Minimum hardward for 1080i broadcast HD - GeForce 6200, P4, 2Gb?

[spdrac1]

Hi all,
I recently upgraded to nPVR on my HTPC, previously running gbpvr. In anticipation of a new LCD TV I also added a Hauppauge 950Q to capture OTA broadcasts. As you can see in the title, my hardware is a bit aged. Here's the list.

Nvidia GeForce 6200 AGP 256Mb
P4 2.8 (Socket 478)
2Gb DDR RAM
Hauppeuge PVR-150 (cable)
Hauppauge 950Q
Windows 7 Ultimate

After a bit of time trying various decoders, I found the best performance from cyberlink from SAF. My analog cable still looks good, as do non-HD OTA channels, however those broadcast in 1080i are quite choppy. With the CyberLink codec my cpu usage averages about 20%, so I doubt that's the limitation, but the video card is suspect.

My question: Is it worth it to tinker with drivers, codecs, rederers, etc further or have I reached the limitations of AGP and the GeForce card? Anyone with a similar setup able to view HD? Not sure if it would make a difference, but I'm testing this on my PC monitor - hooked up through the VGA port. Might that be causing degradation?

Thanks for any thoughts.

[sub]

I'm not in that part of the world, but a lot of north american users in the past suggested an nvidia 6600 or higher is recommended for HD. (something about the bandwidth required to transfer the frames to the card)

[tmrt]

If you would like to have really decent deinterlacing you would need a quite capable card. Look at http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VDPAU for Nvidia for example.

[mikeh49]

I could not get useable HD on a Geforce 6200 under XP; I think you are up against the limit of the technology. With Win7, you could perhaps try the Microsoft DTV decoder, it has given me the best performance, albeit on more powerful hardware. I've done some testing on a low end system, and I can get good enough MPEG2 HD on a Sempron 2800 with an ATI 9600Pro (AGP) using Win7 and the Microsoft decoder. I don't recall if I ran the 9600Pro on Win 7, I think not.

I think some of the new(er) video cards are available in AGP. Folks here have suggested some, but I'm not aware of any reports of results. Otherwise, it's ebay for a a 9600Pro or above, or Geforce 6600 or above.

[spdrac1]

Thanks for the great replies everyone.

tmrt
If you would like to have really decent deinterlacing you would need a quite capable card. Look at http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VDPAU for Nvidia for example.

I'm not sure I totally understood the implications of VDPAU, but it looks like the 6200 is out either way. I'll try to reread and see if I can't get a handle on it.

mikeh49
9600Pro or above, or Geforce 6600 or above

Thanks for the suggestions - I'll see what ebay has in store.

sub
nvidia 6600 or higher is recommended for HD

Looks like this is the agreed upon conclusion. Also, much appreciation and respect for this great bit of coding you've done.


I've also see a few offerings in AGP market from ATI, inluding 3650 and 4650 based cards, although for the price I'm considering a system upgrade at this point. Perhaps something based on the AMD 4250 chipset. Any thoughts on that 4250 chipset (for 1080i/p)?

I guess this is how a $50 upgrade turns into a $200 upgrade.

Thanks again

[mikeh49]

I have an Asrock 890GM board that has sideport memory for the on-board 4290 graphics, and it does 1920X1080 just fine. I decided that for a few bucks more I should go for the 4290 and sideport memory. Others on the forum reported that the previous generation 780G chipset would do HD with sideport memory; my 780G board did not have sideport, and couldn't handle HD (with XP, probably would have been OK with Win7).

I should add that the Sempron/9600Pro test rig would only do 1366X768 (720p) resolution; it couldn't handle 1920X1080. It was OK for me because I use it with a 720p TV.

[tmrt]

I'm not sure I totally understood the implications of VDPAU, but it looks like the 6200 is out either way. I'll try to reread and see if I can't get a handle on it.

