G-Omaha's *** 8790 Review - 2nd Machine *** - Page 3

I just checked mine and the GPU setting is also 405/270.

The camera is much brighter and a little slower than the old one ..

Fried Toast reporting, G. I, too, thought that the underside said D870P. However, upon checking just now, mine does indeed say D87P just like yours. It actually says both.

Model: D87P
Product Code: D870P

However, looking to the right side of that label, we should be able to tell the difference. Mine says Ver. 1.0 Actually that part is a small sticker- underneath was some other number and a 0 is still visible, so if you count it, too, it says Ver. 1.00.

I haven't installed SiSandra or any of the other software, but if I go into the Device Manager, my camera says USB PC Camera 301P. If I ever do install one of those, I'll try to remember to edit this post and put in what it tells me I have for a camera since mine's a 1st Generation unit.

Also look at the serial number . The new label is on top of the old one. The old label still shows Nx.....

Ooops .. I forgot:

original 405/270 3274
modified 460/290 3613

note: setings are in default.

Memory Write Error - Reported by Internet Explorer

A couple of hours ago, I received a script error followed by a memory error in IE. I am running the extended memtest86. I upgrades to the new version 3.1a this morning after receiving the error.

Hope that this is just an application error. So far memtest86 has not reported any errors. It has just completed Pass #1 (38+ Minutes for the first 11 Passes). It is now on pass 12 and I'm not sure what that is or how long it takes. WIll keep you posted.

OK, this Pass #12 is a new one. You might want to only do this if you intend to go to bed for an extended period of time. It writes to memory, waits 90 minutes, verifies that nothing changed, and then does this a few more times.

I have restarted the tests w/o this feature.

Tv tuner

Time shift is not useless!

You must adjust the sound with the ''recording'' slider in audio options. The remote control adjust live audio volume only.

Resolution is 320x240 and 30fps, wich i think is close to broadcast tv. Yes you do lose a little quality but it's great to be able to pause live tv and then skip the commercials.

If you look at time shift options there is 3 quality settings : good, better and best. Better and best are blanked off for me and i can only use the ''good'' setting. Below is a CPU speed wich is supposed to be the recommended for the selected quality. It says 2800Mhz on my machine, and i only have a 2.8Ghz CPU (no way i was going to pay Eurocom's 1$/Mhz upgrade price) so maybe this is why i am stuck with the lower setting.

Can you check your time shift options and tell me what you have?

...a memory error in IE.

Oooh, G, you're using IE. No wonder you're getting errors Not sure if you've checked it out before or not, but you might want to give Firefox a swing (mozilla.org). The only time I use IE now is for Windows Update. I like Firefox much better and tabbed browsing is absolutely the best (altho' there are programs that you can DL that will give you that functionality in IE).

No memory errors encounterd with a five pass test. Maybe it's a fluke??
I hope so....

I'll take another look at it. Like I initially said, I was just "putzing" around with it.

FT,

I have 2 Desktops and 2 Laptops, counting this one and have not had any memory errors with IE. I did have a few random memory errors with one of the Desktops; however, that turned out to be a BIOS problem when using 1GB of ECC memory with the Slot 1 Piii. The memory speed was just a tad to slow for the bus. Adjusted that any everything was A-OK. I then flashed an updated copy of the BIOS, reinstated the settings and alls well.

I hope it had something to do with the "script" error that was ignored just prior to the error being reported. I did get SiSandra to give me a similiar error when I tried to do tests that required modules that were not available to the shareware/evaluation version of the software. This was consistant and was reproduced a couple of times -- different memory addresses though.

OK, Someone wanted Battery Benchmarks with Fans "Full On" - Here it is!

I accomplished the same test that I did earlier with three exceptions. 1). Different movie, 2). Fans switched to on "full on" after POST, and 3). Stopped at 5% remaining rather than let the machine power down on it's own. This was the first time that I watched the movie and decided that it was OK (Paycheck).

This time I got 61 minutes on battery. The CPU was down-throttled to 2.73Ghz and the temperature was a waivering between 35/37C - mostly at 36C as reported by MobMeter with samplings done ever .5 seconds. What was a bit interesting is that the temperature raised to 38C when there was approximately 10% of remaining battery power. Room temperature was between 78/80F during this test.

Then when I plugged the AC adapter back in, the temp immediatedly went to 38C and stayed there (pretty much) for the remainder of the movie. I put on the A/C and the room temperature dropped to about 76F.

The Volume and LCD brightness were set at the maximum throughout the test.

Had the same "shut down" of the Wifi that I has last time; however, didn't observe this for the camera this time around.

I still stand by my original statement. -- USELESS -- There are three settings; however, only one is enabled and that is the 320*240 resolution. This is not TV Quality -- that is 720 x 480. I may look at their documentation if I can find something larger than the "insert" that was included with the remote.

Games - Review

I sorry to say that despite all my efforts to capture and install a ton of games, my son simply refuses to try them out and let us know what the results are. As such, I have uninstalled all games except for Far Cry and UT2004.

Someone else will have to review the games as I can not do them justice.

I have to clear up resolutions from various video formats for Go-Omaha:

HDTV1080 is 1920x1080

HDTV720 is 1280x720

DVD encoded in 16:9 format are 720x480

DVD in 4:3 is 720x360

Laserdiscs in 4:3 is 560x360

Broadcast (TV) is 460x360

VHS is 300x360 (weird resolution because of the non square pixels)

And CD-I is 320x180 with really bad compression.

