Aaron Ledger
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Aaron Ledger
Can you check your audio settings in TMT5 and post those? It sounds like you are more than likely decoding audio with TMT5 and sending PCM audio (raw digital uncompressed audio) to your TV. This would mean that TMT5 is then responsible for defining the audio levels of thise audio samples. There are some dynamic compression options in TMT5 that you might want to play with. Typically, dynamic compression is used to decrease the dynamic range of the audio (dynamic range = difference between high and low). Most soundtracks for movies will be mastered quite similarly with respect to total volume. Some though may have more or less dynamic range which can alter your perception of volume. Also, try to correlate the audio type being decoded with the volume levels you notice. It is possible TMT5 could be doing something different if audio is say DTS-HD MA vs. Dolby TrueHD.
Can you give some information about your audio configuration? Are you decoding on PC or in an external device (AVR, TV, etc.)? Are there any commonalities with the soundtracks you are noticing the same behavior on (e.g. they are all Dolby TrueHD or they are all PCM, etc.)?
Is flow control enabled on each NIC (WHS and WMC)? If you have a Gigabit NIC, flow control is especially important for the transition to FastEthernet.
NIC is one potential problem point and there are many problem NICs, unfortunately (e.g. Realtek). The switch is another potential problem point (converting between Gigabit and FastEthernet at the switch requires enough memory in switch to account for the potential burst of Gigabit traffic it may receive and have to send out at slower FastEthernet rate).
Forcing your NIC to FastEthernet speed instead of Gigabit could help. Reducing other traffic on the switch could help.
The extender is performing the decoding. The XBOX has bitrate limitations with some video codecs. Can you give specifics on the codecs in your file? You could use MediaInfo to find out.
If you look at the recorded program info, there will be an indication (at the bottom of the dialog) if it is copy protected.
The additional memory is likely of little, if any, benefit to HTPC applications with display resolutions of 1080p or less.
Fanless should be perfectly fine. Presumably the manufacturer has performed due diligence in making sure their cooling solution is adequate.
Of the three that you have linked, I would definitely advise against the 64-bit version because it cripples the memory bus bandwidth for only a $5 savings. Either of the other two options would generally be fine for HTPC use (even for most LAV Video + MadVR rendering cases).
Take a look at Intel DH77EB. It is less expensive, smaller and seems better-suited to your requirements as an HTPC with 4 PCIe slots. It is good to see Gigabyte has finally stopped using Realtek NIC, but I’m not sure of the performance of Atheros while the Intel NIC is a known good performer. The Intel board also offers the CIR header. In my experience, Intel board support is much better than Gigabyte. If you can wait a while longer for the i3 IVB parts to arrive, you’ll save some money.
Denon’s Telnet interface is well-documented. Other than writing up a WP7 app, I’m not sure how useful it would be vs. bookmarking the web config pages of interest. I’ve attached Denon’s AVR-2312CI protocol. If you read through, you can see that to say turn power on, you would need to:
1. telnet to IP of AVR
2. enter “PWON” where is just a carriage return.
The Denon interface wouldn’t be too bad to do what you want. Since you won’t be switching inputs on zone 2, I don’t think you would need to do that but the first time when you set it up. From that point forward, you could just power on. You could also bookmark the web pages for quicker access (reserving an IP for the unit or assigning a static IP).
I don’t really find zone 2 all that useful for my needs currently. The AVR-2112 is a bit limited in that regard as it will not take in a digital source and output on zone 2, but analog works fine so it would work for your application. Denon does have higher-tier models that offer more functionality in this regard.
It is most likely not worth bothering with 7xxx just for HTPC purposes. Anything below a 7750 is just a rebadged 6xxx. Perhaps in some of the 7750+ there is a chance for improvement (or regression) since there is new silicon involved. There is support for 4096×2160 @ 24p, but not many people will find a need for that at this time.
Denon’s web interface is functional in a regular browser though I would probably not want to use it on a device screen. Here’s an example screen capture from my AVR-2112CI.
Most likely what you are encountering is the telecine switching in content, you’d need to check to be sure. IVTC utilizes the soft telecine content so that at least there will not be dirty frames (this is what happens with hard telecine) though you will still have uneven cadence of 24p content if played back to display at 59Hz.
It sounds like you’re looking in a good direction with the idea that there could be a networking issue. Have you checked any of your network interface statistics to see if there are any errors? Do you have flow control enabled on all of your PC NICs? What type of switch(es) are you using? Are you using FastEthernet, Gigabit or combination of both?
Another thing to consider playing with is the NIC interrupt moderation settings. You could try disabling to see if it helps.
It is true that the hardware vendors could optimize their designs in the future to respond better to this situation they are being presented. The best solution would be for content originators to alter the transmissions so that they are all soft-telecined for film-based content because it would result in the ideal picture quality.
The strobing you describe is the most annoying potential artifact of the telecine switching (WMC debug info shows you the switch between telecine modes as 29(soft) and 59(hard)). If you configure the nominal range registry setting for WMC, the strobing artifact should be eliminated. Disabling dynamic contrast feature in the Intel, NVIDIA or AMD drivers should also alleviate this artifact.
In case you haven’t used it before: Add the key in Regedit: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREDebugehPresenter.dll and add the DWORD NominalRange.
Value of 1 = 0-255 RGB; 2 = 16-235
The judder created by the issue is another matter and unfortunately, there is no easy workaround at this time. While the transmissions are legal, I don’t believe there is really any gain in switching telecine modes in the manner that it is done in the source video. It is difficult to get traction with the content originators unless people start complaining en masse.
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