I've noticed a few issues with allowing the video inset with DVDs.
1) If you want to press Menu [Home] to skip to the main menu while a disc is still showing its pre-menu crapola (FBI warnings, trailers, etc), then you can't, because it just goes to the video inset instead.
2) You can actually start a second (or 3rd, 4th, etc) copy of a DVD running by choosing another file with the video inset active. The previous DVD doesn't stop!
3) With a ripped DVD (selected from deep within the Video library), if you're in a menu with no sound, and you press Menu, then you may return to a view with no video inset that makes you think playback has stopped. (This is actually how I discovered 2)).
I think the easiest solution is probably just to disable video inset functionality when playing a DVD?
I'm not sure where to start with trying to resolve my picture quality issues here.
TV3 is almost perfect, but TV One, TV2 are Prime are all unwatchable.
I've taken recordings off the media center and tried playign them on other machines, and also tried playback through VLC and Cyberlink directly.
Regardless of where/how I play the recording, the picture quality is rubbish and the audio is choppy which leads me to suspect my HDD, so I switched the recordings to a different physical disk. This didn't make any difference.
I have tried replacing my tuner card (HVR-2200), and that didn't help either.
The Freeview STB gives a good picture, so I think the signal is ok. It's also a brand new aerial, professionally installed.
What can I do to try and resolve my picture quality issues? Hardware:
AM2-5200+
nVdia 9500GT
Hauppage HVR-2200
Since installing 2.1.5, I thought the navigation buttons on my Harmony remote had gone bad, so I went back to my trusty HP MCE remote and have confirmed the problem is in 2.1.5 (I upgraded from 2.0.3).
Basically, navigating up and down seems fine, but it's often taking several clicks to move right one TV show at a time. Left is taking a few more clicks than it used to, but moving right is a real drag. If I go back to 2.0.3 the problem goes away.
So I've been experimenting a little with NPVR. Thanks to Martin I can now see the recordings made by SageTV in NPVR but they will not play. I've tried many combinations of MPG decoder and renderer but all I get is a black screen with no video or audio. I'm running NPVR on WindowsXP.
I'm still using 1.4.7 and experimenting with 2.1.x for an upgrade, so I've written a perl script that I'm using in Postprocessing or whenever something goes wrong and I need to manually update the recording name and DB. You'll obviously need perl on your system and run it with:
perl renamehelper.pl <args>
Features:
* rename a recording using replacement vars similar to WizRenameRecording and works for NPVR (WizRenameRecording doesn't).
* allows moving files to a different drive or network disk (which is one of the main reasons I wrote it).
* updates the metadata.xml with the correct new path for the renamed file.
* uses metadata.xml, if present and the file isn't found in the DB. There's an import feature for files missing from the DB, it will call the command line for *pvr to do the import.
*goes online to TVRage.com and gets some extra data to allow renaming files with the season and episode number (you'll need to create a sqlite DB using the attached sql table structure).
Since this is still somewhat of a work in progress, I STRONGLY suggest you first experiment with it on your dev machine (or copy the DB to another folder and use the DB option) before using it on your actual TV collection!
EDIT: it's been 2 months since the script has been running without intervention and renaming recordings from tvrage so i'd say it's quite stable.
LiveTV is crashing on me every time I start it. It usually goes for a few seconds but sometimes up to a few minutes before it dies with a Windows error "NextPVR has stopped working".
I've scheduled and recorded a half hour program that played back in it's entirety without a problem. If I am able to pause LiveTV for a few minutes before it crashes, it will continue to play back indefinitely once I unpause it. It appears that it is only unpaused LiveTV that will not work.
I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and NextPVR 2.15. My hardware is a Gigabyte 880GA-UD3H motherboard/AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana 3.2GHz triple-core processor with onboard ATI HD4250 video and a Hauppauge Colossus capture card. I have all the latest drivers. The TV is a 46" Samsung UN46D6000SF 1080p 120Hz LED LCD using an HDMI input.
Apart from making sure I have the latest drivers for everything (video, Colossus, audio, LAN), here is what I've tried:
- I've tried multiple combinations of decoders. I've used the Microsoft video decoder and the one that installs with WinTV (currently using Microsoft's). I've tried the SAF6 decoders but am currently using the ArcSoft audio decoders.
- I've tried each of the video renderer options.
- The video is onboard and shares the system memory. It was set to "auto" in the BIOS so I changed it to a static 512Mb (which was the max allowed option).
- I've excluded the NextPVR directories (for LiveTVBuffer, etc...) from my anti-virus software (Microsoft Security Essentials).
The Windows event logs give me nothing of value apart from saying that there was an app crash for NextPVR. I cleared my NextPVR "logs" folder and crashed LiveTV to generate the attached logs. I'm looking for a solution or next step to try in debugging this problem. I've been at it for over 2 weeks and I've exhausted my ideas. Thank you.
First just to point out I'm still running 2.1.4 as I haven't found time to update yet.
I looked at the npvr status about an hour ago (about 23:50) and spotted that my first Nova-T was showing as recording 'Coast' and 'Black Books' although Coast should have finished at 22:00. I checked the nrecord.log and it indicated it had stopped recording Coast at the right time. I then checked the Coast recording folder and saw that the .ts file wasn't growing BUT it was ~5.5GB (previous 1 hour episodes of Coast in the same folder are ~2GB).
I opened the file with a packet analyser and looked at the PID list (see attached). It seems that the file not only contains a recording for Coast on BBC TWO (AV PIDs 610-612) but whatever was also being broadcast on BBC Red Button (AV PIDs 650-652).
There were various recordings going on last night between 19:30 and 00:10 on various channels but none that had been scheduled for 'BBC Red Button' - in fact I don't even have that channel enabled for any capture source.
Not sure if this is a known problem which has been seen/fixed before but I thought I'd mention it. Log also attached.
I think most of this we have discussed over the past couple of weeks, just sort of adding a reminder so you can add them (or not) to your internal road map.
Delete Recordings with Record Button (ctrl-K) - was a PXRx2 feature I originally asked for
Import recordings via filename.xml file from command line
Windowed start command line option - was in pvrx2 - dunno how widespread it's use was.
Show unwatched recordings panel in the recordings plugin
So YMMV as to which of these you want to add, I'm hoping at least the command line import.
