Will this laptop and PCH connection work?

[pbrown77]

I'm new to gbpvr and have a few questions.

I don't have a tuner yet in my old laptop but have set the pch to see the front end of gbpvr on the laptop. So all looks good. I can stream a ~5000kbps mkv from the laptop using the pch gbpvr front end under the video section.

Now the wait till my Fusion HDTV tuner turns up.

I hoped to see if my system will let me record and watch tv on the pch.

My old laptop is a Dell D630 with the 1.4Ghz mobile cpu, 500Mb RAM and uses a wireless 54mb/s card so I realise it will be near the edge of HDTV.

I have a new laptop with a 2.4Ghz core2duo that will definately work but I'd prefer not to use it.

I was hoping to find some relatively small example HD recored files to stream from the laptop to the pch using gbpvr but have had no luck.

I know the laptop will play a 5065 Kbps mkv with 6 channel AC3 640 Kbps.

I doubt I will be watching tv on the laptop, more recording and watching from the pch.

I live in Australia so we use dvb-t that broadcasts up to 1080i but most hd channels are 720 as far as I'm aware.

Any suggestions of what to check to see if the system will work? Or is it best to just wait until my tuner turns up?

[psycik]

Are you worried about network bandwidth or processing on the laptop?

The tuner card should do most of the work for the recording side, leaving the laptop free to server up for the pch. And the laptop "shouldn't" have to transcode your files for the pch, again leaving the laptop cpu pretty idle.

Sounds like your choke points maybe your network and your disk io,but you should be ok with this as well, since you'll only be recording one thing a a time.

But it sounds like you have everything already coming, so keep us posted if it all works out.

[pbrown77]

Thanks for the reply. After reading about the pch doing all the work in another thread I thought that would be the case. Thus why I specified mainly pch playing and recording.

Thanks for verifying it though as in the wait I wanted to make sure I had the right idea.

I have captured sd digital video camera movies using firewire and off memory the measured hdd write speed should exceed the hdtv requirements.

I am a bit concerned about the network speed as I just downloaded an example file found on dvico's website which was recorded with their software and had a rate of 20mbps (~2.5MB/s I think). The 5000kbps mkv worked fine but that is at a rate of about a quarter of the example.

My smb and ftp transfer only go at about 1.5MB/s which I am unsure why. I have searched google to find why the transfer could be so slow with a connection of 54mb/s (~7MB/s) but have had no luck. My reception is good and it's a fresh xp install with no windows firewall or anti virus software. But I suppose this is not the correct forum to ask for advice on this so I will search elsewhere.

Thanks again for clearing everything up. I only have to focus on the network issue now. Unfortunately the ethernet port doesn't work on that laptop so wireless is the only option other than using my new laptop.

[Ted the Penguin]

well, there is always the possibility of using something like this.
http://www.vpi.us/usb-ethernet.html
I would imagine that if you have USB2.0, you should be able to get 100Mbps.

other than that I think you have all your ducks in a row, good job and congrats.

welcome to the community

[pbrown77]

Thanks guys. Seems like a great community here. If I have problems getting my wireless running faster then that option may be a good choice.

I realise that smb is restricted to 3-4 MB/s with the PCH so hopefully one of these options will get me close to the PCH max.

I will report back when I have everything running.

[mvallevand]

Actually SMB is up to NFS speed 38Mbs in the next firmware. You doubt you would see that (sustained) with wireless N.

Martin

[pbrown77]

Well I had no luck getting my smb transfers to go any faster BUT........

I have installed the tuner and pbpvr on the previously mentioned latop. It is pretty much a fresh install and handles wireless to the PCH fine.

I tried a 1080i transcoded in TS mux and it plays, pauses fine on the PCH. Also plays fine on the laptop as well which was a surprise. I think it has something to do with the dxVA capabilities of the video card (ATI Radeon 9000????????)

Checked the max speed of network on laptop and it peaked at 3MB and sustains around 2MB so all looks good. I expected to get max of 1.5MB like with file transfers so I'm not sure why I get more.

I tired pause and that works. The tried fast forward to get back so it wasn't delayed. Seems like the fast forward doesn't seem to go much faster than 2X even if I select 4 or 8 times. But that isn't a surprise with the wireless connection. I have bought a usb to ethernet adapter so may try that later to see of it improves the FFW.

Now gotta work out what can and can't be done from the PCH like rewind live tv, comskip etc.