Hello Martin and All,

OK here I am, across my trek from the NMT to SageTV to NPVR Forums. Thanks to support from others, especially Martin….I am almost there. I wanted to explain what my environment looks like, and what would like to “fix” – and hopefully you good folks can tell me if mvpcm2 is going to work for my setup, or what I need to change, if anything:

1) I have a single little server, with relatively small fast SATA drives for core storage. This local storage supports WinXP/Pro OS, and runs numerous services for the house (file/print/fax), including Audio(squeezeboxserver), Video (NPVR) via HDHomeRun (wired connection) for local TV – and some others too.
2) When large video files come into NPVR, I do not view them from the NPVR video files directory. I would run out of space if I did. Instead, every night(very late when nobody watching/accessing USB storage) I run Robocopy and move all the Video files to the USB storage, call it drive X. This drive is large and perfectly fast for streaming video, and sleeps when not in use. This drive wouldn’t be fast enough to be the native NPVR Video directory – as multiple TV/PCHs will access it for reading only through the day. The PCHs are in use in my house all the time, and take the place of any cable or set-top boxes.
3) Drive X is NFS shared(over UDP) to the PCHs over Wifi-N via some Ethernet bridges. I use Microsoft Services for Unix to provide the NFS server function on the Win XP server. I have tried native SMB/CIFS – but the Samba NMTs use is not as efficient over wireless, and I have trouble streaming MPEG2 HD streams otherwise. NFS works well for me over Wifi, and is a good reason why PCHs work well in my house (versus most others that don’t support NFS)
4) All Videos from various sources appear in different NFS shares on the PCHs. All Videos from the NPVR source are filed away in a directory called PVR which is also NFS shared.
5) PCHs have no local disk added.
6) NPVR never has any videos or files to manage, as they all get moved to the USB connected NFS shared storage. As far as NPVR is concerned, there are usually 0 available files for viewing at the end of each day.
7) PCH/TV viewer watches shows…then deletes them from the remote, which delete them from the NFS share….
8) For TV sources, the EWA interface works well enough …and we use that from PCs or whatever to schedule recordings.
9) This all works fabulously so far. But one problem…
10) The problem is about 50% of the Tuner/NPVR sourced content has difficulty playing on the NMT. I can manually fix them so they play by remuxing them using ffmpeg (thanks again Martin). But this is a manual process….unless I somehow automate it with other batch files or scripts with NPVR. My understanding is that mvpcm2 improves the native stream-handling capabilities of the PCH NMTs, so I wouldn’t need to worry about remuxing them.
11) Based on my limited understanding, mvpcm2 is running on the PCH (A110), and provides a user interface into NPVR and streams video over HTTP (not NFS). If this is true, can mvpcm2 look at this separate drive X(normally NFS shared), and stream from there, even though NPVR doesn’t know about these files or location? Or will this not work because I move the files away from NPVR each night?
12) Does mvpcm2 change the normal function of the A110, where no longer see the NFS shares that have the bulk of my video content, or does it augment the features and just provide another Web Services selection under Sources on the PCH interface? I have been looking for exactly what it changes in the NMT interface and cannot find that too easily in the threads
13) Being diskless, on the PCHs……does this present challenges or sacrifices for full mvpcm2 function?
14) At the end of the day…. I only want to fix the remuxing issue, and this is main reason I feel compelled to try mvpcm2. Is this a good reason?
15) If I do install, In the Installation instructions (Dummies), the link that shows the installation GUI has options for installing the software: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...post337156 Since I already have NPVR installed, is all I need the first two checked boxes as shown in the link? Or do I also need to install Skins/Plugins and/or NMT Setup?

Based on the description of how things are setup, what, if anything, do I need to change to use mvpcm2, or should I just stop now and just remux when I need to?

Thanks very much!

Jim

I have seen this a couple of times. I checked an in process recording (about 20 minutes into an hour recording) and it was listed as failed. I then checked the recording directory and it was actually recording. Then today I checked it and it only recorded about 20 minutes. That means it died sometime around when I checked on it. The logs say it never started. The show was the Amazing race on 3/20. The logs also shows that the next show failed, but it actually recorded fine.


[ATTACHMENT NOT FOUND]

I have 2 apparently identical Acer R3610's with Win 7 and NPVR clients. Both play full HD quite happily from a recorded .ts from the server. However, If I try to play back an HD quality .mov file from my video folder, one of them plays it flawlesly, but the other stutters. Here is the log section for the good one

Good deal on a nice card that works well in HTPCs. 1GB of DDR3, HDMI out and low-profile compatible. I love the one I have.

http://www.newegg.com/special/shellshock...ShockerEB3

A subtly annoying thing.... all the status of tuner shows HDHomeRun "Sleeping". When infact a recording is in progress using this tuner. The status doesn't change, ever, to my knowledge.

Is this because HDHR isn't officially supporting NPVR as a registered app? Or is this an issue on the NPVR side? It would be nice to see the status correctly reflect the state of the tuner.

Thank you for helping/confirming.

Jim

I'm making the switch to npvr and I can't get a screen to show the video while mapping my qam channels. What do i do to get the screen it was always there when you scanned in gbpvr.

Not sure if this has been reported yet, but in npvr 2.0.3, it appears that the live TV timing.info files are not being deleted. I'm starting to get quite the collection in my live tv folder.

I normal watch 4x3 pillar box, but I can see the benefits of using the panoramic view that sblueeye talked about here http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...post403763 because I definitely don't like seeing fat people.

I have created this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6z0mPefueE to show how the effect works. What you see will be short 15 second segments with

1. Pillar boxed
2. Full screen stretched
3-5 Various levels of wide angle.

You might want to zoom full screen and step back to get the effect.

I used a tennis game since figured the court would give you some perspective of the fish bowl effect of a non-linear stretch, broadcasts don't look quite this extreme.

The purpose of this thread if it is worth adding to mvpmcx2 as either a default or command line replacement for the normal full screen stretch.

Martin

Now that I got recordings working, I have 2 other problems.

1. During playback of NPVR recorded files (.ts), I have a hang when skipping. Usually for 5 seconds or so the playback hangs and then continues whenever I skip.

2. On a livetv channel change, NPVR hangs and after a while returns to the Menu saying device not available but I can go back to livetv and it is now on the new channel.

Attached logs show the 2 problems. I played a file with 3 skip pushes and then went to livetv changed the channel and after the return to the menu when back to livetv. I then exited the program.

Thanks for you help.

I have been catching up watching some older recorded shows today. (These were recorded with versions of npvr prior to 2.0.3 and the fix for switching channels during the post-padding, if that matters.)

I was using the built-in Recordings screen and noticed after both the last 2 recordings of "The Cape" that the Recordings listing didn't display the watched indicator. However, if I select the recording, it gives me the "Unwatch" option.

Logs are attached.