VDPAU is the Nvidia technology for video decoding and manipulation on the GPU. Such a card needs very little CPU involvement and is able to decode and deinterlace HD on machines with slow CPUs provided that the bus is fast enough. I have no idea whether the AGP bus can provide adequate speeds and whether AGP versions of such cards are available.

[spdrac1]

I have an Asrock 890GM board that has sideport memory for the on-board 4290 graphics, and it does 1920X1080 just fine. I decided that for a few bucks more I should go for the 4290 and sideport memory. Others on the forum reported that the previous generation 780G chipset would do HD with sideport memory; my 780G board did not have sideport, and couldn't handle HD (with XP, probably would have been OK with Win7).

I should add that the Sempron/9600Pro test rig would only do 1366X768 (720p) resolution; it couldn't handle 1920X1080. It was OK for me because I use it with a 720p TV.

Thanks for your reply. I wasn't aware of sideport memory, but now that I look into it, it seems to be a good option for using onboard graphics. Am I right in thinking that the 4290 is built on the same hardware as the 4250, with a faster clock speed? Do you know what is is about Windows 7 that might have allowed it to process HD better with the non-sideport board? Better drivers?

Thanks for the great information.

[spdrac1]

VDPAU is the Nvidia technology for video decoding and manipulation on the GPU. Such a card needs very little CPU involvement and is able to decode and deinterlace HD on machines with slow CPUs provided that the bus is fast enough. I have no idea whether the AGP bus can provide adequate speeds and whether AGP versions of such cards are available.

Interesting. Clearly my 6220 card was not made with this technology. Now I'm wondering if a better solution might be a MB with little to no onboard graphics power with a lower-end VDPAU capable PCI-E card. I suppose I'd pay a little bit in power consumption.

Any experience with ATI vs Nvidia driver issues? I see lots of complaints about ATI drivers, but I'm not sure if those apply to HTPC usage. It sounds like some people are perfectly happy too.

[mikeh49]

Re the 890G: I think you're right that the 4290 is a higher clock version of the 4250. I did some research on this at the time, but don't recall the specifics, just that I decided the 4290 with sideport was the way to go. It seems to be difficult to get definitive information on the performance of on-board graphics for video. When the 780G came out (3250 graphics, I think) there was great enthusiasm for it as a HTPC chipset. Based on reports here and my experience, it just didn't have the horsepower to do HD, at least the US version of HD (MPEG2). As noted in the earlier post, one user here got good performance with the sideport version of the chipset.

Re Win7: I don't have a good answer why, but my HTPC performance has been an order of magnitude better with Win7 rather than XP (performance and stability). The built-in Microsoft DTV-DVD video decoder works great for me and I'm satisfied with the picture quality. All you need to add is an AC3 decoder for audio as, I believe, the MS audio decoder cannot connect to 3rd party filters, and Sub needs to do that. I use AC3 Filter which has always been well behaved for me. No need for codec packs, at least to get started. ffdshow has lots of features, but it has never worked well for me, others are very happy with it. As an experiment, I set up my old Sempron 2800/9600Pro MB with Win7 to see how it worked. It can play HD at 1366X768 resolution at 45% CPU using the MS video decoder and AC3 filter. As a side note, I added ffdshow to see how it would work and got high CPU use and choppy video. I tried to go back to the MS decoders, but now had high CPU use and choppy video here as well. Uninstalling ffdshow did not help; I had to reinstall Windows!

All of my experience has been with recorded US TV in MPEG2, no h.264, mkv, etc. YMMV with these.

I'm still undecided about a MB with onboard graphics, or separate graphics. Obvious advantages either way; if there was high assurance that the onboard could do the job, I think it would be the way to go. I guess you still have the option to add a graphics card, and the onboard MBs don't seem to be any more expensive. I added a 9500GT to the 780G board to solve he HD problem. No problems with the Nvidia drivers as far as video performance, but there was (still is?) a problem with the audio interface to the TV using DVI to HDMI for video, and analog stereo for audio. Needs a registry hack to fix. Let me know if you want more info on this.