Stoked's Ramblings

Update...

2009-08-24T01:39:00.000-07:00

I picked up a pair of Belkin Gigabit Powerline AV units but ended up returning them. In my home, I was only able to get maximum of 60Mbps at a somewhat usable location. Usable location meaning not side by side in the same room. Not only that, the units would lose their brains occasionally and would require a reboot, looks like I'm just going to have to run cat5e.

Anyhow, now that the new Zotac Ion mobos support Wake-On-USB, I couldn't pass up a great deal at NCIX and ended up buying a package with the mobo and 4GB of ram for just over $200CDN. I probably won't have time to build the system any time soon so it's sitting on the shelve in the den.

I did however finally grab a netbook. I bought an Asus EEE 1005HA from the US which will probably come out to around $310CDN after taxes and cashback/rebates. First thing I did was deny the Windows XP EULA and installed Moblin on it. Apart from the very poor Wifi performance, I have been very impressed with Moblin. It's designed specifically for Netbooks with very little screen real estate and while it's still in the beta stage, it seems fairly stable so far. I was able to determine the poor Wifi performance is Moblin specific since Windows 7 Wifi has no problems. In Moblin, the network connection would disconnect/reconnect every 10min or so, and iwconfig showed 20-30db poorer signal that my other linux laptop. Since going to Windows 7 on the device has really made me appreciate how nicely done Moblin's UI is thought out for netbooks. I'm hoping to get some feature requests in, however the project's webpage is poorly laid out and I'm having a little trouble trying to figure out where enhancement requests would go.

Ion and Gigabit Powerline AV

2009-06-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've posted, but I've been busy moving homes, etc. Now that we've moved, I have more opportunity to dig into some of the more recent HTPC happenings.

The Nvidia Ion seems to be a fairly promising platform and seems to have received decent reviews and it's something I'll definitely be considering in the near future. In my new home, we completely gutted the kitchen and rebuilding it. There's a small wall between two large windows that is too small for a cabinet, yet a 20+" LCD mount would fit perfectly. Coupled with a small Ion PC, I'd be able to stream TV, media, music into the kitchen for the small eating area. First things first though, finish the kitchen =D. While GPU assisted high def playback works great on the Ion, my main concern is how sluggish frontends like Mediaportal or XBMC would be with the fancier skins like Mediastream. The lack of wake-on-USB on the Zotac boards is a deal breaker for me, although Anand from Anandtech has reported that a rev B with wake-on-USB will be released for the Ion mobos, although I'm not sure if the GF9300 mini-ITX mobo will get it.

At my previous home, the layout was conducive to pulling cat5e to the areas that needed network access, however my new home is not. My internet access terminates in one corner of the upstairs of the house and the TV is in the opposite end. My server needs to be downstairs for cooling, coax access, etc. In a pinch, a coworker gave me a pair of version 1 Powerline adapters he didn't need and at least I was able to setup my server in the basement and have connectivity, getting a peak of 15Mbit which isn't too shabby considering they were V1 products. I had been doing some digging on how fast the newer Powerline AV products were, and the Netgear XAVB101 seemed to stand out amongst various devices available. I found several reports of 90-96Mbit real world transfer speeds. While this isn't close to the 200Mbit theoretical it is definitely a useable thoroughput. Two days ago however, Belkin announced a gigabit theoretical Powerline AV adapter using the Gigle Mediaxtream chipset. Now no one believes for a minute that these devices can do real gigabit, but if they can do 200 or 300Mbit or more, these things would be a real alternative to dragging cat5e or wifi dropouts. The Belkin F5D4076 Powerline AV adapters are supposedly available in North America and were available for order at time of the press release but have since been sold out and back ordered.

Passive HD4550 Update...

2008-11-06T15:21:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been quite some time since the release of the HD4550, but even though there's been passive cards announced, I've yet to see anything hit the streets. An interesting thing though, Sapphire changed their actively cooled HD4550 to passive as can been seen on their HD4550 product page. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any vendors locally or online that actually specify the passive version of the Sapphire card. Interestingly enough, there is a Ebay seller that is selling a Sapphire fanless heatsink HD4550. A concern I have however, is that the HD4550 may not do SD deinterlacing quite as well as the HD4650/4670 as can seen from this post on AVSForum.

