Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005: Feature and Performance Investigation
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 12, 2004 12:19 PM EST- Posted in
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Multituner Performance
For our next test we wanted to see how much more overhead adding a second tuner card and recording two programs would cost us. We recorded a show in the background while watching another TV show, once again all while varying CPU clock speed over time - the rest of our testbed remained the same.
We left the results from only a single tuner on the same graph to see the extra penalty incurred by going to dual tuners. As you can see, you basically add on another 10% CPU usage for recording one program while watching another. You can extrapolate that to get an idea of what kind of hardware you'd need for 3 tuners.
But once again, even in the worst configuration we're still only looking at 54% CPU usage, that's more than enough to spare. But what happens when you start scrolling through the program guide for something else to watch when you're sick of one of your programs?
We continued our experiment by scrolling through the program guide while recording one program and while we had another show running in its window in the corner of the guide. Here the average CPU utilization increases dramatically, with everything slower than 2GHz racking up over 90% CPU utilization.
Once you get closer to 100% CPU utilization that's when things start to get choppy and we saw some serious reductions in smoothness on our lower end configurations. Interestingly enough, even in our choppiest configuration the MCE system was still more responsive and faster navigating through the guide than a Tivo. What we lost was the smooth transitions from one page in the guide to the next, or from one listing to the next, everything was a lot more jerky.
The plot thickens when you look at maximum CPU utilization during the time period, while the three fastest CPUs had their average utilizations in the 70s, their peak CPU usage figures were in the 80s and 90s, bordering on 100% CPU utilization. Whenever we hit 100%, something had to give, but luckily it was always the speed of the menu, never the frames in the video - something we were very appreciative of.
Another interesting phenomenon we noticed was that the slower the system got, the more prone it was to crashes. The larger the processing and disk queues got, the more our custom built Socket-939 testbed with aggressive memory timings started to crash. The majority of the crashes were hard locks and they didn't happen at all with the faster CPU configurations, but they definitely happened once we dropped below 1.6GHz.
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jamawass - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
First post, longtime anandtech reader. MCE 2k5 looks good from all the reviews I've read but at around $170 (with essential remote)is just too expensive as the reviewer pointed out. With the type of hardware you need to run it, you're looking at $1000 at least. With networked DVD recorders with tivo capabilities ( which are much more stable) getting better in the $400 range why would I put mce in my living room?glennpratt - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
Best solution for mom is to have TV and Computer connected and running at the same time. And yes, if mum can use windows and operate a TiVo, she can use MCE. Just make sure you get nice and stable components.GodsMadClown - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
You know what? I look at this and see a market for dual-core.tantryl - Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - link
I'm trying to figure out whether this is something that you could, well, give to mum for example. Or mom as you crazy americans call them.Presume a nice setup, 3+GHz or equivalent, Hauppage TV Tuner, 80GB system drive and 200GB storage/video drive, 512MB or 1024MB RAM (not info given by Anand as to what difference this might make?), all MCE approved components, with the necessary remote all set up in a quiet case...
Would Ma be able to use it? Would she be able to handle swapping between the monitor and a regular TV? Would she be better off having a physical switch that changes the signal from into the PC to into the TV?
So Anand - you think this is something mum could use?
glennpratt - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
9 & 10 - I have not seen one copy protected file yet and I use both analog antenna and digital cable for over a year. It is up to the station to set the flag to lock the file, which IMO is fair. Also, you can convert the file after the fact to WMV using DVR2WMV. I like the low CPU usage that hardware MPEG2 brings, and if i decide I like the program I can convert it and archive it.Reflex - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
#10: Part of the 2005 release is that its available to system builders or sites like Newegg for do it yourselfers. I do agree about codecs, but its not a *huge* deal to me.segagenesis - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
#9 - I would prefer BeyondTV solely for the fact I can do whatever I want with recorded shows. And I dont have to buy a new computer just to get the *software*.PrinceGaz - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Windows MCE will never be any use for people serious about video until it allows you to select what codecs you want to use for encoding from all the DirectShow codecs installed on your system. Having to use the proprietary MS stuff with all their DRM garbage is unsuitable.rbV5 - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
Nice Review Anand. I'll be building one of these shortly using dual eHome Wonder cards and HDTV Wonder (hopefully MS will release the patch soon.) I ordered MCE + the remote from Newegg earlier today, so i should be on it by the end of the week.kurisu - Tuesday, October 12, 2004 - link
I still think the interface is pretty attractive. I see this doing well in the market..