Upgrading for CQC

[wkearney99]

I currently have J.River's Media Center, driving 4 zones (off usb soundcards). This works pretty well for supporting media into a Russound CAV66. But the machine that's driving it is underpowered. So I'm going to upgrade. This begs the question of what to run, and on what box (or how many boxes)?

I've gotta run the main user interface in the rack. Right now it's on the same box as JRMC (which basically IS the main UI on this touchscreen box). I've toyed with various other lobby interfaces and they have their issues, mainly running up against the limits of their underlying purpose (jukebox, media player, etc). So CQC becomes a natural consideration when looking for better growth options.

Most media is stored on a separate network fileserver. Which is also being upgraded to a gigE network adapter.

I've also got a Sony VGP-XL1B 200 disc changer that will get integrated. Here on this box presumably. The XL1B requires MCE2005, will CQC operate with that?

If possible I'd like the box to serve multiple duties like drive audio streams to the CAV66 and potentially video to a plasma TV. We're only talking two TVs ever in use at once so it's not like I've got big streaming demands. I's the support of better video options that's driving the upgrade. The existing touchscreen maxed at 800x600; just not enough for main server UI needs. Given that this box won't get used for any regular UI activities it should probably be OK to jam the , infrared, lights, audio and video onto it.

So just what sort of cpu/memory is necessary to be both a good main CQC server and UI given the above sort of scenario? I've got a chassis here already that'd be a perfect fit for a microATX motherboard.

[IVB]

I'd advise to *not* use the same PC for both CQC master server and video rendering duties. I tried that with an AMD3200 and CQC had issues whenever I'd render video, probably due to all the dScaler/etc stuff that I was doing.

A modest machine can easily run the CQC master server, all your audio streams, and all other drivers, and a touchscreen/monitor in your rack. Then you can stick with a PC to render a TV or DVD stream.

Another thought is ripping CDs - I've noticed my Core2Duo E6400 (lower-end duo) w/1GB RAM rips MUCH faster than my AMD3200.w/768MB RAM. Where would you do that?

If you're buying all new stuff for this, I'm a big fan of using identical motherboards or at least socket types between PCs so you don't have different types of spare parts/etc laying around. If you can afford it, you could just go get a bunch of Core2Duo stuff.

I'm also not personally knowledgeable about how to get a PC to do more than 1 video stream at a time, I would think that would be pretty hard to do.

[Dean Roddey]

I would agree that you don't want the CQC MS to be on a machine doing video rendering. It's too compute intensive.

It's not a problem to have a machine that streams out multiple streams of video data to other players around the house, but to have a single machine that plays two video streams on the same machine is probably a lot more iffy if you want quality playback on both.

[Rolecgroup]

I've also got a Sony VGP-XL1B 200 disc changer that will get integrated. Here on this box presumably. The XL1B requires MCE2005, will CQC operate with that?

Dean forgot to comment on this one as he too busy writing the driver for it at the moment :-D

I believe the XL1B will be intergrated real soon....



Dean (the other one)

[Jonathan]

I'd advise to *not* use the same PC for both CQC master server and video rendering duties. I tried that with an AMD3200 and CQC had issues whenever I'd render video, probably due to all the dScaler/etc stuff that I was doing.

Ideally, I agree but more for stability reasons than processor reasons. My AMD x2 4600+ can do upscaling of DVD to 720p in software (using ffdshow) and not break 40% processor usage. CQC doesn't even register! However, on a video rendering machine you have to deal with driver and rendering software stability and during those times you will be impacting your other services.

[wkearney99]

Ok, so can video and media repository be on the same machine? Perhaps also along with a fileserver? The fileserver's main purpose is to serve up the media content so this'd kill two birds, so to speak. Assuming, of course, that a sufficiently powered box and network interface was used.

That just leave the UI and master server running on the rack touchscreen box. Is a 1.5ghz box with 512mb sufficient for this task? Not trying to cheap out on it here, but I have a spare box with just that sort of configuration.

[Dean Roddey]

That just leave the UI and master server running on the rack touchscreen box. Is a 1.5ghz box with 512mb sufficient for this task? Not trying to cheap out on it here, but I have a spare box with just that sort of configuration.

That should be fine.