Old PC Video Card?

[Tinker]

I have two Hauppauge MVPs and love them but need to change over to new hardware to allow for digital and HD broadcasts. I have an old PC that I want to use as a client(streaming). It is working great with analog recordings but with the digital/HD recordings the video skips or jumps every few seconds. Can this be improved by upgrading the video card only? I want to buy a new machine but can't afford it right now. My current video card is and ATI that has 256 MB. I was looking at a Sapphire 100275L with ATI Radeon X1650PRO and 512 MB. Will this improve anything or do I need to bite the bullet and upgrade the machine? How much does the network speed affect this. My router that I am using is a 10/100 will a gigabit router help the situation?

[reboot]

Are you sure it's video giving you the trouble? I have an X1650 Pro and it's the best AGP card I've ever used.
Check which decoder you're using, it could be that, also hard drive speed. If your hard drive is busy doing something with windows, then recordings suffer. Best to have a separate hard drive just for recordings, on it's own channel.

[gEd]

Tinker said he was "looking" at a 1650 card.

Why not just just replace your MVPs with popcorn hour devices that are designed to stream HD content and work with gbpvr?

[Tinker]

Why not just just replace your MVPs with popcorn hour devices that are designed to stream HD content and work with gbpvr?

It comes down to $50.00 vs $200.00. If upgrading the video card will do the trick then I am home free (well, home for 50 bucks). I heard that when they first came out they were hard to get. Is that still true?

[gEd]

fair point.

availability? I think you have to pre-order and they ship them out in batches.

What is the exact g/card and cpu you have in there atm? perhaps some other people in your side of the pond might be able to advise whether this card will work with US broadcasts.

as reboot says, your current problem might be a decoder issue. what is cpu load like during playback?

thing with the PCH is that it is $200 and will work out of the box whereas you might blow $50 on a g/card and a) find it doesn;t work b) spend a month trying to get it working well.

just a thought.

[Tinker]

What is the exact g/card and cpu you have in there atm?

Graphics Chipset ATI Radeon 9600/9550/X1050 Series and 256 Mb of memory, and the CPU is a P4 3.06 Ghz with 512 Mb of RAM.

My CPU is bouncing around 80%, as low as 72% and as high as 94%. I will think about the PCH for my second MVP setup. Does this sound like a decoder issue?

[gEd]

I'm kind of hoping that someone from the US might chime in as UK TV shows have different requirements.

I used an ATI 9600 pro (128MB) for 3 years to playback standard def DVB-T PAL which is 720x576 and it was pretty good but I did notice very minor stuttering, mostly on panning shots. The nvidia 6600GT I now use is much better.

I suspect that this card is too weak for HD playback. If reboot can playback the same type of recordings using a 1650, this sounds like a viable route.

I generally consider 512MB to be the minimum RAM for gbpvr (client and server). You may have to do some kind of "xp lite" type of install to work with 256MB.

[reboot]

Geez, toss in another gig and a half of RAM!!! 512 is choking totally, especially if you're at SP3. Cheaper than new devices, and only a bit more than a new g/card.

[prouton]

...ATI Radeon 9600/9550/X1050 Series...

Those are great upgrades to an older machine to get SD video to play smoothly, but don't have the hardware assist features for HD.

As for just increasing the mainboard RAM, I doubt you'd see any improvement. It would have to currently be paging something in and out all the time in order to be the problem (which would show up as almost constant hard drive activity), and the combined activity would probably run the CPU all the way to 100%.

[Tinker]

Those are great upgrades to an older machine to get SD video to play smoothly, but don't have the hardware assist features for HD.

So are you saying that the upgraded video card will not help with HD recordings? It would be nice to hear from someone that has experimented with this. Anyone? Thanks.