So your time delay video recorder is about the same as VHS quality, which is slightly less than broadcast quality.


As you can also see... there is no comparison.... HDTV blows away everything else. In fact it is higher resolution than most movies in theaters. Oh how I wish HDTV DVDs would come out!!!!

Shank,

Thanks for the info. I guess the 525 for NTSC (circa 1953) is a bit different than we both have observed.

Anyway, the time delay is NOT about the same as VHS quality or it would like a VHS that is attached to the tuner. It simply is not.... it is very bad...blotchy, blurry, and the colors run iton each other.

I watch the TV on the screen from the "live source" and it looks very clear and clean, then hit the "time delay" and everything gets real muddy and blurry and the colors tend to bleed like crazy. Additionally, the sound is superamplified and overdrived - distorted.

If I record the same signal - none of this "bad behavior" is evident. A TiVo replacement, this thing is not.... simply useless .... unless I take off my glasses --- then it all looks blurry.

All things considered, mayber your system is better than mine. Mine simply stks.

I could be wrong, but ...
DVD all aspect ratios (NTSC) is 720 x 480 @ 4:2:0
4:3 H rez = 540 lines max (720 x 3/4) - skinny pixels
16:9 H rez = 405 lines max (720 x 9/16) - fat pixels
16:9 DVD with 4:3 extraction has H rez of 405 lines, or 540 x 480.

The horiz rezes are theoretical, LP filters reduce this around 10%.

Bdcst TV = ~420 x 480 (based on 4 Mhz BW @ 80 lines/Mhz= 320 x 4/3). Bdcst TV is analog so there isn't a direct conversion. Most consumer tuners are not too flat in freq response either, so the horiz detail is further reduced.

VHS= 240 lines (3 Mhz) x 4/3 = 320 x 480. Color H rez is very low (.3 Mhz) due to hetrodyne color under system. High lum freqs are quite noisy too.

Vertical resolution is not affected by bandwidth limitations- it's directly related to the number of scan lines. The .7 Kell factor could be considered which effectively lowers vertical resolution, but this is true for all scanned images. Interlace lowers that even more.

Analog has horizontal detail loss from HF rolloff. Mpeg has losses in both H & V detail from the input filtering & the DCT quantizing matrix, so smaller detail amplitudes are reduced more than larger ones.

Beyond that boring stuff , I was wondering if anyone had tried the Windows Media 9 High Definition demos on the 8790 - they should look stunning on it. They can be found at http://www.wmvhd.com

My 8887 can show the 720p without any problems but the 1080p skips. I also installed the Omega Drivers with Fast Writes Disabled so that could be the problem. I wouldn't need the fast writes for anything else.

High Defination View Test in Media Player 9

I ran both of the 1st video without any problems. I am going to try one of the action clips and see if that is still good.

One quick observation: Temp went up to 61C when viewing the 1080.

I ran both the 720p and 1080p versions of the Terminator 2 - Judgement day trailers. Both played without a hitch and were crystal clear.

Temps measured at just less than 2 mins were 59C for the 720p and 61C for the 1080p viewing. I had the fans at their normal settings.

When I redid the test with the Max Fans enabled the temps dropped to 43/44C for the 720p and 44/45C for the 1080p.

Now that the tests are over, the temp is a very constant 37C.

Room temp for this entire period was 78F.

Headphones - Click - Click - Click

Actually it is not a click; but rather, a very high pitched short burst tone. I have this on the left headphone. I disabled all input and output sound devices and volume and the condition persisted. Looked down at the keyboard and noticed that on the longer "bursts", that the HDD drive was blinking at a rate corresponding to the errant tones. I launched diskkeeper and started a defrag. Yep - that's the cause. Now to figure out if it is the actual drive, the controller, or just an unshielded/mispositioned cable that is picking up the noise. It is really loud; however, it is annoying. It only happens on the left channel, the right channel is as silent as can be.

I don't doubt you Go-Omaha, it sounds really bad.

The resolution in pixels should be kinda close to VHS based on resolution alone... and since you say it gets noticably worse, it is probably due to compression. Is there any way to adjust the amount of compression? I do not own the TV tuner, so I don't know...

Actually you are wrong on almost all resolutions ;)

Hey Each Hit,

Not to be a stickler, but this is my area of work, so I know a lot about it. The resolutions I quoted above are the correct ones... there are lots of places online you can research this... here is one:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Ld/ResolutionComparison/


And yes I have played back the HD WM9 stuff on my 8790 and it does look stunning! THe 8790 has no problem with the 1080 stuff, doesn't even make it sweat. I have a HD Sony HS20 projector that I hook my 8790 up to and even with the high compression of the WM9 stuff compared to actual HD signals, it is STUNNING! My home theater looks better than the movie theater with WM9 material. Coral Reef Adventure and Terminator 2 extreme edition are both DVDs you can buy that have HD in WM9 format that you can watch. You should see T2 on a 16 foot by 9 foot screen in HD WM9 format!! Wow! Too bad the sound from the 8790 is terrible even with digital out. No 5.1 surround out only two channel, and no pass through of digital signal... it is sampled sent through the volume control and THEN output. Sounds terrible. I will soon get a USB Audigy sound card... I hope that improves things when playing back HD stuff... but I am not sure if the Audigy supports AC3 5.1 surround. Anyone know? I know it supports 5.1 Dolby Digital, and not DTS... but WM9 HD material uses AC3 5.1 which hardly any sound cards support.