When I set up a recording to record on any channel, it seems to pick a default channel to try first - in this case, a non HD channel, when the HD tuner is not going to be busy at the time. How would I tell NPVR to prefer a certain channel or lineup over another when using the "Any channel" option?

I'm having a problem with my Hauppauge HVR 1600 that I'd like help for a work around. Since I see the same behavior with both NextPVR and WinTV, I'm sure that I'm looking at a hardware/firmware problem with the card. But I believe that a software workaround exists.

When a scheduled recording on the analog interface ends, the computer freezes for about 7 seconds. All processes (including taskmanager and the clock gizmo) halt for that time, and then pick up again. The clock skips ahead 7 seconds when it unfreezes. This is a nuisance if I am recording something from my other card, since I now have a 7 second gap in my program. I'd guess that the card tries to do something involving bus-mastering, and gets the PCI bus into an error state for this period of time.

However, there is a ray of light. This freeze doesn't occur if the HVR's digital tuner is in use when the analog recording ends. So what I'd like until we can get a firmware fix from Hauppauge is a stub that basically makes sure the digital tuner gets turned on for the short period of time that the analog recording is ending. I'd see it as first checking if the digital tuner is in use. If it isn't I'd start a recording on any available digital channel on the card for the period of time it would take to end the analog recording.

Thanks for an excellent app, sub.

BritAm

Hey there - I got my HD PVR set up in NPVR just fine. Video works great, but I get no sound when making recordings. Here's a log from trying to record two channels for a few minutes.

http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Vse5QBdr

The session times out after a few hours and one can't schedule new recordings and also the config button disappears from the guide page. Deleting the cookies and reentering NEWA guide via a saved bookmark will workaround the issue. All 3 of my nPVR boxes have the issue. On 2 I'm using whatever version NEWA was installed with nPVR v2.4.3 and on the 3rd box nPVR v2.5.5 with the NEWA v1.26 updates. I've tried Firefox 2.0.0.20, 3.6.28, 10.0.2, Opera 11.52, Internet Explorer 8.0.6001.18702 and concluded it's probably not the browser.

I googled it and found info suggesting starting the ASP.NET service and then changing the ASP.NET mode from InProc to StateServer. I tried that and it seemed to help a bit (maybe I imagined it..I don't remember...), but it didn't fully fix the issue so I changed it back. There was also some discussion about needing code to "serialize" the session, which I tried to follow, but somewhat over my head..

I usually only connect to NEWA once a day and I found that as long as I first delete the cookies and then use my bookmark to get to the guide, the issue stays away. Kind of a kluge workaround, but whatever.. not a big deal but thought I'd post and see if anyone else has seen the issue.

This may be related to the other recording cut short threads here.

Given the following scenario:
3 tuners installed,
2 programs ending the same time,
1 program starting the same time that the other 2 are ending,
pre and postpads being used,
The programs are scheduled as one time recordings.

the result:
One of the earlier programs will be cut short by several minutes, and the cut short recording will end about 5 seconds before the minute mark. The NTFS last modified times on all files will be correct (having included the postpad), implying that the files were all closed at the correct time, and that one tuner stopped sending data several minutes too soon.

I haven't determined if the pre and postpad times affect the result. I use a prepad of 3 minutes and a postpad of 8 minutes. The cut short recordings are about 11 minutes short.

I have 3 nPVR boxes. Here are some notes I've compiled:

nPVR Box 1 (nwlp), Lenovo Thinkpad T61:
XP Pro 32bit, Core2Duo 2.0Ghz, 2GB RAM, 500GB SATA2 NCQ working, nPVR 2.4.3,

Box 1, tuner experiment A (this is the setup I'm currently running):
(2) Hauppauge HVR-950Q USB
notes: no problems

Box 1, tuner experiment B:
(3) Hauppauge HVR-950Q USB (via a D-Link DUB-H7 powered USB hub)
notes: recording cut short issue exists

Box 1, tuner experiment C:
(2) Hauppauge HVR-950Q USB
(1) Silicondust HDHomeRun (dual tuner)(via gig-e switch or dedicated USB LAN adapter)
notes: recording cut short issue exists, HDHomerun has ~50 bad frames per hour dedicated LAN or not and I tried it on 2 other machines too and with their command line recorder... probably the use of UDP at fault
-----

nPVR Box 2 (bsod), Sony VAIO PCV-7752:
XP Home 32bit, P4 2GHz, 512MB RAM, 200GB IDE, 300GB IDE recording drive, nPVR 2.4.3,
amazingly this ancient box is sufficient to record 3 streams, I named it BSOD because when I rebuilt it, all it would do was BSOD... hehe.. finally determined the RAM bus drivers were weak and it would only run stable with 1 stick..

Box 2, tuner experiment A:
(2) Hauppauge HVR-1150 PCI
notes: no problems

Box 2, tuner experiment B:
(2) Hauppauge HVR-1150
(1) Dvico Fusion5 HDTV PCI
notes: recording cut short issue exists, Fusion5 has ~50 bad frames per hour, also causes BSODs every few days (this is nothing new.. the other boxes this card has been in since 2006 have suffered BSODs caused by the Fusion5)

Box 2, tuner experiment C:
(2) Hauppauge HVR-1150 PCI
(1) Sabrent TV-PCIDG PCI
notes: recording cut short issue exists, Sabrent stream quality is as good as the Hauppauges and is half the price (wish I'd known that a few months ago...)

