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racerxnet
Joined: 20 Jun 2007 Posts: 362 Location: Illinois
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Link Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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Oliverg,
Quit your whining. From a technical perspective and programming at the kernel level, you do not know squat. Hard drive speeds are measured to have peak read/write and sustained read write as well. Just the same as firewire and USB. I did many measured read/write and bios mods on the Promise and 3ware raid cards several years ago. Always looking for more sustained speed for my NLE rig. Newer firewire speeds have the capability of providing 1080 output without a problem.
I have over 15 years experience in programming, both at the kernel level and user level. So don't think I do not understand the limitations of throughput. You go read your fanboy site, I'll keep writing code.
Quote: | You guys are WAY over my head. Shocked
Last night I transfered a 6.35Gb folder from my firewire drive case to my HTPC's hard drive, to get an idea of what the speed and CPU load is. It took about 3 1/2 minutes to transfer. CPU usage bounced around from 2% to 9%, and probably averaged 5%.
I believe that's an average of about 30Mbps. I'm not sure how much band width 1080p requires, but it's several times less than that, right? At the lower bandwidth of 1080p, I would assume my CPU usage would also significantly reduce. CPU usage is already not that much, so you would think would become insignificant when transferring 1080p. |
Phil,
This stuff is pretty easy to understand, and I have a degree in software engineering as well have a perspective as an engineer. What firewire standard are you using? Firewire 800 and above will have adequate speed for your needs. 1080p bitrate will vary, it is not constant. Level 4 MP@HL has a peak rate of 20Mbit/s, to a maximum of 240Mbit/s at Level 5.1. You will never see a 240 peak rate on HD material from a disc.
I have used firewire to view 1080p on many occasions with customers in my Theater, so it has been done. Go back and read my response on this page to understand why you do not see CPU usage peaking higher.
Good Luck to all, and have FUN.
MAK
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oliverg
Joined: 15 May 2007 Posts: 800 Location: Melbourne, Australia
TV/Projector: Sony G90 X2 - Vidikron Vision 1
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Link Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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racernetx - lol - you obviously don't know 'squat', I've actually gone through this exercise and witnessed these issues first hand with about 10 clients this year alone - even aratax agreed with my main points! - everything he wrote is SPOT on in his last post. Its all about maintaining the integrity of a high bandwidth bitstream without interuption - SATA/PATA/RAID is a far more optimal method. USB/FW devices are toys.
Anyway, if you want to dream your dreams, go right ahead - use FW/USB and suffer from substandard HTPC performance! All you people that think you can use a toy interface for your toy htpcs are living in cloud cuckoo land - go and actually TRY it before you come here and spout your theoretical bull$hit.
Perhaps you should learn something about how hardware works in the real world?
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racerxnet
Joined: 20 Jun 2007 Posts: 362 Location: Illinois
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Link Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:44 pm Post subject: |
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Hey Oliverg,
Would you like a little cheese with that whine??
I've written more device drivers than you will ever know. This at a level you will not be able to understand from a hardware perspective. Enough said to a 13 year old fanboy with limited knowledge.
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oliverg
Joined: 15 May 2007 Posts: 800 Location: Melbourne, Australia
TV/Projector: Sony G90 X2 - Vidikron Vision 1
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Link Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:46 pm Post subject: |
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hey racernetx - grow up - see definition of wanker above
if i had such limited knowledge, why did aratax end up agreeing with me?
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oliverg
Joined: 15 May 2007 Posts: 800 Location: Melbourne, Australia
TV/Projector: Sony G90 X2 - Vidikron Vision 1
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Link Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 2:22 am Post subject: |
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[QUOTE=racerxnet]Hi Oliver,
I thought I might provide an engineers perspective on software/hardware design and limitations to expect. When you are looking at throughput design, one has to understand what you are trying to accomplish. In this case it is to play back HD content from a external drive. Whether it is USB 2.0 or firewire 800 and above, one should test the read state of the drive for the intended use. In this case as stated, we are concerned about the max bitrate that Blue Ray and HD-DVD are capable of. I believe it is 50 MB and 35 respectively. Neither formats will have a (constant bit rate)CBR. Any novice Videophile who does NLE work will know this and will use VBR to encode the disk. This happens with HD content as well.
