Heya... first post

I've just converted an old Dell machine I had gathering dust into a Jukebox/movie player. No tuner for now, but I'm happily watching Xvids and listening to my MP3s over the network. Very nice.

I want to get a remote control happening so I don't have a 101 key keyboard sitting on the coffee table (girlfriend is not impressed) but I would prefer not to buy one of the MCE remotes. I'm about the get a universal remote to run the whole system, and if I can incorporate GBPVR into that, I'd be a happy man.

I've had a look in the Wiki at the HIP guide, and I'm "sort of kinda maybe" understanding it, but I don't want to jump the gun and end up buying the wrong thing... so I'm hoping I can learn from someone who has already done all the hard work for me

Can I just get a generic USB IR dongle and use it as a receiver? I thought it would be that simple, but I've read a few bits and pieces that say the USB IR will not work for this, and I'll need a serial connector. Is that true, or do I have the wrong end of the stick?

Can I even do what I'm hoping to do? It seems so from the Wiki, but searching the posts here indicates a lot of MCE and ATI remotes...

In guide- enter channel number to jump to that channel in the listing but not actually watch the channel

Switching between tuners while watching live tv, e.g. I have 2 tuners, I set Tuner 1 to channel 3 and Tuner 2 to channel 5, should be able to Swap tuners to give affect of jumping between channel 3 and 5. Motorola DVR has this.

Option to choose what More button on MCE remote does. When watching live tv, it displays main menu but displays tv in data window. I'd rather have it
display show info, e.g. same as Guide button then OK button to select channel being watched. Same for recordings, should display show info.

Shouldn’t be able to go back in time while in guide, e.g. if it's 11pm, shouldn't display times prior to 11pm.

When in time shift mode, how to skip directly to live tv?

When watching a recording, left and right arrows change volume; what is
green bar at top of screen?

XGuide: enter channel number to jump to that channel in the listing but not actually watch the channel

XGuide: how to remove channels from listing

XGuide: Shouldn’t be able to go back in time while in guide, e.g. if the time is 11pm, do you want to allow person to hit left arrow to show 10pm shows?

XGuide: Stop button toggles between 3 viewing modes, is this intended? If so, maybe add a line of text at top of listing that says you can do this?

XRecord: I think Pending and Reoccuring should be made cleaner. Here's what I think makes more sense:

Reoccuring should look like Pending with posters and text underneath of show name. You can fit more "season passes" onto the screen this way. Select the one you want, then show details. As it is now, you have lines of text for each show. Some may argue this gives you a quick view, but to me it makes more sense that I want to see details only when I select a show.

Pending should have at the top the shows that are currently recording. The only way to know what is recording is to know what shows are recording, choose poster, and see the text "Recording" at the right of the episode data.
Have something like the first x lines of text (x represents # of tuners) that says: Tuner 1: recording xxxxxxxxxxxxxx on Channel yyy, and selecting that line of text will pop up menu the same as when you select the episode itself that says "Recording".

Reproduce Error: Select xguide from main menu, and then hit guide button,
error box appears and says the following “Error: ExecuteReader requires an
open and available Connection. The connection’s current state is closed.”
with an ok button.

There is no way with the remote to click the ok button, therefore you are stuck. If you use mouse on ok button to dismiss error box, remote no longer controls software. So GBPVR has to be shutdown and restarted.

Sub can you give a quick explanation of how the PlayVideoFile method works when on a client.

If I am on a client trying to play a video (from the server) I give it the name from scheduledRecording of G:\bla blah.mpg but from the clients point of view this doesn't exist.

Do you do some trickery on your recordings screen to make this work from the client? I.e. replace G: with \\server??

I noticed that when you pause a video or live tv you can't hit the blue button to make the time bar hide so you can see the full screen, I know this used to work but I don't know what made it stop working, it's not a huge problem but it was nice to pause on a picture and hide the time bar to view the entire screen.....

any help??

thanks

I got the client to successfully start, but when I go to the 'Recordings' page, I get the following error:

Error: SQLite error
no such table: RECORDING_SCHEDULE

I checked in the .mdb, and the table is indeed there (shows empty, though, which is odd because if I run GB-PVR on the server machine two recordings show up). The only oddity to my setup is that I have the database share pointing to a shared directory containing hardlinks to gbpvr.mdb and config.xml, because I'm on a fairly large network and don't want to expose program directories on a windows share.

I'm still having problems with my VistaView saber 2020 card. It has problems with the second tuner, and causes random reboots and frozen picture. I am using the latest drivers from vistaview (1033.4.3). I did some editing of the direct.ini, and the config.xml. I was able to pretty much fix the frozen picture problem by changing the VistaView Saber 2020 (device #2)'s filter encoder to the following FILTER_ENCODER=7162 BDA MPEG PS Encoder0. I changed the encoder to the same as device #1 because I just figured that the vixs can encode up to 4 streams at once, however I don't know if all 4 streams enter the chip using the same pin or not, this did allow me to get a picture though instead of a frozen frame.

The other problem with the random restarts seems to happen when either both tuners are doing a back to back recording, or when tuner 2 is doing a back to back. I was able to somewhat limit it by changing the config.xml so that pre and post show padding were set to 0 mins. However the restarts do still seem to happen, and sometimes when my wife is watching a recorded show while tuner 2 is recording the computer will either restart or the second tuner will record without audio. (i'm not sure how that is related but that is what is happening)

My knowledge of XML is very limited so all I did was go for the common since things here to see if I could fix the problem, however the problem is still there (except now at least when I hit record on the second tuner I can at least get a picture instead of a frozen frame).

Anyways, my wife loves GB-PVR over SageTV now, because it is the best PQ that we have seen using this card. I was just wondering if someone with more skills then I can tell me if the changes I made really did anything, or was it just coincidence. If they did make a difference then can someone tell me what to change next, or try next? Or maybe someone knows exactly what I should put in my direct.ini so that I can use pre and post show padding.

Thanks
Armyb77

I have one last question since i read through the forum and i see a thread that describes my problem and i ran register filters but it didnt change a thing...And what is happening is i cant record a thing.. if i set a manual record or hit quick rec, i look in the list and it says FAILED by the show name and time under recordings. If i set it to record 5 minutes ahead and set it up and watch the black/white icon in the tray it never goes green when it should be recording.. If i double click on it it says capture source 1 and then underneither sleeping... Do u have any suggestions to get my recording working since everything else is fine.. Thats why i moved to this great software so i could record... Thanks for any help!!!!!

In recent days, GBPVR started maximising with a two-pixel border, rather than none, as it used to do.

GBPVR Config is set to maximised. The shortcuts that start the program can be set to maximised or normal window, but their setting makes no difference either way. It's a two-screen setup to a single device (analogue output to the plasma display's VGA socket, digital to the HDMI socket and I can switch between them as required) with the PC's Windows gubbins going via analogue to the first 'display'. GBPVR is directed to the second 'display' both by Config, and by the nVidia nView desktop manager software.

Using the keyboard to Restore and then Maximise fixes this problem, but it doesn't make for domestic harmony as the machine is under the TV in the living room... Is there a permanent fix, please?

It's not life-threatening but slightly annoying, and I've done the usual search and can't find a solution.