PVR Motherboard

[Kasper]

Some time ago I posted a message with regard to 4 x satellite cards recording all at once.

I can now report that I have changed my system to an ASUS Commando motherboard with a Core II Duo E6420 2.13G and 2G ram. The above problem has disappeared and all is working very well.

The Commando is the only modern motherboard so far that I have found with 4 PCI slots and 6 Sata2s also help.

Hope this may guide somebody in the right direction

Regards
Wayne

[sub]

I can now report that I have changed my system to an ASUS Commando motherboard with a Core II Duo E6420 2.13G and 2G ram. The above problem has disappeared and all is working very well.

Good to hear you found a solution to that.

[argo]

Some time ago I posted a message with regard to 4 x satellite cards recording all at once.

I can now report that I have changed my system to an ASUS Commando motherboard with a Core II Duo E6420 2.13G and 2G ram. The above problem has disappeared and all is working very well.

The Commando is the only modern motherboard so far that I have found with 4 PCI slots and 6 Sata2s also help.

Hope this may guide somebody in the right direction

Regards
Wayne

Hi Wayne

If you were to build your Server again from scratch would you still use the Commando? I ask as I'm going down the Server route and want to keep some resource head-room (although I'll probably never get to 4 tuners ). I also see you have a E6420 CPU, quite a bit of horsepower! By chance have ever measured CPU-usage whilst recording 4-streams? Just wondering if can drop down a bit to save $$. Any other Server build advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Brendan.

[gEd]

just as an FYI, last week I built a new PC for my main rig (not HTPC). I chose an Intel 2160 cpu as they are only £56.

It only has a small cache so will almost certainly be slower for encoding videos but apparently this doesn;t make too much difference in games.

I clocked it from default of 1.8 to 2.4Ghz without having to increase the Vcore. Plan is to try and get closer to 3Ghz.

The 2180 is out now which is probably an even better bet.

[Deusxmachina]

just as an FYI, last week I built a new PC for my main rig (not HTPC). I chose an Intel 2160 cpu as they are only £56.

It only has a small cache so will almost certainly be slower for encoding videos but apparently this doesn;t make too much difference in games.

I doubt it makes much difference in encoding, either. Seems like the extra cache is great for SuperPi test scores and not necessarily a whole lot else. Encoding seems to be mostly about straight cpu mhz speed.

Argo, if Wayne doesn't reply, everything I've read says recording multiple digital streams (or using hardware-encoder cards for analog) isn't what requires horsepower, the viewing the file does. I've been messing with my e2140 (1.6ghz) vs. my other one at 3ghz, and while encoding is certainly slower, playing 1080p movies or 1080i TV with deinterlacing generally doesn't spike much above 50% cpu usage with average around 30 or 35 or so. Those comparisons were mainly with using a 7600GT.

Anyway, since this is a motherboard thread, I mainly wanted to mention about motherboards with onboard video. While the onboard video can be disabled and a card installed, the rule of thumb across the board is boards with onboard video tend to not overclock well even if a card is used instead.

I read a lot of reviews looking for a good overclocking board with onboard video, and if there were any that I don't remember, they didn't necessarily save much money over getting a regular board that is for certain a good overclocker, and pretty much all the reviews said the OC'ing was rough.

Kasper talks about the Commando with four pci slots, and a lot of the cheaper micro-atx boards I was looking at only had two. Two!

[argo]

Very interesting guys, thank you. I guess I should explain what I'm trying to achieve with this server. I'm a bit of a hardware guy so I'll add these objectives as well (hey takes all sorts to make a community ).

First my location:
- Auckland, New Zealand (exciting times, the country has recently gained access to Sat FTA). Great for our household as our terrestrial reception is cactus due to being in the 'shadow' of a hill.

Server function:
- To act as a video/music media server
- To be a tuner host of up to 4 sources (Sky STB#1, Sky STB#2 <maybe if 2nd box price goes down!>, DVB-S#1, DVB-S#2).

Server form:
- 24/7 Headless Server (not sure how I'll administer, probably Remote Desktop).
- Custom built wall-mounted enclosure (to live in a nice cool garage) containing all items associated with the Server (eg: drives, motherboard, tuners, STB's, switch, router, etc). The case has been designed to incorporate an easy-maintenance positive-pressure dust-filtered air cooling scheme (or to put it another way: the case has big blowing fans with easy to reach dust filters).

Clients:
- Initially 2 MVPs
- A client-PC will also be high on the list. Current lounge 'display' is a 33" Mitsubishi CRT TV that refuses to die (ok, I have had to solder a couple of dry-joints). As soon as this behemoth dies I'll have a high WAF to get a LCD and HT Receiver and then a client-PC should come into its own.

So that is the plan, and the reason for the questions! Progress to date is I've tried GBPVR on one of the home PC's (integrated into a XP-image as 2nd boot option), designed the case and am having it fabricated, and have bought a pre-loved CoolerMaster WaveMaster case as a parts donor.

So based on above, any CPU, M'Bd, HDD, etc advice would again be greatly received!

[Kasper]

For those who may been wondering about the motherboard my apologies for not providing an update before now.

The problem I was facing was not one of CPU horsepower (I put a dual core in because I could). GBPVR when recording 4 streams is basically just idling. The problem was PCI bandwidth and I suspect multiple demuxing and remuxing occurring simultaneously. TV3 at the time was running peak bit rates up to 10Mbits and now TV1 and TV2 also with their new encoder head end which went into operation in September. So consequently if you had all 4 cards recording with these bit rates this was when the errors started to show (I record back to back programmes in separate files so therefore during the overlap 2 tuners are used.) In fact even with this setup I still found errors so I now record TV3 in a separate computer.

I have subseqently experimented with doing complete transport stream recordings (the whole 27mbit stream) using TSReader and demuxing this later. This has proved to be very succesful in terms of handling the data without errors, so I suspect the previous problems may have been the multiple demuxing and remuxing. However finding an elegant solution to do timed recordings etc is another mission.

[TobyO]

Just thorwing this in the ring. I have a ASUS A8N-SLI Pre MB with a X2 4200 (939) sytem with 2 GB ram. It only has 3 PCI slots which have a 150, 350 and 500 Hauppauge TV Tuners. essential 4 tuners all analog. I am able to record 4 show at one time with good results. The hard drive that records the show is a WD PATA 320 GB drive. I'm am suprise I'm able to to do this with out the hard drive choking. I've even watched a show from the same drive as 4 other show were recording, trying to get a choppy video and seem to work without any issues. As mension above the CPU Utilization bearly breaks a sweat at 5% use. I did find a limited of recording 3 shows while ripping a DVD on a different drive. The rig strickly severs the digital media to 2 MVP and 4 computers.

I'm wordering when I make the switch to digital TV if I will continue to has a good luck or will I need to upgrade the MB ?

I'm really waiting for Cable card to decrypt HD channels to be offered to DIY builders.


TobyO