Once we have an understanding of the throughput, we can determine the proper device for sustained delivery of the media. In this case firewire 800 has a peak of 90 MB/s. As stated it will not always be capable of this in the real world, but neither does the disk require 50MB (BlueRay) constantly. Keeping the figures in mind and you see that Firewwire 800 approaches ATA 133 and surpasses it with firewire 1600 and above. When I hacked and wrote software drivers for software raid, the throughput was actually slower than firewire 800. I have better than $100,000 dollars in audio and video equipment and have used firewire extensively for film transfer and viewing on my CRT blend via my HTPC. Is it my choice always? No. Only when viewing the final output before burning to disk. Does it stutter? No.
Times have changed since then and technology will always find a better and faster way to do things. Some times it works, sometimes not. I am not writing this to convince you or any others for that matter. What does matter is that the technical engineering and standards are developed for a purpose. And it does apply to all that we use, whether it is an appliance or HTPC. I was involved in the hacking of the Apex DVD players with OFFA and the ESS based chipset. Soldered on a SDI output on the Apex as well for shits and giggles. They (SDI module) can be bought from Moomie for a reasonable price. Oh well, external drives will continue to move forward in speed.
Many have stated that a software blend on a HTPC could not be done. It has been done with VLC and I have since wrote a blend program for a single card application and a cluster which is scalable. I am running 2 8500's for the blend with 2 Nvidia 3000G cards. Pictures are posted on this site.
I wish you luck and I have no more time to present the facts and engineering. It has been done and will continue to be done with external drives and NAS boxes. Try to be a little more open minded in responding to others when you post. A closed mind will never learn very much.
Best of luck and most important is to have fun
MAK[/QUOTE]
Racerxnet, my mind is hardly closed. I have seen first hand the inadequacies of USB - instead of accusing me of being a 13 year old fanboy with no experience, try to take a more open view yourself. You obviously have never tried what we were discussing in the thread or you would have seen the same issues - without doubt - they are well documented.
Telling me that I'm whining when I'm merely trying to discuss some issues openly merely suggests to me that you are the very thing you accused me of being.
There's a reason why USB isn't used as a form of primary drive storage - from an engineering/manufacturing perspective, the cotrollers are much simpler and cheaper.
Also, we weren't talking about the later versions of FW/USB - the issue in particular was Phil's HTPC - which is only USB2. In any case, the consensus is clear, if a choice had to be made between USB/FW or sata/pata/raid the people that know what they are doing would choose the later. You are just arguing for the sake of it.
I am well aware of the peak bandwidth requirements of BR etc but there is a lot more going on behind the scenes (events which cause jitter and interuption to the bitstream - especially if something causes CPU utilization to peak out) If you really understand the structure of PC architecture you wouldn't be arguing from a just a software perspective and mouthing off as to how I don't know what I'm doing. A dedicated appliance only has to do one thing - a PC has many forms of low and high level overheads (software and hardware) and they can interfere with particular types of devices - more so to USB/FW and less so to SATA/PATA.
Why do you think no-one puts a paging file on a USB drive?
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Axatax
Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Posts: 403
TV/Projector: Sony VPH-G70Q (aka Barco Cine8 Onyx)
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Link Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 11:19 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | In the end, Axatax wanted to debate about definitions of words when he knew exactly what I was talking about. In the end, he even agreed with me. He knew what I was saying was true, but it seemed to me he was trying to discuss things issues which weren't relevant. The fact that my interpretation of the finer details of interupts/polling are different to his didn't mean that my main points (which in the end he confirmed) were invalid. |
Oliver,
You claimed *interrupt latency* due to polling as the prima facia cause for performance issues, which is why I challeneged your statements. This is not parcing words. I agree with you about the suboptimal nature of USB as a primary HD playback source (even tough it remains a viable option).
This doesn't change the nature of your statement regarding "interrupt polling", as this cannot be interpreted as a "point of view" or opinion, anymore than an opinion about 2 + 2 being equal to four. Your statements would have merit if we were discussing the use of *software* interrupts to call APIs, as was common in DOS - but an NT-based Windows OS doesn't operate this way and never has.
