Hi all,
I'm new to this list and VDR in general, so if I'm missing some points or habits of this list, please feel free to correct me.
I'm on the way of building a VDR. At the moment I'm searching for hardware recommendations, but this seems to be a hard task.
What I want my VDR to do: - Playback of 1080p videos (e.g. the big buck bunny) - Watching TV over DVB-S (normal and HD, e.g. AnixeHD) - Recording of TV (should not be too "difficult" *g*) - Playing music and films from my fileserver
What I'm not sure about is: - Full-featured or budget DVB card - CPU requirements for HD playback
There was a quite silent PC recommendation, in a recent c't (german computer magazine). They used an AMD Atholon X2 4850e on a GigaByte MA78G-DS3H mainboard and got the whole system to be not louder than 0.4 Sone. The graphic is an onboard ATI Radeon HD3200 with HDMI out. What do you think? Is this sufficient for HD playback? And what about the DVB card? Is a budget card ok?
Greetings -Sascha-
Hi,
On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 10:54:00PM +0100, Sascha Vogt wrote:
Hi all,
I'm new to this list and VDR in general, so if I'm missing some points or habits of this list, please feel free to correct me.
Welcome to the list ;)
I'm on the way of building a VDR. At the moment I'm searching for hardware recommendations, but this seems to be a hard task.
What I want my VDR to do:
- Playback of 1080p videos (e.g. the big buck bunny)
- Watching TV over DVB-S (normal and HD, e.g. AnixeHD)
- Recording of TV (should not be too "difficult" *g*)
- Playing music and films from my fileserver
What I'm not sure about is:
- Full-featured or budget DVB card
- CPU requirements for HD playback
There was a quite silent PC recommendation, in a recent c't (german computer magazine). They used an AMD Atholon X2 4850e on a GigaByte MA78G-DS3H mainboard and got the whole system to be not louder than 0.4 Sone. The graphic is an onboard ATI Radeon HD3200 with HDMI out. What do you think? Is this sufficient for HD playback? And what about the DVB card? Is a budget card ok?
Take a look at: http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/HDTV
There are 2 different ways how you could do this:
1. Use a Reel HDe card
Use a Reel HDe card (http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/Reel-HDe) for video output. This will offload you CPU and do the video decoding in hardware.
2. Use softdevice / xineliboutput
Here you will do software decoding. Right now it is extremly CPU intensive. You need a at least Dual-Core CPU with 3000+ MHz. I can watch Arte HD with my Athlon X2 6000+ with a CPU load of ~90%.
You can also use a Nvidia Video card with VDPAU, which will do the decoding in hardware. Then then CPU-Load will be less then 10%, but this is currenly in development and does not work reliably right now. Using VDPAU you will be able to watch HDTV with a Atholon X2 4850e CPU.
There are also Mainboards with onboard Nvidia 9300 or 9400 GPU's. They also support VDPAU.
The ATI cards can also do video decoding in hardware, but this is currently not working with linux at all, so I would recommend you to get a mainboard with an onboard Nvidia GPU.
To receive Arte HD you need a DVB-S2 card, like the TechnoTrend S2-3200 or the Hauppauge HVR4000 because Arte HD is transmitted on DVB-S2 and not DVB-S.
Regards, Artem
Hi,
Artem Makhutov schrieb:
Take a look at: http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/HDTV
I did that, but there it said a Athlon64 at 2 GHz is sufficient. But I think your example shows, that this isn't...
You can also use a Nvidia Video card with VDPAU, which will do the decoding in hardware. Then then CPU-Load will be less then 10%, but this is currenly in development and does not work reliably right now. Using VDPAU you will be able to watch HDTV with a Atholon X2 4850e CPU.
As there are hardly any HD programs atm I think I'll go that way. I feel much more comfortable with a NVIDIA anyway (all my other PCs have one too). Hopefully that VDPAU will get stable soon (Soon as in till 2010). Point is the 4850e has a TDP of 45 Watts which is much more easier too cool than those "bigger" CPUs.
There are also Mainboards with onboard Nvidia 9300 or 9400 GPU's. They also support VDPAU.
Hmm, sounds good. I'll search for some of them.
To receive Arte HD you need a DVB-S2 card, like the TechnoTrend S2-3200 or the Hauppauge HVR4000 because Arte HD is transmitted on DVB-S2 and not DVB-S.
