I've been using Windows Media Center for a couple months now and have been mostly happy with it. It's very easy for the rest of my family to use which is the biggest reason I went with it in the first place. It also helps that the configuration is fairly simple. I'm looking at possibly converting over to GBPVR. Here's why.

It seems like more and more channels are using DRM over analog cable. At least that's what I think is happening. After using Media Center for about a month, I suddenly lost the ability to play a lot of my recordings. I simply got a message that said the content was restricted. I did some research and found out this was most common over the premium movie channels. I noticed that was where my problems were as well with the additional of one other channel. I accepted my loss and started making a point to check my recordings on a daily basis to make sure they still worked.

About a week ago I lost a bunch more recordings to DRM. This time I knew for sure I had not made any changes to my computer (hardware or software) which would cause the DRM to be lost. In addition, I noticed recordings from another channel started being lost that weren't having problems before. So I'm assuming the use of DRM over analog cable is spreading.

My solution to this was to find something that would record my shows in a non-DVR-MS format. GBPVR is at the top of that list. In addition to not losing my recordings to DRM, I have the added benefit of not having to watch them on my Media Center all the time. Since I usually do all the scheduling, I thought maybe I could use GBPVR just for the recording but still use Windows Media Center for the front-end. The problem I have with that is not having all the meta data from the GBPVR recordings available in Windows Media Center. Plus I don't know what will happen if GBPVR is recording two shows at the same time and Windows Media Center tried to watch Live TV (I only have two tuners).

So now I'm looking at using GBPVR completely to make things integrate easier. The first thing I've run into is finding movies to record. In Windows Media Center, I could go to My TV > Recordings and get a list of all movies that were coming up in the next couple weeks. I usually went through this list alphabetically once a week and chose what I wanted to record. Is there a similar functionality in GBPVR? I've looked but not found anything yet.

My next question is in regards to aspect ratios. I tested a DVD last night that has widescreen menus but full screen content. My setting in GBPVR is to use the 4x3 aspect ratio. However, when I put the DVD in, it was using widescreen. So the menus looked fine but the actual content did not. I was able to hit F7 to cycle through to the full screen option and everything was fine. It looked like the default option was auto. Any idea why that would not have worked? Also, I thought I read that the main green button on my MCE remote should switch aspect ratios but it did not. Instead it just brought up Windows Media Center. Would using HIP fix this?

My last question for now is about Live TV and timeshifting. I like the fact that by not using timeshifting all the time, you can channel surf quite quickly. This was always a big drawback to using a DVR. However, I'm not sure how much I like having to hit the pause button to start using timeshifting. We usually watch recorded shows so this may never come up but what if I'm watching something for a while and then want to rewind a couple minutes before activating timeshifting? As far as I can tell, I don't have that option. So I would have to pause first thing once I settle on a show.

I tried leaving timeshifting on all the time but that made channel surfing incredibly slow and tedious. I am actually surprised at how slow it is. Windows Media Center seems to handle this pretty flawlessly. Is there something going on behind the scenes that is affecting this? When I change channels in GBPVR, there's a small delay before switching. There's some weird stuff on the screen while switching. And there's some heavy stutterings for a few seconds after switching before it all calms down. Is this because it switches recording files when switching channels? Can you give the option to use a single file instead? Or maybe another option would be to automatically enable timeshifting after settling on a channel for a configurable amount of time?

I have both Cyberlink and ATI MPEG muxes installed on my system. Is there any way of specifying which one should be used for transcoding DVR-MS?

My wife has trouble reading the information of a movie/show/etc. in the MovieWiz plugin. Is there somewhere I can change the font size so it is larger?

Can't get the tuner to tune channels. Any help appreciated. Says tuning channels but it doesn't actually do anything and it appears to just crash.

Tried changing bda.ini as per http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...ight=dvico

[Dvico Fusion DVB-T PLUS]
TUNING_TYPE=DVB-T
FILTER_TUNER=FusionHDTV, BDA Tuner1
FILTER_CAPTURE=FusionHDTV, Transport Stream Capture1
PIN_TUNER_IN=Input0
PIN_TUNER_OUT=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_IN=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_OUT=MPEG2 Transport

Filtercheck output

Hi,

I know you've just added the option to play all music in a subdirectory by pressing play on that folder but it would be even better for me if I could choose whether it plays random form the folder or in track order. Maybe an option in config or even an edit in one of the xml's?

Cheers

I haven't really been keeping up on this but...

When I setup GB-PVR 1.2.9 on my exes computer, she had a new wide screen lcd panel.

THe main menu and all other pages have fonts that are sort of fuzzy, cetainly not as sharp as I see on any other monitor I look at.

I think that it's a aspect ratio, resolution problem. Would it get cleare dup setting GB-PVR to 16x9? or should I play some more with the Resolution and desktop size...

I love the new release 1.2.9. I like the information that can be brought up with Control-O. However, I have noticed that Control-W does the same thing with the new release. Previously, Control-W was used to skip to the last channel. Thanks for the continued improvements Sub.

Perhaps this is related to 1.2.9, but I've just tried to install this for the first time and it hangs up right at the end while restarting the recording service. It does in fact restart the service and then just stops with it's progress bar at 100%.

I've tried it twice and just had to end task it.

And since I'm here, I can see that it copies files to the standard Blue directory and the Community3 directory. And I right to suspect that these files have probably not been updated for 1.2.9 yet and I've probably just taken a step backward?

Sorry if this should be in the MVP forum, but I think it is GBPVR driven from my initial review.

Tonight, I upgraded to GBPVR 1.2.9 on my server. I have been and am running the "factory GBPVR" dongle on a new wired MVP. I typically do not use the MVP to watch live television, but rather just recordings. However, tonight, with three kiddos four and under, I didn't want to miss a particular movie. So, I was watching this movie with live preview and pausing on and off to get the kids ready for bed: baths, nighttime snacks and a bottle feeding. As I was nearing the end of the movie, suddenly the MVP lost its connection. At the time, I was approximately 15 minutes behind in the movie. After checking, it appears that this connection lost happened right at the time that the program ended. Looking at the MVP-PVRX2 log, it states that the software connection was terminated by the host machine. The GBPVRRecordingService log shows that a new file was started at nearly the same time. I have attached these two logs for your viewing pleasure. What can I do to prevent this. I can see where this would happen with the a new LiveTV temp recording file being created, but...

Any suggestions for keeping this from happening in the future? Any help or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Luckily, I was able to go into the network Temp folder and finish watching the movie. Yeah!


Important EDIT: I am not using the mvpmc dongle, I am using the new 1.2.9 dongle because it overwrote the mvpmc dongle (that I had renamed).

Installed on Vista 1.2.9 and received the Error 1721 but as I killed the process so no backup. GBPVR operational but have problem getting into TV Guide. It hangs and I need to kill it. I have run config and updated the EPG. Have also run "c:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\PVRX2.exe" -OnlyUpdateEP without problems. Still hanging sop I looked at logs and can see a number of Divide by zero errors. Just wondering if you can look at logs.

Much appreciated