A/V Recommendations please

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by GeorgeK, 9 Jun 2011.

  1. GeorgeK

    GeorgeK Swinging the banhammer Super Moderator

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    Hi all

    I've recently upgraded to fttc (which is awesome btw 37mb/s down 8mb/s up :D) and now can stream HD videos from iplayer etc

    Only one problem: I've been using an old desktop as a make-shift HTPC / server connected up to the TV in the living room but it doesn't seem to have the grunt to play the HD videos, going all jerky - it will play SD videos fine. It's definately not the internet connection as I've been able to play the videos on other, newer computers.

    I've tried speeding up the computer by disabling startup items, services etc to free up enough processing power to play the videos but still no luck. Can you spot anything on the spec that would obviously stop it from being able to play HD video?

    Pentium 4 3.06GHz
    2 Gig RAM
    Sapphire HD 3650 512Mb
    Screen Resolution 1024x768

    I'm thinking the graphics card, but wanted to check before upgrading. If it is that - any suggestions as to what I'd need (as cheap as possible really)

    Thanks

    GK
     
  2. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Shouldn't have any difficulty playing HD video in my opinion. Perhaps a driver issue?
     
  3. TheStockBroker

    TheStockBroker Modder

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    I think I know what it is.

    It's a partial browser/iplayer thing.

    The video would play fine if your screen resolution was a little higher, i.e. 1280 x 720. What's happening is that the content being watched is being decoded to 720p (or what have you) which isn't hugely tortuous for your cpu - but it's then needing to be scaled/changed to support your non-hd monitor resolution.

    At least, this is what happens on my Core 2 Duo laptop: There's more than enough grunt to play both 1080p mkvs over HDMI, and 720p mkvs natively on the 1366 * 768 screen using VLC media player.

    Playing a 720p video stream from iPlayer works flawlessly in full screen on the laptops native resolution. The same can be said for 1080i content from iPlayer over HDMI.

    However if I start a 720p+ video over iPlayer and don't play it full screen, it stutters horribly, as it's having to do more work to format this higher resolution video, to the smaller window size. (If that make sense?)

    So I think this is what's happening in your situation: Your P4 can handle 720p fine. But it can't cope with decoding that, and then trying to downscale to your lower resolution, while maintaining the aspect ratio on the fly?

    So either bump up your monitor resolution so it's at least got 1280 * 720 pixels available on-screen (1280 * 1024 would be fine) Or If you have an easily moved monitor with a larger resolution around, give it a quick try and see if that's the case.

    Hope this helps!

    TSB
     
  4. GeorgeK

    GeorgeK Swinging the banhammer Super Moderator

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    I've tried upping the resolution to 1280x768 and 1360x768 but no luck - it's less jittery but still unwatchable... When I tried 1280x720 but the tv came up with 'mode not supported' - I'll try a monitor at some point to see if it is the tv. Also I’ll look for updated drivers – thanks.

    Does anyone have any other ideas to consider?
     
  5. adam_bagpuss

    adam_bagpuss Have you tried turning it off/on ?

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    thats because the TV always scales as the ACTUAL pixel resolution of most TVs is 1366x768 not the true 720p res of 1280x720 which alot of TV dont support.

    weird i know.

    can you have task manager running when you run HD content to see how much CPU and RAM your using ?
     
  6. Cleggmeister

    Cleggmeister Of reasonable knowledge...

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    £80 will buy you a WDTV Live. You'll never look back!
     
  7. TheStockBroker

    TheStockBroker Modder

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    D'oh!

    I didn't see it was outputting to a TV. Which makes what I've said more or less useless, as Adam correctly points out the TV will ultimately do whatever it wants re: scaling/pixel mapping.

    That said though, a TV with 1024 * 768 resolution, that's kinda odd, no?

    TSB
     
  8. adam_bagpuss

    adam_bagpuss Have you tried turning it off/on ?

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    nearly every TV ive used supports that res but its not the native one which is either 1366x768 or 1920x1080
     
  9. mrbungle

    mrbungle Undercooked chicken giver

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    Ud be surprised at how utterly useless that old P4 will be.

    I bet task manager shows it crying when running anything HD.
     
  10. GeorgeK

    GeorgeK Swinging the banhammer Super Moderator

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    It would seem to be the cpu... task manager shows 100% cpu when playing hd (98/99% for chrome) but only 40-60% when playing sd...

    Damn - I'd hoped it would be an easy fix rather than a complete rebuild needed... Well I suppose not a complete rebuild, but new mobo/cpu in any case... balls

    Cleggmeister - funny you should mention that - I had been looking at similar things but can only find ones that don't stream from things like BBC iPlayer - anyone got any suggestions?

    Cheers

    GK
     
  11. mrbungle

    mrbungle Undercooked chicken giver

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    cheap dualie and motherboard wont cost the earth :)

    have a gander at what the motherboard can take, might be able to take a pentium D at a push?
     
  12. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Can the job not be offloaded to the GPU?
     
  13. adam_bagpuss

    adam_bagpuss Have you tried turning it off/on ?

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    some programs support it yes
     
  14. GeorgeK

    GeorgeK Swinging the banhammer Super Moderator

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    how would i go about that then? what programs could accomplish that?

    edit: oh and in reply to mrbungle - the specs say that it will support "Pentium 4 Prescott (up to 519) and Celeron D (all) processors" so that doesn't sound likely then...
     
    Last edited: 10 Jun 2011
  15. Blogins

    Blogins Panda have Guns

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    Been a while since I read about it but isn't iPlayer supposed to support GPU acceleration since Adobe Flash Player 10.1?

    Try updating your Adobe Flash Player first!
     
  16. adam_bagpuss

    adam_bagpuss Have you tried turning it off/on ?

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  17. GeorgeK

    GeorgeK Swinging the banhammer Super Moderator

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    Annoyingly I've just checked and Flash Player is at version 10.3.something on that PC.... Also the computer is running xp so, from what I can see on that link, I wouldn't be able to use VLC

    Any suggestions as to a good (and cheap) mobo + dual core processor. I'd also be tempted by an upgrade to windows 7 I think as I prefer it over xp
     

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