I'm not an sat-expert. Do I need a special LNB for DVB-S2? Or is it only the card which makes the difference?
In general, what has the overall better Linux support? TechnoTrend or Haupauge? (I try to support hardware vendors who care about their Linux users and I usually see a "WinTV"-label on all those Haupauge cards).
Thx for those hints, that's at least something to start. Greetings -Sascha-
On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 23:54:59 +0100 Sascha Vogt FunkyFish@gmx.net wrote:
Artem Makhutov schrieb:
You can also use a Nvidia Video card with VDPAU, which will do the decoding in hardware. Then then CPU-Load will be less then 10%, but this is currenly in development and does not work reliably right now. Using VDPAU you will be able to watch HDTV with a Atholon X2 4850e CPU.
As there are hardly any HD programs atm I think I'll go that way. I feel much more comfortable with a NVIDIA anyway (all my other PCs have one too). Hopefully that VDPAU will get stable soon (Soon as in till 2010). Point is the 4850e has a TDP of 45 Watts which is much more easier too cool than those "bigger" CPUs.
I think that's a good idea. VDPAU may still be a bit too cutting edge for comfort, but support for it is bound to improve, and HD is still cutting edge in VDR in general (I haven't heard of anyone releasing a patch for the BBC HD audio pid problem yet).
I chose a 4850e too. At first I tried ATI 3200 onboard graphics, like you thought of, but it was dreadful, very unstable with ATI's fglrx driver, while the open radeonhd driver doesn't even support Xv on it yet AFAICT. I replaced it with an NVidia 8200 based board. I think there's a performance problem with the 177 series nvidia driver on basic acceleration, but it's fine with Xv and OpenGL, stable, and hopefully the performance is fixed in 180. I haven't tried VDPAU yet.
IME the 4850e can playback 720p H.264 quite easily, but can't manage 1080i from DVB. It might be trying to run a deinterlacing filter that pushes the demand over the limit. I'm quite disappointed that they standardised on 1080i, even for movies by the look of it, instead of 720p.
On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 11:10 PM, Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk wrote: ...
(I haven't heard of anyone releasing a patch for the BBC HD audio pid problem yet).
...
This is a fault with the broadcaster, not a problem with VDR. I have informed the BBC of the problem and they have acknowledged the issue and are going to fix it shortly (they say in the New Year after a Christmas period "change freeze" period), so it should just go away.
Apparently it was due to an upgrade that the BBC applied to their encoders. The problem doesn't cause any problems with Sky or Freesat boxes so they didn't notice it in testing.
Must say, I was very impressed with their response and I'm looking forward to seeing the fix being implemented.
On Fri, 26 Dec 2008 14:09:32 +0000 Morfsta morfsta@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 11:10 PM, Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk wrote: ...
(I haven't heard of anyone releasing a patch for the BBC HD audio pid problem yet).
...
This is a fault with the broadcaster, not a problem with VDR. I have informed the BBC of the problem and they have acknowledged the issue and are going to fix it shortly (they say in the New Year after a Christmas period "change freeze" period), so it should just go away.
Apparently it was due to an upgrade that the BBC applied to their encoders. The problem doesn't cause any problems with Sky or Freesat boxes so they didn't notice it in testing.
Must say, I was very impressed with their response and I'm looking forward to seeing the fix being implemented.
Yes, I'm not just impressed, I'm surprised. I just thought that as Sky and Freesat boxes can handle it, it should be possible to work around it in VDR too, but hopefully that will no longer be necessary in a few weeks.
On 26/12/2008, Tony Houghton h@realh.co.uk wrote:
On Thu, 25 Dec 2008 23:54:59 +0100 Sascha Vogt FunkyFish@gmx.net wrote:
Artem Makhutov schrieb:
You can also use a Nvidia Video card with VDPAU, which will do the decoding in hardware. Then then CPU-Load will be less then 10%, but this is currenly in development and does not work reliably right now. Using VDPAU you will be able to watch HDTV with a Atholon X2 4850e CPU.
As there are hardly any HD programs atm I think I'll go that way. I feel much more comfortable with a NVIDIA anyway (all my other PCs have one too). Hopefully that VDPAU will get stable soon (Soon as in till 2010). Point is the 4850e has a TDP of 45 Watts which is much more easier too cool than those "bigger" CPUs.
I think that's a good idea. VDPAU may still be a bit too cutting edge for comfort, but support for it is bound to improve, and HD is still cutting edge in VDR in general (I haven't heard of anyone releasing a patch for the BBC HD audio pid problem yet).
