As you can see in my signature I have two working media pcs. These now belong to my family and I am moving to Alaska (lots of military stuff which is why I vanished and still will be kinda vanished for the next couple months).
Anyway, I figured out I need to order the components while I am stateside since and shipping is very expensive to Alaska.
Desired Capabilities
- Output HD quality TV
- Record 2+ streams (at least one of which is digital)
- Cut out commercials/encode to xvid
- Send out shows to an extender
- Optical audio out
Currently Have
- High-def LCD tv (LG)
- HVR-1600 (coming out of HTPC 1)
Largest issues:
- I have never had good luck with ATI video cards; everytime I get one I hate it for some reason or another.
- With the motherboards I'm looking at it looks like the 780G by ATI beats the GeForce 8200...
Can anyone tell if either of these motherboards have H.264 hardware acceleration?
Case
I'm really sad that they don't make the NSK2400 anymore so I'm open to suggestions. Cool and quiet are paramount. Currently I'm thinking the:
- Antec Aluminum Veris Fusion Black 430 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case with IR receiver (newegg)
Ram
Just gonna pick up 4gb of RAM compatible with whichever motherboard that way I can dedicate 512mb to the videocard (or the max I can).
OS
I'm hoping to run WinXP Pro but I can run Vista Business (have a copy from school). Opinions?
Processor
I'm thinking that going with a 45W dual-core processor will cut down on the power bill; will I still have enough power to watch tv, do processing, etc? Normally processing is done overnight the biggest "issue" would be recording digital and streaming to an extender.
- AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor (newegg)
or the one that takes more power:
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ Brisbane 2.7GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor (newegg)
Extender
Popcorn Hour A-100 (opinions anyone). Are there any others that integrate well with GB-PVR?
Hard Drives
Standard SATA, probably start with 500-750gb (all recorded shows will be made into HD xvid overnight).
Optical Drives
some sort of SATA drive most likely
Tuner
- HVR-1600 to start; then once I get to Alaska I'll either add another one (any issues with two 1600s?) or get an HD-PVR.
So, opinions, help, etc? Everything has changed since the last two... not to mention the ATI vs nvidia thing is really getting to me.
I have read through the various threads and I believe I should be able to get FLAC and WMA lossless files to play on my MVP however they continually fail. I believe FLAC files are re-coded to MP3 via ffmpeg (though MVPMC may natively support FLAC) so I have manually tried to encode with ffmpeg and that fails as well FLAC - "could not find codec parameters" and WMA lossless "unsupported codec"
I have the CoreFLAC codec installed (not sure if I actually needed it) as well as the usual Microsoft ones - VLC has no issues playing either file.
It seems Comcast likes to constantly re-arrange their clear QAM lineup to keep their hard paying customers guessing, (and it is a PITA! - glad the FCC slammed them on their messing with transfer speeds for certain protocols! What a go, FCC!)
I'm looking at fixes with Vista and my channel Logo Tool to grant admin rights to update the media directory within GBPVR. However this prompts a question. mightyou move these folders to another directory ? outside of Program files ?
I have an ATI X1900 and wish to capture OTA Digital SDTV via an external tuner on the AVIVO In port. I installed gbpvr but it didn't detect any cards. How do I get it to use the video in on my card?
On updating to 1.2.13, I seem to have some weird problem with my EPG updating correctly via SchedulesDirect and I-Xmltv. It seems to update fine when I select Update in the System plugin, but the nightly EPG update does not seem to work.
I think it has to do with the i-xmltv.bat file and maybe a difference between gbpvr and pvrx2. The last part of the batch file contains the lines:
Code:
CD %GBPVR_DIR%
IF %EmptyEPG% == 1 gbpvr -OnlyEmptyEPG
which I changed to:
Code:
CD %GBPVR_DIR%
IF %EmptyEPG% == 1 pvrx2 -OnlyEmptyEPG
When the routine runs, the line "pvrx2 -OnlyEmptyEPG" actually runs PVRX2 (effectively blocking the i-xmltv.bat file until manually closing down pvrx2), and it doesn't seem the EPG empties. I don't believe this was the behavior with gbpvr.
I tried searching and seen a lot of problems with people and live tv, but I could'nt find anything specific with the hd-pvr. I have an HD-PVR hooked up component cables and analog audio to a STB. I also have a HVR-1600 hooked up to the analog tuner with straight analog cable. Whenever I watch live tv through the hd-pvr a lot of times i wil just get a black screen then goes right back to the main menu. Other times it will work but whenever I go to change channels it goes right back to the menu. I have tried both coreavc and the arcsoft encoder, firewire channel change and the blaster, as well as live preview mode enabled and disabled and get the same results...Heres my logs if that will help any...thanks..
I can't seem to load any other dongle (incl July 16) besides the default Hauppauge dongle that came with v 3.4.25345. Onscreen, I get as far as the http://www.mvpmc.org splash screen with the 3 red, 2 green and white/blue blocks and no further. My server is running Vista x64.
Ive managed to map all my local areas channels, but ive still got a few problems that is ruining my viewing experience.
1.) Changing between channels seems to take a long time minimum of 5 seconds between one channel and the next.. I want it to as closed to instantaneous as Hauppage TV manages to be.
2.) Sometimes when you select certain channels it doesnt load at all, you have to wait about 30 seconds looking a blank screen and then it kicks you out into the menu screen.. if you select 'live tv' again you have to change the channel quickly else the problem happens again
3.) Only a few of the channels seem to get EPG information, I know I can download this from the internet, but why can't i get it from the signal for all of the channels?
