My upgrade of the media centre to a Pentium D to handle HD, has been a string of problems.

This one is odd.

Here's the sequence of events:

1. Play a recording
   
2. blank screen
   
3. escape back
   
4. play recording again
   
5. black screen, but recording details display
   
6. escape back
   
7. play recording a third time
   
8. works.
   

I'm trying to find a solid solution for watching and recording LiveTV on several TVs, other media (pictures, music etc.) being of secondary importance.

GBPVR sounds really interresting, but even after searching the forum and wiki, I've got a lot of unresolved question. Here's the setup:

MediaPC
The PC I'll be using as media center is a 4GB, Core2 Quad PC running Vista 64-bit.
This PC will handle all media, including the TV signal (2-3 tuners) and will be locked up in the basement (inaccessible).
Ethernet wired hardware extender are needed for each TV set.
GBPVR Question: Does GBPVR work on Vista 64-bit?

Tuners
The signal is cable (DVB-C). Analogue signal is free, but all digital content is subscription based, so I'll need digital tuners with CI, Irdeto CAM modules and a valid subscription card pr. tuner.
So far the only DVB-C tuners featuring CI supporting this seems to be FireDTV and Terratech Cinergy, the latter selling at about half the price of the former.
GBPVR Question 1: Does GBPVR support this setup?
GBPVR Question 2: If so, is FireDTV so much better than the Terratech to validate twice the cost?

Extenders
I'll need support for HD 1080p and surround sound.
I've read a lot about the GBPVR client for the Popcorn Hour media streamer, but I can't figure out if this client is still very alpha.
GBPVR Question: Is the PCH/GBPVR combo ready for general use (rest of the familiy), who will primary use it for LiveTV and TV recording/viewing?

fixes issues with ePSXe and XtraEmulators.

Cheers

Hi All

Having just upgraded my machine (which I only use to serve video to MVP units) I'd like to try out the on-the-fly transcoding GBPVR offers. It seemed to work well on a few avi files I had, but the audio seemed to be noisy and I noticed that the CPU was pegged at 50%; since I have a dual core CPU I presume that means that the ffmpeg process is running only a single thread. So, I was wondering whether the variable

<MVPFFmpegTranscodeCmdLineNTSC>

defines the command line used to transcode on the fly? I see that it is converting to 352x240, which seems a little low. I thought I'd play around with some command line settings to see if I can improve the quality.

Thanks!

How do you change the color of the text in the TV Guide?

Hi I'm about to release a GUI tool to help adjust Zoom and Overscan for GB-PVR (PCs connected to monitor, Wide Screen, CRTs, etc)

I use a couple of test videos that come stock and standard when you have Windows Media Center...

PositioningOS16x9.wmv
PositioningOS4x3.wmv

Question 1: Do these two videos come stock in a Vista Media Center system?

Question 2: How would anybody feel about making these available for download? (for those users without MCE)

THanks

A recording I did as a test (and it played back fine) refuses to delete. Also, AGAIN, when I exit, the status shows the tuner as STILL RECORDING THE SHOW I WAS WATCHING (I'm NOT using Live preview mode)
The file is in the buffer folder, and is STILL growing. I set this up as a manual recording, and said to record until I exited Live TV (Which I did, gracefully).

Any particular logs you want to see?

I've just upgraded from 1.2.13(?) to 1.3.7, switched over to the TS Mux and tried out multiple recording from a single tuner and it works a treat - 1.3.7 is definitely more than a "Minor upgrade" for me! Unfortunately, though, the PVRX2 UI seems to get itself into a state after a few tens of seconds of inactivity where it runs at 100% CPU usage, which unfortunately causes my elderly AOpen Cube AV to get a little toasty warm and start whining about the fact! PVRX2 is running with the "Slick" skin (which does indeed have a very pretty Main Menu) with a photo set as the backdrop.

Any suggestions appreciated!

I have removed and added them and it looks fine at first, then when I exit and go back into config, both analog tuners are again showing up as Direct Recording Plugin. However, if I edit the source, it is listed as Analog recording plugin!!


Also, I cannot record one analog show and watch another - says no tuning devices available. And yes, the SHARED_NAME entries are in the bda.ini file.
My bda.ini relevant section - however, I just realized this has nothing to do with watching 2 shows on analog (correct?). MUST be related to the analog mess. What gets me, is there IS NO Direct Recording Plugin to pick from, so where is it getting this option??


[Hauppauge HVR-2250]
TUNING_TYPE=ATSC
SHARED_NAME=Hauppauge HVR2250
FILTER_TUNER=Hauppauge WinTV-7164 BDA ATSC/QAM Tuner
FILTER_CAPTURE=Hauppauge WinTV-7164 BDA Digital Capture
PIN_TUNER_IN=Input0
PIN_TUNER_OUT=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_IN=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_OUT=MPEG2 Transport

[Hauppauge HVR-2250 (QAM)]
TUNING_TYPE=ATSC
TUNING_SPECIAL=2
SHARED_NAME=Hauppauge HVR2250
FILTER_TUNER=Hauppauge WinTV-7164 BDA ATSC/QAM Tuner
FILTER_CAPTURE=Hauppauge WinTV-7164 BDA Digital Capture
PIN_TUNER_IN=Input0
PIN_TUNER_OUT=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_IN=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_OUT=MPEG2 Transport

Having re-formatted my GB-PVR box with XP Pro SP3 (was running Vista SP1, had problems too numerous to go into here), I am very close to having GB-PVR working pretty well.

However, I can't solve the one problem which is that any 1080i HD channel plays back very choppy (whether in LiveTV Preview mode or playing back a recording). 720p HD channels are smooth as silk, as are all SD channels.

Decoders I have tried:
- Cyberlink PDVD 8 (from k-lite)
- Cyberlink PDVD 6 (from a PDVD 6 install CD)
- ATI AVIVO (current version from website, released with Catalyst 8.11)
- Intervideo NonCSS decoder (from WinTV install on Hauppauge HVR-1250 CD)

All the decoders work the same; 720p perfect, 1080i choppy

System highlights:

GB-PVR 1.3.7
XP Pro w/SP3
AMD X2-5000+
1GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD4550 (Catalyst 8.11)

I'm running 720x480 via S-Video out, though I have tested other resolutions with the same results. I'm using VMR9 Custom, but have tested FSE and Overlay with the same results.

Tuners are Hauppauge HVR-1250 and K-World ATSC-340u. Using TS-Mux.

If I playback a 1080i .ts file in PowerDVD, it plays perfectly with 10% cpu utilization. Playing back the same exact file from PVRX2 is choppy, CPU utilization goes to 40%+.

If I watch a 720p channel, CPU is at 7-10%. As soon as I switch to a 1080i channel CPU use jumps to 40-45%.

The 40-45% utilization seems to be across both CPU's - it looks like the decoding process is single threaded, but it bounces across both CPU's. Setting the affinity to a single CPU puts 90% use on one core but doesn't otherwise change the results.

The above all seems to imply that PVRX2 is somehow preventing hardware acceleration from working with 1080i playback, while it works fine with 720p.

PowerDVD has no problem accelerating 1080i though, so it's not directly a limit of the driver or decoder.

I had no similar problem running Vista on the same hardware.

Logs attached showing a short run of PVRX2. After launch, I call up the guide, select a 720p channel (7.1 KABCDT), watch for a few moments, then switch directly to a 1080i channel (2.1 KBCSDT), watch that stutter for a bit and then exit.

Thanks for any help.

Dave

p.s. I did find this thread: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=34802 which seems to be a similar sort of problem. I've read quite a bit of that, but never came across a solution; it seems to have died out some months ago