I have been using SageTV for years on and off. I recently moved into a new house and had grand ideas of having the whole place SageTV wired (or wireless as it were).
Anyhew - due to the Google buyout, this is no longer an option.
I looked at GBPVR ages ago, but back then it wasn't quite so polished. Downloaded the other day, and I have to say that I am very impressed with what is going on here now.
So newbie questions (sorry for being lazy):
1. Can I receive HD content using my PCTV 290e DVB-T2? (if not, is this on the cards?)
2. What are the extender options? (dream would be AppleTV 2, I have a couple of MVP's but they are slooooow and non HD)
3. Is there any kind of client for osx (use my mac mini at present)
4. Are channel logos an option?
I genuinely hope that this all fits the bill, as so far I am liking nPVR, a lot.
So, I got my channels scanning problem fixed (thanks Sub!) and figured out the network shares with some help from Martin.
I'm using several WDHDTV boxes (wireless) on the other TVs for remote viewing and the WDHDTV works well with wireless, but it is picky about file types. I'm not sure if it's the file types, or the wireless speed, but I've found that it handles MP4 without complaint. Anyhow, my solution is to convert the .TS to MP4 with ffmpeg and then copy the new file to the network share which is visible to all the WDHDTV boxes. I'm using a ffmpeg routine:
These files get played on just some small, run of the mill, TVs which are 704x384 so I've down converted and reduced the audio a bit to make the file smaller. Nothing really fancy, but it seems to work.
The problem is the MP4 files occasionally tile. The .TS files play fine in NPVR and it's not every converted file, just some. This happens even when played back on the same machine as NPVR is installed so it's not network/wireless related. while testing the conversion in a local DOS window, I've noticed I'm getting a number of errors from ffmpeg.
I've attached a copy of about 1000 lines of the DOS window while running ffmpeg. The errors are mostly these types:
[mpeg2video @ 020DBA20] invalid cbp at 0 35
[mpeg2video @ 020DBA20] mb incr damaged
[mpeg2video @ 020DBA20] ac-tex damaged at 0 42
[mpeg2video @ 020DBA20] slice mismatch
[mpeg2video @ 020DBA20] concealing 7560 DC, 7560 AC, 7560 MV errors
[mpeg2video @ 020DBA20] 00 motion_type at 20 9
[mpeg2video @ 020DBA20] invalid mb type in B Frame at 4 28
I've checked the signal quality with the HDHR utility and the signal looks good (at least to me)
The average for my channels are:
Signal Strength - 87% to 94%
Signal Quality - 100%
Symbol Quality - 100%
I know about nothing about file conversion, so I'm not sure if this is normal, or if there's something I can do to fix the tiling? It's not bad, at most 2-3 times in a 1 hour show and then only for a second or two. It's just enough to irritate the better half, especially when she watching her show and misses that important word or 2 in the dialog. And we all know, if she ain't happy, nobodies happy!
I wonder if there's a way to remap that 'info' button on my generic MCE remote correctly in KeyMappings.xml.
Would appreciate if anyone has this same remote and/or knows the way to map it right... .
'One-button cancel recording'
Another question is I wonder if there's a way to do a one-button 'Cancel-recording on current channel' from the remote. Would be a handy feature so I don't have to go into the recording menu and select 'cancel'... .
Nothing too exciting, nor essential here, but here's a couple of ideas that might enhance Live TV functionality:
1) When you exit Live TV, NPVR just does it; this can be annoying if it happens by mistake (cat walking on the remote control, baby trying to eat it, etc) and you were 20 minutes behind actual live TV because of pausing or rewinding. How about an option to "Confirm before exiting Live TV". Or take it one further and "Confirm before exiting Live TV when at least [xx] minutes behind reality" (or words to that effect).
2) When browsing the Now/Next details with Up/Down (very handy btw), it would be nice to be able to hit Info/Ctrl+B and pop up the description of what you're looking at. Perhaps one press for now's details, a second for next's, and a third (or escape) to close and return to the previous now/next summary.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Pay-TV-ind...2.html?x=0
It's not surprising when money is tight and you have to eat and pay the rent that people would ditch pay tv. Especially with all the choices on the internet.
My company (Cox) even offered me $100 and will hold the price for 2 years if I stay with them. I do plan on it unless the bottom falls out.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The weak economy is hitting Americans where they spend a lot of their free time: at the TV set.
They're canceling or forgoing cable and satellite TV subscriptions in record numbers, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of the companies' quarterly earnings reports.
The U.S. subscription-TV industry first showed a small net loss of subscribers a year ago. This year, that trickle has turned into a stream. The chief cause appears to be persistently high unemployment and a housing market that has many people living with their parents, reducing the need for a separate cable bill.
But it's also possible that people are canceling cable, or never signing up in the first place, because they're watching cheap Internet video. Such a threat has been hanging over the industry. If that's the case, viewers can expect more restrictions on online video, as TV companies and Hollywood studios try to make sure that they get paid for what they produce.
In a tally by the AP, eight of the nine largest subscription-TV providers in the U.S. lost 195,700 subscribers in the April-to-June quarter.
That's the first quarterly loss for the group, which serves about 70 percent of households. The loss amounts to 0.2 percent of their 83.2 million video subscribers.
The group includes four of the five biggest cable companies, which have been losing subscribers for years. It also includes phone companies Verizon Communications Inc. and AT&T Inc. and satellite broadcasters DirecTV Group Inc. and Dish Network Corp. These four have been poaching customers from cable, making up for cable-company losses -- until now.
The phone companies kept adding subscribers in the second quarter, but Dish lost 135,000. DirecTV gained a small number, so combined, the U.S. satellite broadcasters lost subscribers in the quarter -- a first for the industry.
