I spent some time hacking the IR Blaster that comes with the PVR150 today, figured I'd post my findings.
I was trying to make the blaster work with my Starchoice Satellite box. I had to download the latest blaster app (feb 05) to get the correct codes for this box. I verified it was sending the right codes with a scope, but the sat box still would not respond. Turned out that the IR LED in the Hauppauge just doesn't emit in a spectrum that my sat box will recognize. I had an IR LED I knew worked, so it was a matter of wiring it to the Hauppauge dongle.
The plug on the dongle has 4 connections - going in from the tip of the plug:
1 - (tip) +5volts - appears to have some protection on it because I mistakenly grounded it to my scope and it didn't smoke (whew !)
2 - IR receiver data out
3 - IR led driver
4 - ground (the ring embedded in the molded plastic part)
The IR led anode is connected to +5v, the cathode is connected to the driver. The IR LED in the dongle is not like any IR led I've seen before and seems to have a coupling cap in it. I inserted a 220 ohm resistor in series with the new IR led because I wasn't sure if the card has any current limiting in the led driver circuit. It seems to work fine with the 220 ohm in there.
Hopefully this will help somebody who needs to extend their blaster cable or use a different IR led as I did.
Has anyone being seeing this in their config.exe log?
4/2/2005 6:15:34 PM.656 WARNING [7] Unable to compact database automatically
Dubya
p.s. I'm happy to say I've sorted out all of my MediaMVP issues... I just turned off all Hauppauge services and restarted the GBPVR MediaMVP Server from the start menu and presto... I dunno why it wasn't working with just the autostart... but it's all good now and that's all that matters. Whew!
There's a perl script available for MythTV to grab the PPV listings for Dish Network, and insert it into Myth's guide.
I'm trying to modify this for gbpvr, and I'm running into a few questions.
The method this script uses to do it's updates on the DB, is to basically flush all the existing shows, and re-insert them each time it's run. I think if I were to do that, I'd break any scheduled recordings for those shows.
From what I can gather, scheduled recordings are stored in recording_schedule table, and reference the program's oid in the programme table. If I drop and re-insert the show, it's oid will change.
My next approach was going to be to do the insert if it doesn't exist route, which is probably going to be horribly slow.
There must be a better way, I'm just drawning a blank.
How does gbpvr manage this when it does an EPG update?
How/when does old EPG data get dropped from the database?
I have a Hauppauge 250 (without FM) connected to Cable TV (Cablevision, central NJ). It only finds about half of my channels, and it seems like each time I scan them there are slight variations in the ones it finds. Well, let me clarify... it does actually find the channels, and allows me to add them, but all I have on those channels is dark grey static. Any ideas on what the cause might be? I'm using Zap for the EPG. The EPG info seems to be complete, I see the listings for all the channels I should have, but about half of the channels only display static.
I have been updating and learning GBPVR for a couple of months and now have a lot of trash in the directory. My system is now not as stable as I would like so I want to do a complete reinstall. The problem is I have a pretty big library and want to be able to get them through "Recordings". I know I can still see them through My Videos, but I really want to see the episode descriptions. If I blow out the GBPVR MDB file I know I will loose this info. If I rename the MDB file, clean out everything else, then reinstall GBPVR and then replace the new MDB file with my old one, will it work? Or does the MDB file contain other stuff that I would be better off starting new with?
Are there any other options? Would x-record somehow help me on this? I thought I read somewhere it did not use that file for info.
