Resolution/Refresh Rate

[stustunz]

anything that throttles back your cpu is going to be a pain in the arse
the less extra crap that is meant to make your computer run smooth the better

good to see you got it sorted

[chrisv]

Just when you think you got it all figured out...

The 5-minute skip problem is still there, although it occurs more frequently now (every 1 to 2 minutes). This occurs both with LiveTV and recordings. I attempted to change my video decoder to PureVideo but that made things worse. With that, the entire picture would shake constantly. Scrolling text looks like someone is constantly shaking the TV. I reverted back to PowerDVD and now the same shaking occurs with that. Very odd as nothing else was changed. The only thing I can do to stop the shaking is pause, then resume. That works, although as soon as I skip back to live TV, it starts shaking again.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

[chrisv]

Just an FYI, it appears my Quartz.dll got replaced upon installing something. Not sure if it was PureVideo or the updated Catalyst Control Center, but that was the cause of the problem. I had updated to the 9.0b version of Quartz.dll a while ago, which is why I didn't think of that right away. I re-replaced the current version and the picture is not shaky anymore.

[chrisv]

I am resurrecting this thread.

The 2-5 minute stutter problem is still there and I finally got a chance to test some stuff out this weekend. I downloaded ProcessExplorer and ran it in the background while watching live tv. Each time there was a stutter, there was a spike in I/O bytes (not CPU %). The spike was svchost.exe a few times, GBPVR Recording service a few times, and Windows Update (now disabled) a few times. The weird thing is that this occurs in Live Preview Mode which means no reading from or writing to disk (unless it is disk caching). Write Caching is enabled in Device manager. As an FYI, it also occurs while playing back a recording.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[stustunz]

are you recording onto the same physical drive that your system files are on?

[chrisv]

Yes (different logical drive but same physical drive). That's one thing I thought of, but in Live Preview mode, this should not have an effect, should it?

[stustunz]

it has to go back and fourth everytime it want sto write data to the disk
plus with the bigger drives it takes that little bit longer as the drive gets messed up over time
you could try defrag
honeslty only having one drive is like trying to run a running race with one leg

you want your live tv buffer and recordings drive to be on a seperate physical hardrive you can still archive them back to the system physical drive to watch later
but recording or watching there is just to much traffic to get smooth playback all the time

[chrisv]

I had tried defragging with no luck. What you are saying makes sense, although I thought that when in Live Preview mode it does not write to disk. Do you think it's worth getting a 10000 RPM HD for an HTPC, or is a 7200 SATA drive good enough if only using the PC as an HTPC?

Thanks for your help.

[stustunz]

others have since told me that theirs run fine with one harddrive
you might have read the post try disabling your antivirus if you have one
everybody has their opinion and what works for one system may not work for another

the speed of the hard drive isnt that important if you ask me. If it was double the speed then it would be worth it but from 7200 to 10000 isnt that much i always try to double anything if i am going to replace it

just go for the 7200 and get more Gb instead bang for buck

[chrisv]

No antivirus installed. I did a quick test yesterday. I played back a recording directly in PowerDVD and I had no stutter for the 10 minutes that I watched. I will watch a little longer tonight to confirm but if it is the case, something is occuring while watching in GBPVR that causes the stutter. I am using the PowerDVD video and audio decoders in "-fse". I toggled "ForceSingleProcessorAffinity" and the results are the same regardless of the setting. Are there any other settings in config.xml that can have this effect?