(Solved)TBS 6928 hardware requirements for PayTV in HD

[morto]

Hello,

what are hardware requirements for TBS 6928 used with HD resolution? I bought TBS 6928 + CAM Irdeto CI+ Neotion for my HTPC with following setup:
MB: ASUS M4A78-HTPC
CPU: AMD Athlon™ II X2 Dual-Core 235e; 2.7 GHz; 2MB cache; 45W
RAM: 2GB
graphic card: integrated ATI HD 3200
Software used:
Windows 7 64-bit
TBS drivers version: 1.0.1.1
TBS Viewer: V20111103
AMD Catalyst 11.12 (latest drivers for HD 3200)

SD channels are ok, but i experience problems with HD channels - picture freezes and blank lines appear during fast moves in HD video. I checked in Win System Monitor and one core is used in average at 50% and second at 90%. I know this setup is capable of playing HD video, because i can play any Bluray disc using Power DVD software with CPU usage around 30%, so i suspect problem is in CAM decoding? I tried tuner in my second gaming PC with Phenom II X2 550 3100MHz and ATI HD 5770. Picture was not freezing anymore, but blank lines during fast moves in video was still present on some channels so something like 90% satisfaction on gaming PC

If my HTPC setup does not meet hardware requirements, can you please advice best upgrade, so i can watch HD channels smoothly and keep power consumption and noise of computer low?

EDIT: Corrected onboard graphics chip - it is HD 3200 and not HD 4200.

[steven]

Hi morto

Would you mind try to use other decoder to have a test,If SD is ok,it means the
card is work well,and because HD channel always use H.264 so maybe you need to
use H.264 decoder to watch it smoothly.
and
the codecs for HD https://shop.tbsdtv.com/blog/how-to-set-a ... ectly.html
Please have a look about this.

Thanks

[morto]

Thanks for your reply. I tried to play with decoder settings, but all options i have for H.264 and AAC Audio (Microsoft DTV-DVD, FFDShow, AVERTV, AUTO) did not make playback better Label besides decoder option is green "OK" for all options except of one of DivX decoder, but it should not play any role in this issue. I tried again to download another sample of H.264 video file from internet and playback was 100% smooth, so i don't see the bottleneck in H.264 decoding. In addition, more time i spend watching TV i see some problems even on SD channels - sometimes during fast moves in video the picture is broken in one horizontal line in the middle of the screen and then synchronized again and everything is ok for some time till there is another fast change in video.

[steven]

Hi morto

Would you mind remove your graphic card: integrated ATI HD 3200,then have a try agian.
maybe it is your graphic card's problem.

Thanks

[morto]

Hi Steven, thanks for helping to deal with my problems Actually, it seems the problem is really software related. I was able to configure Mediaportal TV server and all channels play smoothly with default codecs in Mediaportal. Anyway it seems my hardware configuration is somehow on the edge, since majority of codecs need more hardware resources and i will consider a little upgrade (probably some discrete graphic card nVidia with passive cooling). Finally, i am happy with this DVB-S2 card, because of its one slot PCIex format with embedded CI slot