The AP's tally excludes Cox Communications, the third-largest cable company, and a bevy of smaller cable companies. Cox is privately held and does not disclose subscriber numbers.
Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett estimates that the subscription-TV industry, including the untallied cable companies, lost 380,000 subscribers in the quarter. That's about one out of every 300 U.S. households, and more than twice the losses in the second quarter of last year. Ian Olgeirson at SNL Kagan puts the number even higher, at 425,000 to 450,000 lost subscribers.
The second quarter is always the year's worst for cable and satellite companies, as students cancel service at the end of the spring semester. Last year, growth came back in the fourth quarter. But looking back over the past 12 months, the industry is still down, by Moffett's estimate. That's also a first.
The subscription-TV industry is no longer buoyed by its first flush of growth, so the people who cancel because they're unemployed are outweighing the very small number of newcomers who've never had cable or satellite before. Dish CEO Joe Clayton told analysts on a conference call Tuesday that the industry is "increasingly saturated."
But like other industry executives, Clayton sees renewed growth around the corner. Though his company saw the biggest increase in subscriber flight compared with a year ago, he blamed much of that on a strategic pullback in advertising, which will be reversed before the end of the year.
Other executives gave few indications that the industry has hit a wall. For most of the big companies, the slowdown is slight, hardly noticeable except when looking across all of them. Nor do they believe Internet video is what's causing people to leave.
Glenn Britt, the CEO of Time Warner Cable Inc. said the effect of Internet video on the number of cable subscribers is "very, very modest;" in fact, so small that it's hard to measure.
SNL Kagan's Olgeirson said the people canceling subscriptions behind, or never signing up, are an elusive group, difficult to count. Yet he believes the trend is real, and he calls it the "elephant in the room" for the industry.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that young, educated people who aren't interested in live programs such as sports are finding it easier to go without cable. Video-streaming sites like Netflix.com and Hulu.com are helping, as they run many popular TV shows for free, sometimes the day after they air on television.
In June, The Nielsen Co. said it found that Americans who watch the most video online tend to watch less TV. The ratings agency said it started noticing last fall that a segment of consumers were starting to make a trade-off between online video and regular TV. The activity was more pronounced among people ages 18-34.
Olgeirson expects programmers to keep tightening access to shows and movies online. A few years ago, Olgeirson said, "they threw open the doors," figuring they'd make money from ads accompanying online video besides traditional sources such as the fees they charge cable companies to carry their channels. But if looks as if online video might endanger revenue from cable, which is still far larger, they'll pull back.
"Are they really going to jeopardize that? The answer is no," Olgeirson said.
Already, News Corp.'s Fox broadcasting company is delaying reruns on Hulu by a week unless the viewer pays a $8-a-month subscription for Hulu Plus or subscribes to Dish's satellite TV service. Other subscription-TV providers may join in the future. TV producers and distributors want to discourage people from dropping their subscriptions.
Moffett believes it's hard to separate the effect of the economy from that of Internet video. Subscription-TV providers keep raising rates because content providers such as Hollywood studios and sports leagues demand ever higher prices. That's causing a collision with the economic realities of American households.
"Rising prices for pay TV, coupled with growing availability of lower cost alternatives, add to a toxic mix at a time when disposable income isn't growing," Moffett said.
Im a long time GBPVR user. A recent TV upgrade kicked off a system-wide upgrade of everything including an upgrade to NPVR. After endless tinkering over several nights I finally have everything working just how I want. Thanks to Sub and many other plugin authors.
However, my only problem is that the EPG will only ever show the current days programming. And it can be patchy. If I start to look forward through the day all the program lineups eventually just say "no show details". At best I get a few hours ahead and some channels only show very limited programing. Skipping to the next day just shows a whole screen of "no show details" on all channels. Updating the EPG manually seems to be successful but its hard to tell really. I am unsure if the EPG just wont update more than a day or so ahead or if NPVR will only show a day or so ahead from its DB.
One thing I will point out is that my signal gets most channels very strong with no interruptions (ch1, ch2, ch3, four, etc in NZ) but some channels are quite weak and don't always get a reasonable picture (Prime, Maori and other higher channels - NZ). Would this effect EPG updates in this way?
Other than that, not sure where to start.
machine is good spec, dual core, 2 GB ram.
Windows 7
nPVR 2.1.5
2x Hauppauge HVR-3000's (running terrestrial)
If a tuner is disabled in setup, it would be nice (for me anyway) for any channels that only available on that tuner to be hidden or not displayed somehow in the EPG.
Also any season/pending recordings that would only use a disabled tuner be flagged as conflict or something.
My current request is due to my DVB-S tuner being "out on loan" and it was my only source of DVB-S HD material. All other DVB-S channels are available via a STB, but not the HD variants - these currently just fail to record and are still being queued as seasons.
Attached are three skin files that I use to flick between different views in a list. They're in separate files because ultimately my plugin (Videos+) will have multiple views per list type (eg, there may be several views that end up using the HORIZONTAL_ICON mode).
At the moment, the skin is pretty much a cut and paste from Hairy/sub's default. Here's what I currently can't get my head around:
The list view (view-0.xml) defines a section for its metadata - ListSelectionMetaData - which is all the stuff (titles, posters, description, etc) that goes on the right hand side. It also has a different section - ListPosition - for the position bar along the bottom.
But the other two views just have CoversSelectionMetaData and IconSelectionMetaData that only really define the position bar.
My problem is that I want to expand them to include more metadata in their views, but also keep the position bar. Should the UiList code go looking for a "CoversPosition" if I define that (because it doesn't appear to). I'm so bad with skins that I couldn't possible extend the current CoversSelectionMetaData bit to fill the screen, but still leave the position bar part of it in the same place.