On another note, I'm a big fan of Mediaportal, but I'm thinking of doing a Mediaportal vs XBMC comparison when I get the chance. Need to find some time to set it up though.

Nvidia 9300/9400 Released - The best HTPC IGP?

2008-10-18T10:24:00.000-07:00

Is the Nvidia 9300/9400 the best HTPC IGP on the market? Possibly. Looks like it has a few software/driver issues that are hopefully sorted out. But other than that the 9300 chipset is looking like an excellent platform, probably the best on the market for now.

AnandTech - The IGP Chronicles Part 3: NVIDIA's GeForce 9300
The Tech Report - Nvidia's GeForce 9300 chipset: Best integrated graphics chipset ever?
Tom's Hardware - Move Over G45: Nvidia's nForce 730i Arrives

To reiterate, the 9300 is pretty much a rehash of the 8200 chipset but for the Intel CPU's. My hope is that the 9300 is will be more actively developed than the 8200 was. I have a feeling Nvidia will be putting more resources on the 9300 since it's in widespread use in the new Apple laptops. So what does the 9300 bring to the table?

-Integrated HDMI
-5.1/7.1 multi-channel LPCM audio via HDMI unlike 780G/780GX
-no repeater bug like the G45
-works with odd HDMI implementations like Denon
-completely smooth 1080p/24 plaback unlike G45/780G
-low power consumption

There's a still 2 big outstanding issues before these boards hit the street though. Memory performance is slow because Nvidia supposedly didn't have the engineering resources to enable Nvidia's Advance Path in their WHQL drivers, and CAS4 timing wasn't available. Word is Nvidia and board vendors are working on getting this resolved, hopefully we'll see this fixed before the boards hit the street.

If you're looking at the various vendors, I highly suggest you look at the manual on each vendor's website carefully. I purchased the Giga-byte GA-M78SM-S2H (8200) mobo based on the assumption that Giga-byte is a good manufacturer and the various boards should be identical in functionality. I was burned on processor/memory timing option on the GA-M78SM-S2H however. Granular control over memory timing and CPU speeds and also GPU speed is missing on this board and when submitted a ticket with Giga-byte, their initial response was that all mATX boards were workstation not consumer boards (WTF?) and therefore have limited bios functionality. I responded with a link to various other mATX Giga-byte boards that had the features I was asking for, and the response from them was that the GA-M78SM-S2H is a lower priced board and therefore doesn't have that functionality. Hopefully on the Intel platform, CPU/RAM timing isn't as important as on AMD for HD media playback, but it is something to keep an eye out for.

Passive Radeon HD4550's trickling in...

2008-10-09T15:48:00.000-07:00

It seems that even though the NDA was lifted on the ATI Radeon HD 4550 and HD 4350, it is still a bit late to market. However, we're starting to see passive HD4550 cards posted by vendors:

Giga-byte GV-R455D3-512I (2xDVI-I,1VGA,likely HDMI adapter)

Force3D HD4550 (DVI-I,1VGA,1 S-Video,likely HDMI adapter)

ATI HD4550 - No passive cards yet...

2008-10-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

Last week the NDA on the ATI HD4550/HD4350 was lifted and most of the various ATI partners have released the specs of their cards. What I find odd is the reference ATI HD4550 card was passively cooled with no fan yet the vendors who have announced their HD4550's are actively cooled.

Currently announced HD 4550's (all actively cooled with fans):

SAPPHIRE HD 4550 512MB DDR3 PCI-E

ASUS EAH4550/DI/512MD3

PowerColor HD4550 512MB DDR3

HIS, MSI, and Diamond have yet to release their HD4550. Hopefully they don't put a fan on their cards.

ATI HD4550/4450 The Close to Perfect HTPC Video Card?

