mpatnode
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mpatnode
Oooh. One of the more infamous and heated threads from TGB back in the day, but given the different behavior between the two systems, I would try the older CCC driver as well.
On the otherhand, I’m just put a used 1GB Zotac GT 430 on Amazon. I thought it was bad so replaced it with a Asus trying to solve a BSOD problem. Turned out to be the system memory.
In general, I’m much happier with the NVidia driver than AMD. Also, the GT 430 seemed to perform the best on the 23.976Hz tests.
Sure sounds like the ATI Dynamic Contrast issue, even though you say it’s disabled. When I had a 5450, I noticed that it would mysteriously get switched back on sometimes.
I’m currently running with an 8TB ReadyNAS NV+. This is 2 or 3 generations old now, but still has a GB ethernet port and supports DLNA (if that matters to you). Best case, I get around 45MB read speeds and 30MB write (SMB) and the poor little Sparc processor is maxed out at that point. I run Raid 0 (I just couldn’t justify wasting 4TB backing up TV shows) for speed. As long as you’re not trying to feed multiple streams from the device, it’s fine for a single HTPC setup.
I’ve even been toying with the idea of opening up the box and replacing the motherboard with on of the newer Intel Atom boards. 6GB I/O, 10x performance at half the power usage, etc. The only downside is that due to Sparc big-endian byte ordering, if you change the chip, you need to reformat all the drives. 🙁
Amazon has them for around $350 US. It’s almost worth the price just to get a nice shoe box case with easily removable drive bays, but the device will do the job.
It’s now $129 on Amazon. Couldn’t find any rebates.
1. Comcast
2. San Francisco
3. Locals & Expanded Copy Freely, Premiums Copy Once. Note I get random behavior on AMC shows here. Sometimes the protection bit is set, and sometimes it’s not.
4. No SDV
5. Yes
So I believe the reliability issues around SSDs is completely overblown, and my own experience backs that up.
I’ve had a 128GB Cosair P128 SSD as the ONLY drive in my HTPC now almost 2 years (Oct 09). According to CrystalDiskInfo it has 6936 power-on-hours (289 days) I assume this is less than a year because it’s not counting S3 sleep time.
I record ALL my shows to the SSD and then move them to my ReadyNAS NV+ after commercial processing via DVRMSToolkit. I record roughly around 80G of shows a week (Aug total/4).
System performs great, even with my ancient P35 motherboard. My SSD health status is at 98%.
The motherboard/CPU upgrade is next on my list, mostly to get better video processing speed since I use the HTPC to convert VCRs, and they could really benefit from more post-processing. Though it would be nice to upgrade the entire disk I/O chain to 6Gb/s. But I think I’ll upgrade the poor NV+ sparc before a new SSD. Need to open it up and see if I can replace the motherboard with something a bit more modern.
Finally, Disney has no problem with you cancelling your membership, and then restarting it again. They are happy to give you 10 BDs for $130 as many times as you want…
How odd. I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish with that link, but I edited the post and replaced it with the number: 1-800-362-4587 which works for me.
Note the links to the 5 movies for 1$ deal have expired, but it’s still there if you have a promotion code. Feel free to try 17672D which got me to the 5 movie page vs the 3 movie page which is the default. Seems the numbers 11111 and 14366 work as well.
How are you measuring the network speed and whats the transfer protocol? Is it just file copies over SMB?
Another test you might want to try is download the Big Buck Bunny AVI file and see how it plays back. Note it’s a 12Mbps MP4, so it should play easier than the Comcast recordings since you have a recent processor. There’s also a 70Mbps MPEG2 file you can download from W6RZ. Unfortunately, you need to download it in pieces and then concatenate it into one file (guess they never heard of bittorrent) but it’s a one-liner, even in Windows. This will definitely show you if you have an I/O streaming problem from your disk controller.
Just another data point: I playback all my shows from a NAS drive and seldom have any playback pauses or problems. Remember a HD WTV recording from Comcast is only 14.2Mbps (roughly 2MB/s) which is obviously within the capabilities of any HD/controller combo made in the last 10 years.
One thing you might want to check for is what other system activity is going on at the same time? Are you running Showanalyzer or DVRMSToolbox utilities in the background? I found this killed my network playback when DVRMS started moving the WTV file from my SSD back to my NAS, so I scheduled things so it only runs during non-watching hours.
Can you run Resource Monitor from an RDP session while watching a show and see if anything pops?
Did you include the cost of W7 and Blu-Ray playback software in your build? I assume Acer is shipping an OEM version of PDVD or TMT, but it will at least do the job. I’m eyeing the same system to replace my Dad’s ReplayTV. The (not-yet-shipping) Hauppauge USB CableCARD tuner would complete this system nicely, but even one or two ATI tuners off of Ebay would do the job for cheap.
[quote=Techbutton]
I worked for Hitachi GST, and I have to say that the problem wasn’t Hitachi, it was IBM.
[/quote]
I have no problem believing that. I wonder if as part of the deal, they were forced to keep the product name as well.
I’m sure they make good drives, I just can’t believe they didn’t change the model name. There’s a reason Ford no longer makes the Pinto.
I was also refering to the historical problems with the model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitachi_Deskstar
Now if Hitachi isn’t smart enough to change the name after buying IBM’s hard drive division, do you really believe they’ve addressed the quality issues?
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