TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

Hi,
With the price drop of the Ceton cards, I just built myself a new media center PC. Now that I have the one card working, I'm thinking its time to add a second quad tuner. I'm unsure if I have a good enough computer to handle 8 streams..

Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Item #: N82E16813128495
CPU: Intel Pentium Dual-Core G620T Sandy Bridge 2.2GHz LGA 1155 35W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80623G620T - Item #: N82E16819116401
Mem: G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBNQ - Item #: N82E16820231193
Boot: Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Item #: N82E16820148441
Data: Seagate Barracuda Green ST1500DL003 1.5TB 5900 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive - Item #: N82E16822148725
PSU: Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D Green 380W Continuous power ATX12V - Item #: N82E16817371033


Opinions/Suggestions are appreciated. My last media center was XP with HD over the air tuners and with analog cable service. Went to Vista, and the computer went to hell and out the window. The pixelating and stuttering drove me nuts and I do NOT want a repeat.. This MOBO even supports sound over the onboard HDMI, with video sharing 480MB of system ram.

Thanks in advance,
Tom

That system is more than sufficient. The only difference between 8 streams and 4 is how hard you are working your HDD, which the one you have should be sufficient. You have plenty of power in the PSU, so there isn't anything to worry about.

Yep as richard states you should be fine. You will need Tuner Salad to get the other card working.

Thats good. I remember the nightmare's I had with Vista and HD tuners.. On another note, The new issue I have, the computer doesn't "resume" correctly. I want the computer on all night.. but when I wake up to use it, and turn the AV and the TV on, I keep getting a black screen, I can see mouse.. but can't get to desktop or Media Center. I'm wondering if this is because of HDMI and or driver... Idea's?

I've had bad luck with Seagate in the past. Also, the price difference between 1.5TB and 2TB is so small, why get only 1.5TB with 8 tuners?

glugglug wrote:I've had bad luck with Seagate in the past. Also, the price difference between 1.5TB and 2TB is so small, why get only 1.5TB with 8 tuners?

Have to agree there, you will eat up the 1.5TB pretty quickly unless you don't store much of what you record. Next, you will build a WHS machine with some form of drive pooling so that you can have 6-10 TB of storage space....oh wait, that was me.

I just helped a buddy setup a new dual-Ceton setup where his recorded tv drive is a 2TB drive, and we also installed a 3tb drive for "movies". then I setup a scheduled task, triggered on "Recording" event in EventLog/Applications/MediaCenter that looks at everything in the recorded TV section, determine if the wtvs are "movies", then move them to the 3tb drive.

That "should" keep his 2TB drive down... lol.

tomtoth wrote:Thats good. I remember the nightmare's I had with Vista and HD tuners.. On another note, The new issue I have, the computer doesn't "resume" correctly. I want the computer on all night.. but when I wake up to use it, and turn the AV and the TV on, I keep getting a black screen, I can see mouse.. but can't get to desktop or Media Center. I'm wondering if this is because of HDMI and or driver... Idea's?

I had a similar issue with a Sapphire HD 5770 (dual DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort). When using the DVI port, I had the black screen issues. I tried reloading drivers and such, but to no avail...nothing I did could fix it. Even changing over to the other DVI port on the card didn't help. However, when I changed over to HDMI, the problem went away. I have since moved to the DisplayPort since the connector snaps into the video card whereas the HDMI just "floats" in the slot.

My TV and reciever are both older...neither have HDMI connects. I run my video straight to the TV and run TosLink to the reciever.

Are you running your HDMI into your reciever or straight to the TV?

Jay wrote:

glugglug wrote:I've had bad luck with Seagate in the past. Also, the price difference between 1.5TB and 2TB is so small, why get only 1.5TB with 8 tuners?

Have to agree there, you will eat up the 1.5TB pretty quickly unless you don't store much of what you record. Next, you will build a WHS machine with some form of drive pooling so that you can have 6-10 TB of storage space....oh wait, that was me.

Yeah.. I'm already have been looking into and pricing one of those.. Seems to be the next logical progression.. Ha

sduphily wrote:

tomtoth wrote:Thats good. I remember the nightmare's I had with Vista and HD tuners.. On another note, The new issue I have, the computer doesn't "resume" correctly. I want the computer on all night.. but when I wake up to use it, and turn the AV and the TV on, I keep getting a black screen, I can see mouse.. but can't get to desktop or Media Center. I'm wondering if this is because of HDMI and or driver... Idea's?

I had a similar issue with a Sapphire HD 5770 (dual DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort). When using the DVI port, I had the black screen issues. I tried reloading drivers and such, but to no avail...nothing I did could fix it. Even changing over to the other DVI port on the card didn't help. However, when I changed over to HDMI, the problem went away. I have since moved to the DisplayPort since the connector snaps into the video card whereas the HDMI just "floats" in the slot.

My TV and reciever are both older...neither have HDMI connects. I run my video straight to the TV and run TosLink to the reciever.

Are you running your HDMI into your reciever or straight to the TV?

Yeah, I'm running HDMI from Computer to Onkyo A/V switcher. Thats a good idea, I never thought of perhaps running Video directly to tv, and audio optical to the AV receiver.. Something to try. As of right now, it seems my computer/tv times out after a while, even tho I set computer monitor to 'always' be on.. Its the computer going blank, not the tv (I can see onscreen info).

For the last week, I haven't had it crash.. Disconnected a older WD Raptor HD.. and that seemed to be the trick for now.. oh and never turning the tv off with media center in live TV... IS this a common issue.. Leaving the media center on live tv all night long.. for it to crash? if I leave it in the menu.. it seems to be alright.

tomtoth wrote: Yeah, I'm running HDMI from Computer to Onkyo A/V switcher. Thats a good idea, I never thought of perhaps running Video directly to tv, and audio optical to the AV receiver.. Something to try. As of right now, it seems my computer/tv times out after a while, even tho I set computer monitor to 'always' be on.. Its the computer going blank, not the tv (I can see onscreen info).

For the last week, I haven't had it crash.. Disconnected a older WD Raptor HD.. and that seemed to be the trick for now.. oh and never turning the tv off with media center in live TV... IS this a common issue.. Leaving the media center on live tv all night long.. for it to crash? if I leave it in the menu.. it seems to be alright.

Glad to hear things are working for you...wierd that a HDD would cause such a thing.

Ever since I fixed my problem, I haven't had a crash since. I leave the HTPC on 24/7 and my remote just turns on/off the TV and mutes/unmutes the reciever (it stays on 24/7 as well). The TV gets turned off during live tv, playback of a recording, movie...it doesn't matter. No crashes...(:me: looks for wood to knock at this point).

My HTPC is only hooked up to the TV...when I was having the problems, I tried against a monitor. I really can't remember if I experienced the same problems with the monitor though. The TV would be on, just as you described earlier...just a black screen with a cursor at times.

When I first ran into the issue, I thought the card was overheating. When I found the temps were fine, I thought it was not getting enough juice. I even tried overclocking the card, checking the firmware, and of course drivers (betas as well). It would happen almost like clockwork if I ran the screen tests...the ones with the people playing pool and whatnot.

I'm not sure what caused me to try the HDMI port since my TV only has DVI (had to buy the adapter), but it's been fine since.

I was asking about the reciever just to rule it out. I also see that the mobo you have has a DVI port you can try out if the problem comes back again.