2008-09-25T12:04:00.000-07:00

ATI/AMD is slated to release the Radeon HD4550 by the end of September. Word on the street is it will cost $50-60 for a 512MB version and as low as $39 for a 256MB version. Low-end cards in general are always looked down upon in the gaming community for being much too slow for anything but displaying a desktop. However, the HD4550 brings video acceleration for MPEG2/VC-1/H.264 material as well as multi-channel LPCM over HDMI to the table. It will also likely be offered with passive cooling (no fan) from several vendors. While these features are not found on other cards like the HD4870, it is however a breakthrough for low-end video cards. For example, I have some parts leftover from a Socket 939 AMD 3800+ X2 dual core system that merely needs a case and video card. I can revive this older outdated hardware by just throwing in an HD4550 and I can let my parents use this computer as an HTPC.

Current State of HTPC IGP Motherboards

2008-09-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

The proliferation of the HTPC IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor or onboard video) motherboards has made it quite confusing for people to decide on what path to take. The beauty of onboard video is tighter packaging and generally less power consumption which leads to less noise. Most people don't like the eyesore of a PC tower in the living room which has led to various form factors that allow for smaller packaging, some of which are so low profile that a regular video card or addon card becomes difficult to fit. Power consumption is generally a common factor to how a HTPC user purchases his equipment. No one likes having ten fans spinning just to cool a system that's playing your latest movies or TV shows. Less power consumption means less heat which in turn means less requirement for active cooling.

There only a few chipsets in my opinion today that are worth looking at. These are the AMD 780G/790GX, Intel G45, and the Nvidia 8200/8300 or 9300/9400. All of these chipsets have video acceleration for common video codecs like mpeg2, VC-1, and h.264, have HDMI connectivity for audio and video, and strive for low power consumption. The AMD 780G/790GX seems to be the most mature, which is natural since it has been on the market the longest. However, it lacks multi-channel LPCM support which can be a show stopper for a lot of HTPC users. See this good high level overview of why LPCM is important @Anandtech "Understanding 8-channel LPCM over HDMI". If getting the very best audio from your system for Blu-ray/HD-DVD collection, then this is likely important for you, it is for me. If regular Dolby Digital or DTS from DVD's is good enough, then the 780G/790GX chipsets merit your serious consideration. For the rest of us, the Intel G45 and Nvidia 8200/8300 are our best options. The Nvidia 9300/9400 release should be in the next few weeks. Both the G45 and 8200/8300 have been around for quite some time, I personally wouldn't call either chipset very mature but they each have their pros and cons. In general, the G45 doesn't support 1080p@24Hz, adheres strictly to the EDID data of your HDMI devices, and currently has a repeater bug where it just won't play a Bluray when you're connected to a receiver. The EDID adherence only affects devices that have odd interpretations of the EDID standard like older Denon receivers. The 8200/8300 on the other hand doesn't seem to support 5.1 LPCM only 7.1 LPCM and seems to be hit and miss with CPU choice in order to get smooth Blu-ray playback. I personally try to choose my parts on bang for the buck, and therefore like to buy the cheaper cpu solution that gets the job done. I can get away with this because of my usage patterns, I don't use postprocessing and only use the HTPC for media playback and not encoding. My experience with the 8200/8300 has left me feeling that Nvidia doesn't really care too much about it whereas Intel seems be updating the G45 constantly yet claims that they can't offer 1080p@24hz.

The new kid on the block is the Nvidia 9300/9400 chipset, this is basically an Intel CPU version of the 8200/8300. However, I'm hoping that Nvidia support will be better with this chipset since it will be in widespread use with the updatedApple Macbook. If I had to pull the trigger today, I'd look at the G45 with a E5200 or E7200 cpu, or an Nvidia 8200 with a 4850e or X3 Phenom cpu. The 4850e may be a gamble however according to some 8200 users. If my purchase wasn't for a month or two I'd definitely wait to see how the Nvidia 9300 turns out.

StOkEd

PS. Looks like Cyberlink released a patch to address the G45 repeater bug Cyberlink PowerDVD8 build 2021a Update