Whats the general concensus for best GBPVR OS?

[johnsonx42]

For me, Windows 7 was the secret sauce that finally made my HTPC really work well. I wouldn't even consider running on XP now. I don't like Vista much either... when I upgraded my main desktop box from Vista SP1 to Windows 7RC, the performance improvements were immediate and obvious. More importantly to me though, since I have Pro/Business licenses of Windows, is that 7 Pro includes the Microsoft DVD-DTV Decoder that works perfectly for me whereas Vista Business and XP Pro do not.

As to 32-bit vs 64-bit, there's little to be gained with 64-bit unless you have more than 3GB of RAM. And really, what does an HTPC need with all that RAM? 2GB seems more than sufficient.

[LewE]

As to 32-bit vs 64-bit, there's little to be gained with 64-bit unless you have more than 3GB of RAM. And really, what does an HTPC need with all that RAM? 2GB seems more than sufficient.

If you are running GBPVR in a PC that is not dedicated to just running GBPVR, there definitely is a reason to put more than 2GB on a PC. I run Windows 7 with a quad core processor with capture cards that can process 4 channels simultaneously and use Media MVPs and a Popcornhour NMT to drive the images onto the televisions.

The PC is also my primary PC for all my needs. So, when the PC is transcoding or Comskip is processing the recorded programs after the recording has completed, it doesn't bring my PC to its knees for doing anything else.

I have often seen the CPU usage in the 70% range, meaning that it is keeping the equivalent of 2 1/2 of the four cores busy.

I currently have 4GB of memory and plan to expand to 8GB eventually. This made 64 bit WIndows a necessity.

If you have a dedicated PC to running GBPVR and nothing else then I agree that 2GB is probably plenty of memory.

[teookie]

After thinking about it a bit, I think I'll reuse my vista business when I reload the OS. When I upgraded to Vista from XP there were a few things that just worked better out of the box, sound being one of them. I didn't have to monkey around with any 3rd party software to get the sound working how I wanted it too.

And, since I hardly ever use this computer for anything other then GBPVR, the security annoyances with vista are rarely actually annoying.

Thanks for all the input! XP is great on my work computer and brand new netbook, but it will be Vista again on the GBPVR rig.

[Mr. Camaro]

I'm running it on Windows Home Server with no problems. It is nice because I only need to have one computer running 24/7. The server then manages TV Recording/Playback during the day and backups of all my other computers at night. It is also nice because all of my recordings can be recorded directly onto the Server.

[mvallevand]

Here's another nail in XP's coffin http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm

Martin

[johnsonx42]

Here's another nail in XP's coffin http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8557144.stm

Martin

That particular problem is being rather over-hyped. The majority of people who buy a 4k-sector drive for use with XP and a single partition can simply set a jumper on the drive and be done (at least in the case of the already shipping WD 4k drives... presumably other vendors will follow suit with a +1 sector alignment jumper) . More advanced users who want multiple partitions and/or multiple OS's will create their partitions with a 4k-aware utility such as is included with the drive.

It's largely a non-story. If the hype serves to make everyone aware of the 4k issue, that's ok. If the hype makes people think 4k drives are somehow bad for use with XP, that's not so good.

[mvallevand]

Do you actually believe that 512 byte sector emulation will be perform like native 4k sector drives support?

Martin

[johnsonx42]

512 byte sector emulation is 100% as fast as using native 512 byte sectors, as long as the partitions are aligned on 4k boundaries. This is largely because all modern OS's, including XP, use a minimum 4k cluster size. Dividing a 4k cluster into 512 byte logical sectors, and then having the drive re-assemble those 8 logical sectors back into one 4k physical sector is no worse than having a 512-byte drive write the 8 sectors individually.

There's no special reason that exposing the physical 4k sectors to the OS will make any significant performance difference either (and we can't know yet, since no 4k drives yet actually expose the 4k sectors to the OS, and I don't believe this evolution is planned for 2011 either). The OS already does everything in 4k chunks; whether it has to divide further to 512 sectors or not is fairly inconsequential. Less bookkeeping for the OS of course, so it may bring some minor performance improvements.

[SLR_65]

I use Asus M2NPV-VM motherboards in my htpc and it's client. Vista loaded up fine EXCEPT the video driver wouldn't play well when using the SVHS output to my old CRT tv.

I loaded XP Pro and had no issues after that, so if you're going to use a composite/SVHS out to an older tv you may want to look into that.

The client now interfaces to a LCD TV via a DVI interface so I imagine this bug may be gone for it, but I dunno as everything is running just fine on XP so I'm hard pressed to mess with it.

As mentioned earlier, XP Pro COAs can be bought off of fleaBay dirt cheap right now - I've seen them go for as little as $8, so if you're doing a budget build XP Pro is probably still worth looking at.

[collin]

I use Asus M2NPV-VM motherboards in my htpc and it's client. Vista loaded up fine EXCEPT the video driver wouldn't play well when using the SVHS output to my old CRT tv.

I loaded XP Pro and had no issues after that, so if you're going to use a composite/SVHS out to an older tv you may want to look into that.

The client now interfaces to a LCD TV via a DVI interface so I imagine this bug may be gone for it, but I dunno as everything is running just fine on XP so I'm hard pressed to mess with it.

As mentioned earlier, XP Pro COAs can be bought off of fleaBay dirt cheap right now - I've seen them go for as little as $8, so if you're doing a budget build XP Pro is probably still worth looking at.

Your svideo bug may have been resolved with Windows 7, I an running all svhs to a CRT and have never had an issue.