OSD Trouble

[patrioticballer]

I am running an Epia sp13000 with 512 mb ram and a pvr 150mce currently. I havent been able to utilize the cn400 acceleration that is on the motherboard as of yet because of some apparent driver problems that I read about in another thread. However my question involves stuttering problems regarding the OSD. My processor load is running at about 60% while the OSD is off but when it pops up it jumps to 90%+. Just wondering if there was any way to minimize this until the hardware acceleration was useable.

[stefan]

Somewhere in the config app (I can't remember exactly where right now) there is a setting called something like "use minimal OSD". Try that. That said, I like the OSD and have learned to live with the stutter that occurs when the OSD shows. We just don't have the horsepower for that on our Epias. I never did get the hardware acceleration to work, either.

[ricklous]

can i pick your brains folks?

when i first started drawing up the specs for the machine ive built i was going to go for a sp13000. eventually picked up a Insight with 2.4 celeron cheap from ebay, but i might make another one in the future for myself...was wondering how in general your sp13000 and m1000 boards handle gbpvr?
do you reckon the lack of grunt could be overcome with a gig of ram?

[stefan]

Nah, my RAM isn't half used (512), so I doubt another 512 would do any real difference (unless you plan on using the computer for something else at the same time). Two big downsides to the m10000 is that moving through menus (and the EPG) is almost painfully slow, and that the picture stutters a lot when the OSD appears. Plus that the tv-out is of not-so-great quality (picture wise) and there is no AGP slot for another graphics card...

[patrioticballer]

I also am hardly using any of my ram. When GBPVR is recording a show and I am watching another one on replay I am only using between 150 and 200. This biggest problem is the processing load. This could be fixed if I could ever figure out how to use my hardware acceleration and decoding but who knows when that will happen. I am also having a lot of problems with menus being slow to respond and sometimes not responsive at all.

[sub]

Unfortunately the CPUs in these EPIA machines are just too slow for a nice snappy GB-PVR experience. I recommend a minimum 1Ghz PIII class CPU. A M10000 is a about the equivalent of a Celeron 600Mhz. I'm not sure where an SP13000 comes in comparsion, but I suspect not much better.

They'll work, but they'd be painfully slow.

[ricklous]

Okay, cheers for the comments guys.

Guess its Plan C then: Nick the gf's PC and use that!

[nkh]

Okay, cheers for the comments guys.

Guess its Plan C then: Nick the gf's PC and use that!

You could build her a new around one of the mini-itx motherboards, I'm sure she'll like the quietness


That said, maybe I'm just used to slow computers, but I'm quite pleased with the performance of my GBpvr box. It takes a couple of seconds to load Recordings and the Tv guide, but that's probably coursed by a badly fragmentet C-drive and only 256mb ram. Video plays fine * ones I found the right codec and settings, it stutters a little bit when the osd comes on but it doesn't really matter 'cos when I press the blue button it's the osd my eyes are focused on.

* - using a pci gfx...

[Beinar]

Hi!

Have U found out how to get the CPU-load down on playback of mpeg2? If U look in the Support-forum and search for "sp13000", U will get an thread called "CyberLink decoder in GBPVR", this will help U utilize the hardware-decoder in the CN400-chip. But I've still have some stuttering playback with the OSD.

I haven't got the mpeg4-acceleration worked yet.. via have to make a driver for that one... (or divx could support the hardware)

-beinar-