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madpoet
Joined: 30 Mar 2006 Posts: 852
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Link Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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Funny... I have been bleeding edge HTPC for years. I guarantee I was light years ahead of most of you last year when I wrote the hacked together guide for doing BD and HD DVD playback on the same machine, back when it was REALLY hard to do I think I was possibly the first person to actually do it. And I still wouldn't piss and moan at each other like you all are doing.
I use FW800 enclosures all the time for archived MPEG2, HD DVD, and BD images. Works fine. You guys go right ahead and get all crazy if you want to, but I'll just keep using my "toy" solution on my "toy" HTPC.
_________________ 9500LC + MP Mods V2 + HD10F lenses + Frankenyoke V2 = Something nice... I hope I get to actually watch it sometime!
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racerxnet
Joined: 20 Jun 2007 Posts: 362 Location: Illinois
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Link Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:29 pm Post subject: |
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The last post from OliverG regarding this matter was sent privately at AVS which he copied and posted here. It was done this way to keep the noise level down to a minimum. Unfortunately, Oliver could not give up his position when confronted with the facts, and certainly looks like a child when posting private messages never intended to be open. Not running around to other forums and pasting private messages.
It was Phil who was looking for a solution, as we all are for our ideas. This is what the forum is about, solutions to a dilemma. Others have stated their successful results with USB and Firewire. If it does not work, it is knowledge gained for all. I would rather fail 100 times and be successful once at times. I have gained 100 times the knowledge from those failures.
To Oliverg:
I am sorry this turned out this way. I have no hard feelings towards you.
All are friends.
MAK
P.S. Madpoet,
Bleeding edge is a 1960's 1100 cubic inch Abrams army tank motor mounted in a pulling tractor. V8 - 4 valves per cylinder - all aluminum. Runs like sh*t though.
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drice1234
Joined: 07 Oct 2006 Posts: 1309 Location: Allen, Texas
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Link Posted: Mon Jul 16, 2007 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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cheap htpc
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oliverg
Joined: 15 May 2007 Posts: 800 Location: Melbourne, Australia
TV/Projector: Sony G90 X2 - Vidikron Vision 1
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Link Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:00 am Post subject: |
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Axatax wrote: |
I'm not trying to be an ass, but here's the deal:
USB is definiately NOT optimal for any type of type HD playback (and I would argue that it's not ideal for SD either),
Is this setup succeptable to hiccoughs when some background processes decides to kick in? Absolutely. Is it ideal? No. Do I use an HTPC for BRD/HD-DVD playback. Hell no. Appliance for me.
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Spot on.
I'm not here to debate on prime definitions or to debate on mechanics of how USB/FW is different to SATA (suffice to say it IS different). I'm not here to name call and act like a troll or a wanker like some people have. I posted a thread on AVS to ask the same question - the consensus was "well, we use USB occasionally for 1080i" (not 1080p) but given a choice - EVERYONE said they would prefer to use SATA etc
Why do you think Microsoft recommends not placing a swap file/paging file on a USB/FW drive? For exactly the same reasons as you shouldn't use USB/FW to deliver 1080p video reliably.
Anyone that wants a substandard method of delivery, go ahead. When you run into problems, I bet you don't come back here and sheepishly say "oops, er, you were right" - you'll just migrate your video to a medium better suited to delivering it, like a SATA drive.
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turbospeed
Joined: 04 Dec 2007 Posts: 1
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Mark_A_W
Joined: 15 Mar 2006 Posts: 3068 Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia
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Link Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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Except DVD players are about as useful these days as a Beta Video machine.
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james69
Joined: 02 Nov 2007 Posts: 20
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Link Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:56 am Post subject: |
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you obviously havent seen my player... it passes all the tests with flying colors
there are still a lot of people out there using dvd players ...... a lot more than people using beta tape players
if your statement were true mark_a_w then how do you explain the sales of dvd players and discs on amazon??? compared to other formats which number in the thousands there are millions of sales of dvd players and dvds themselves each week
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oliverg
Joined: 15 May 2007 Posts: 800 Location: Melbourne, Australia
TV/Projector: Sony G90 X2 - Vidikron Vision 1
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Link Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 7:44 am Post subject: |
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What's your player James69?
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