set up now.

I just ordered one myself. I really think this is the solution for our own media extender / link box. 199.99 ... complete .. ready to plug into AC.

It even has HDMI output. Comes with Win XP Home and a keyboard. You can't build a link box from scratch for this price.

It has one bug that users are reporting. That is that for some reason the audio part of the HDMI output doesn't work. Might have something to do with the motherboard based sound firmware. The thing that closed the deal for me was the gigabit LAN.

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by ZetaVu

So, what did you do on you ion system, specifically what TME version did you install, anything else special?

I will double check when I get home, but its whatever version of TME I got off of the HD-PVR disk. (Actually Zeta, its the same version you let me download from you a few months ago, which I think is the HDPVR CD version)

Originally Posted by ZetaVu

Which W7 version (home pro, ultimate, 32 or 64?)

Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit

Originally Posted by ZetaVu

Is playback different in BTV vs otehr programs?

I will check this when I get home. I've only used BTV for playback of HD-PVR files.

Originally Posted by ZetaVu

What is your video driver? (W7 default or did you do something special) Any overclocking, any GPU tweaking?

No overclocking of anything, BIOS settings are whatever they were when the board was shipped to me. I am using the "ION ITX Chipsets driver for Win 7 & Vista 32bits" from the Zotac website. There was no specific graphics driver, so either that installed the driver, or its the one built into windows.

Originally Posted by ZetaVu

I assume you are running overlay and only one monitor (not cloned or anything). If you change the decoder from arcsoft to snapstream, what happens to your cpu? Anything else you can think of that's important?

It actually works fine in both overlay and 3D accelerated, though I run it normally in overlay mode. Will try the Snapstream decoder when I get home.

[ZetaVu]

I'll be playing with my W7 machine this weekend see what I can find. Rich, let us know how that Asus works, I know they have one with the 330 atom for $130 more, (backordered) but if you run it in xp you should get the hardware acceleration for HD PVR (You got one of those?) For $200, yes, I may just go with one of those myself later. It would be nice to have the bigger cpu and more memory, (and W7) but if everything works in xp (and students still can get W7 for $30) then maybe this is the $200 extender we've been looking for.

Of course, ideally I'd dual boot Ubuntu on it...

[Rich A]

I think you mis-typed Asus when you meant Acer. The Acer is what Nick and I are talking about.

For me, this may finally be the "holy grail" of BTV link machines. It all depends on how well it'll play all the video types that the BTV server can generate.

I've been known to get more out of my PCs than most people do. I fully expect to optimise this turn-key product for use as a BTV-link-extener. It's really small and very guiet. Although I don't intend to use it for anything other than a BTV-Link machine, I will of course try some web based stuff and report back. On my BTV server I do often use the NetFlix web streaming movie playback. The big deal for me is that my entire lan is all gigabit. So the slowest bottleneck for streaming (lan-wise) is my ISP. And in my case my ISP is very fast. My Netflix streaming is darn near DVD quality with no drops etc. So if this little box can't stream Web based video well I'll know it's due to the pc's video playing capability. It only comes with 1 gigabyte of RAM. And about a quarter of that is shared with the on-board video. So if anything I'd probably up the RAM a bit.

I'll start a new thread on this subject when I get the machine and have something to report. I don't like hijacking threads which is kinda what I"m doing here. (off topic) ... Sorry Homey ...

[ZetaVu]

Do you know if it comes with 1 1gb stick or 2 512's? (I assume it has two memory slots, do you know that?)

[Wolfie351]

Keep in mind, the Acer 1600 has the "LE" version of the Ion. The 3600 and 3610 has the full fledged version. What that means or if it affects HD playback, I don't know. But, in any case, if you're near a Fry's, the 1600 is on sale for $179 this weekend.

[ZetaVu]

Wow, I'd be tempted to pick it up, but the LE concerns me. It does have two memory slots, one is available, so if you mathc up the memory type you can double the ram for about $20-30 more.

[HomeyFour]

Originally Posted by Rich A

I'll start a new thread on this subject when I get the machine and have something to report. I don't like hijacking threads which is kinda what I"m doing here. (off topic) ... Sorry Homey ...

Rich, I think after all of this time, you would be one of few people on this forums who I would happily yield my thread to.

[Nick Burns]

Originally Posted by Rich A

I just ordered one myself. I really think this is the solution for our own media extender / link box. 199.99 ... complete .. ready to plug into AC.

It even has HDMI output. Comes with Win XP Home and a keyboard. You can't build a link box from scratch for this price.

It has one bug that users are reporting. That is that for some reason the audio part of the HDMI output doesn't work. Might have something to do with the motherboard based sound firmware. The thing that closed the deal for me was the gigabit LAN.

If you read through the comments, the HDMI Sound issue is an NVidia known problem with Phillips TVs. Luckily, I have a Samsung.

[Wolfie351]

HomeyFour, you mentioned you're using PureVideo as an mpeg playback decoder. Is this something you installed by itself or was it part of the graphics installation? It was my understanding that the newer PureVideo HD doesn't have it's own decoder, it uses 3rd party ones like cyberlink and arcsoft. Oh, and thanks for letting us interrogate you!