I chose a 4850e too. At first I tried ATI 3200 onboard graphics, like you thought of, but it was dreadful, very unstable with ATI's fglrx driver, while the open radeonhd driver doesn't even support Xv on it yet AFAICT. I replaced it with an NVidia 8200 based board. I think there's a performance problem with the 177 series nvidia driver on basic acceleration, but it's fine with Xv and OpenGL, stable, and hopefully the performance is fixed in 180. I haven't tried VDPAU yet.
IME the 4850e can playback 720p H.264 quite easily, but can't manage 1080i from DVB. It might be trying to run a deinterlacing filter that pushes the demand over the limit. I'm quite disappointed that they standardised on 1080i, even for movies by the look of it, instead of 720p.
deinterlacing is only required if your source/stream runs at a different refresh rate than your output monitor. The problem with nvidia and the tv-out adapter(s-video plug) is that they decided to lock their driver(closed source) to 60Hz after a certain version, for newer cards and your output happens to be a CRT screen/monitor. PAL, happens to run mostly on 50Hz. You would see tearing and/or the individual fields if you do not enable a deinterlacer, which requires more cpu load. Offloading it to the gpu could help. The best would be to get your output device to run at the same refresh rate. Now there are different kinds of approaches: playing with your xorg.conf, to disable EDID of the video driver and you define a mode that tells your video driver you want 50Hz on your LCD, CRT/Plasma or on ATI there is a RGB(red, green, blue) patch, that requires you to plug in an adapter cable/board from your vga plug to your output monitor. Look for "PCI fun (RGB/PAL over VGA at variable frame rate)" in the mailing list. So there is another trick of saving on your electricity bill.
eHD works for up to 1080i which is fine for DVB-S2 etc, and it seems they don't want to go 1080p because of bandwidth constraints. But what happens if you want to watch DivX/Xvid, or happen to have a blu-ray device capable of 1080p source. Then the eHD is not going to help you and you need software (to transcode to a format the eHD can output). So decide what the main purpose of the machine will be, unless if you have the will and patience to fine tune your software machine setup.
my 2c
On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 09:55:45 +0200 "Theunis Potgieter" theunis.potgieter@gmail.com wrote:
deinterlacing is only required if your source/stream runs at a different refresh rate than your output monitor. The problem with nvidia and the tv-out adapter(s-video plug) is that they decided to lock their driver(closed source) to 60Hz after a certain version, for newer cards and your output happens to be a CRT screen/monitor. PAL, happens to run mostly on 50Hz. You would see tearing and/or the individual fields if you do not enable a deinterlacer, which requires more cpu load. Offloading it to the gpu could help. The best would be to get your output device to run at the same refresh rate. Now there are different kinds of approaches: playing with your xorg.conf, to disable EDID of the video driver and you define a mode that tells your video driver you want 50Hz on your LCD, CRT/Plasma or on ATI there is a RGB(red, green, blue) patch, that requires you to plug in an adapter cable/board from your vga plug to your output monitor. Look for "PCI fun (RGB/PAL over VGA at variable frame rate)" in the mailing list. So there is another trick of saving on your electricity bill.
When I had a CRT TV I solved the problem by using a Matrox G400 graphics card with vdr-fbfe. With a monitor or LCD TV I think there's still a deinterlacing problem even if you can sync the refresh rates. This didn't work on CRTs either with ordinary graphics cards (other than the Matrox and things like FF cards specialised for TVs) because there was no way for player applications to distinguish between top and bottom fields in the vblank interrupts. Matching refresh rates alone doesn't help very much; by scaling each field to the full size of the screen you're just performing "bob" deinterlacing which may not look very good compared to somehow interpolating data across fields, especially if that could be done intelligently with motion vectors from the MPEG data.
There are also Mainboards with onboard Nvidia 9300 or 9400 GPU's. They also support VDPAU.
Hmm, sounds good. I'll search for some of them.
For an AMD 4850e CPU you can use Boards with 8200/8300 GPUs. They are very similar to the 9300/9400 GPUs on Boards for Intel CPUs. VDPAU supports the 8200/8300 GPUs, but there is no official statement whether the codec VC-1 is supported. Some users got it running, it seems. A Board with this GPU will be my next, because there are no 9300/9400 Boards with ATX-Form factor and 3 PCI-Slots.