Box 2, tuner experiment D (this is the setup I'm currently running, I try to schedule such that it's only using 2 tuners max):
(3) Hauppauge HVR-1150 PCI
notes: recording cut short issue exists
-----

nPVR Box 3 (hdtv), HP dc7800pC8:
XP Pro 32bit, Core2Duo 2.33Ghz, 2GB RAM, 80GB SATA1, 500GB SATA2 with NCQ working recording drive, nPVR 2.5.5

Box 3, tuner experiment A (this is the setup I'm currently running):
(3) Hauppauge HVR-1150 PCI
notes: recording cut short issue exists, I have (3) HVR-1250 and (2) HVR-950Q I'd like to install for 8 tuners total after the cut short issue is resolved, I built this box this month and it's eventually going to be my main recording box but for now it's to help resolve this issue
-----

I'm receiving ATSC via a 15 ft Channel Master antenna (yeah a little overkill, but I used to live 70 miles away, plus I like the outdoor eye candy of a big antenna..hehe..). No amp as I'm only 11 miles from the TX farm. RG6 coax, Antronix splitters, PPC compression connectors.

The OS installs are all new and the boxes are only used for nPVR. I don't run antivirus on them. They are headless and I only use them to record, controlling them via NEWA from my main machine. I use UltraVNC if I need to get to the desktops. I image with Ghost 2003 after any significant changes and use it to revert to previously known good states if anything bizarre happens (and when removing tuners so no remnants of previous tuners remain). The XP installs have all Windows updates (including DirectX) and the only codec installed is FFDSHOW. I use Schedules Direct for program info.

I use a post processing app written with Delphi 4 to generate a batch file that renames via the file's alt. data stream (with a lookup table for the virtual chan num) and moves the file to my file server. I usually run the batch file via the Windows Task Scheduler only when nothing is recording (to reduce the chance of bad frames).

The only thing I haven't ruled out is the Hauppauge drivers. In all my experiments, there has always been at least 2 Hauppauge tuners present. I do have 2 more of the Sabrent cards on the way to experiment with a Hauppauge-less box.

Here are the logs for one of the cut short recordings. These are from Box 3.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]34308[/ATTACH]

Here are 3 programs I recorded, the NTFS last modified times, and the recording lengths (via Videoredo or MPC-HC):

2012-09-03 1600 13.1 WTVT DT Judge Judy.Anime Action Figures Missing.hdtv.ts
NTFS last modified time: 9/3/2012 16:38:01
Recording length: 00:40:57

2012-09-03 1600 3.1 WEDU HD Martha Speaks.Martha Runs the Store.hdtv.ts
NTFS last modified time: 9/3/2012 16:38:01
Recording length: 00:29:55 (this is short by about 11 minutes)

2012-09-03 1630 16.3 CREATE The American Woodshop.Sectional Plantation Table.hdtv.ts
NTFS last modified time: 9/3/2012 17:08:01
Recording length: 00:40:57

I'm thinking the cut short recording ending around the minute mark may be a decent clue as to the cause.
Any ideas?

When a new channel comes from the cable company you have to manually scan for it again in the devices setup. Could you make it so that when the new scan is done only the previous channels you had setup are checked off instead of having everything checked off? I have about 90 channels out of 600 setup, it is rather tedious to get out the channel list and re-check only the 90. This way I could just find the new channel in the scan and it would be the only one that had to be checked.

NextPVR can stream video to XBMC through the built-in NEWA server. The way this is accomplished is by creating files that open the individual channels as streams. The following steps will do this for you. This is done on the computer that hosts NextPVR.

1) Create a folder inside your shared media folder, like where your recorded tv is stored. Name it "Live TV"

2) Create a ".bat" file within the Live TV folder, name it "ChanStrmCreate.bat" and put the following line into the file:

for /l %%n in (1,1,99) do echo http://127.0.0.1:8866/live?channel=%%n >> ch%%n.strm

When executed, this will create 99 stream files for channels 1 through 99, using the NEWA server address 127.0.0.1 through port 8866. This is a simple batch loop the numbers in the parenthesis is the starting number, add 1, stop after 99. so you may need to adjust to your needs, the %%n is the count variable.

3) Execute the "ChanStrmCreate.bat" file.

4) In XBMC go to the Video or TV Shows and "add source". Browse to the location of "Live TV" folder, click "ok" and the streaming channel files are installed and live tv can be watched.

Now I prefer to know what is on using a guide, so I installed an add-on program called TV Guide into XBMC. this allows the use of the XMLTV guide that you use for NextPVR, and will allow you to attach the stream files created earlier to each channel of the guide. This is not a NextPVR addon for XBMC, so it does not have all the bells and whistle controls that NEWA birings to the table. It just opens and closes the live tv streams.

Hope you find this suitable until an actual add-on is created for XBMC.

Hi,

I'm using the Hauppauge HD USB PVR box and it seems to be working quite nicely. However for some reason, I cannot fill the screen when I'm watching a show recorded in SD that is 16x9. I get black bars all the way around. HD is fine, it fills the screen.

Also, I cannot play the mpg files that BeyondTV created. There is audio, but no picture.

I've tried all the codecs in my list, but none of them make a difference. Are there any available codecs out there that work best?

Anyone know a place to see channel number and resp. frequencies per country?

I have migrated from XP to windows 7. Everything works fine except for the channel changer on my set top box
I use redeye2 and it changes channels fine from the command line. NPVR sees the set top box fine and will show whatever is playing on the STB, but cannot change the channel

I have feeling that in some way NPVR is confused by the previous installation on windows XP (I transferred the db and the config files amending as necessary).

Looks like the best way would be to start with a clean slate; but the config details for the changer are in the db3, I understand. How can I start from a clean slate without deleting the db3 file, which would be disaster with 400 gb of programs in the database

Steve Hodge