Gerald
Hi,
Gerald Dachs schrieb:
There are also Mainboards with onboard Nvidia 9300 or 9400 GPU's. They also support VDPAU.
For an AMD 4850e CPU you can use Boards with 8200/8300 GPUs. They are very similar to the 9300/9400 GPUs on Boards for Intel CPUs. VDPAU supports the 8200/8300 GPUs, but there is no official statement whether the codec VC-1 is supported.
It seems not. I found http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Vdpau which says: | VC-1 support in NVIDIA's VDPAU implementation currently requires | GeForce 9300 GS, GeForce 9200M GS, GeForce 9300M GS, or GeForce | 9300M GS
And that's what I think to have read some days (maybe weeks) ago on some news site (heise.de or golem.de iirc)
Some users got it running, it seems. A Board with this GPU will be my next, because there are no 9300/9400 Boards with ATX-Form factor and 3 PCI-Slots.
Yeah, I was suprised that there seem to be only 3 boards for the 9300/9400 chipsets (ASUS P5N7A-VM and MSI P7NGM-Digital for 9300 and Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H for 9400) and all of these are micro-ATX boards. Correction: Found XFX GeForce9300 as a 4th, anyway also µATX
Greetings -Sascha-
Am Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:52:49 +0100 schrieb Sascha Vogt FunkyFish@gmx.net:
Gerald Dachs schrieb:
There are also Mainboards with onboard Nvidia 9300 or 9400 GPU's. They also support VDPAU.
For an AMD 4850e CPU you can use Boards with 8200/8300 GPUs. They are very similar to the 9300/9400 GPUs on Boards for Intel CPUs. VDPAU supports the 8200/8300 GPUs, but there is no official statement whether the codec VC-1 is supported.
It seems not. I found http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Vdpau which says: | VC-1 support in NVIDIA's VDPAU implementation currently requires | GeForce 9300 GS, GeForce 9200M GS, GeForce 9300M GS, or GeForce | 9300M GS
I have read this thousand times at thousand places, but from time to time you can find things like this: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showpost.php?p=56160&postcount=8
Gerald
Hi,
On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 11:54:59PM +0100, Sascha Vogt wrote:
Hi,
Artem Makhutov schrieb:
Take a look at: http://www.vdr-wiki.de/wiki/index.php/HDTV
I did that, but there it said a Athlon64 at 2 GHz is sufficient. But I think your example shows, that this isn't...
You can also use a Nvidia Video card with VDPAU, which will do the decoding in hardware. Then then CPU-Load will be less then 10%, but this is currenly in development and does not work reliably right now. Using VDPAU you will be able to watch HDTV with a Atholon X2 4850e CPU.
As there are hardly any HD programs atm I think I'll go that way. I feel much more comfortable with a NVIDIA anyway (all my other PCs have one too). Hopefully that VDPAU will get stable soon (Soon as in till 2010). Point is the 4850e has a TDP of 45 Watts which is much more easier too cool than those "bigger" CPUs.
There are also Mainboards with onboard Nvidia 9300 or 9400 GPU's. They also support VDPAU.
Hmm, sounds good. I'll search for some of them.
To receive Arte HD you need a DVB-S2 card, like the TechnoTrend S2-3200 or the Hauppauge HVR4000 because Arte HD is transmitted on DVB-S2 and not DVB-S.
I'm not an sat-expert. Do I need a special LNB for DVB-S2? Or is it only the card which makes the difference?
No, you do not need a special LNB. The standard "universal" LNB should work. You just need a DVB-S2 capable card.
In general, what has the overall better Linux support? TechnoTrend or Haupauge? (I try to support hardware vendors who care about their Linux users and I usually see a "WinTV"-label on all those Haupauge cards).
I can't tell you anything about the Hauppauge HVR-4000, as I don't have one. But it should be supported since Kernel 2.6.28 out of the box. For the Technotrend you have to compile the modules by your own, but the card is working for me.
There are also some TeVii cards: http://www.dvbshop.net/index.php/cat/c435_TeVii.html
I have ordered the TeVii S650 DVB-S2. I can report how good it works as soon it arrives.
NetUP has also announced the development of a PCI-Express Dual Tuner DVB-S2 card: http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/NetUP_Dual_DVB_S2_CI
Regards, Artem
-
Artem Makhutov -
Gerald Dachs -
Morfsta -
Sascha Vogt -
Theunis Potgieter -
Tony Houghton