Possible myHTPC Defector

[MC001]

Just come across GB-PVR and it looks ahem... the nuts. Here's what I'm looking for, If someone can tell me if GBPVR will satisfy my requirements, I'll defect from the #### that is my current myHTPC setup. (Big respect to the meedio massive though it's a top prog).

Before I start here's my rig details...

WinTV PVR350
PACE Sky Digital STB connected to PVR350 via tuner/rf socket
Win XP Home SP1
Shuttle SN41G2
USB UIRT
Girder

Here's what I and the wife (oh god must keep her happy) want to be able to do...

1) LiveTV - with easily configurable channel changing on STB
2) Pause/Rewind Live TV like Sky+
3) Integrated EPG (I'm familiar with Xmltv)
4) Scheduled Recording
5) Season Tickets would be nice too
6) DVD Playback from DVD drive (don't use ripped files)
7) Music module to playback Windows Media Player music library

A couple of questions while I'm at it:

Does the EPG update automatically via windows scheduled tasks? or via a service?
Do I have to teach GBPVR my sky remote commands or use girder?

Thanks for any help with my quest in advance

M

[MC001]

Actually, I think I'll try GB-PVR instead of GotTV, that way I can keep simpleVideo and the MyPictures modules of myHTPC.

[MC001]

I'm talking to myself here... I know... but I just re-read the documentation page and spotted the custom tasks bit... which i presume works with the latest release...

d'oh!

Apologies to everyone who may have read this thread and thought... READ THE SITE PROPERLY YOU PLONKER.

I'm deffo gonna give GBPVR a go the neet

[AndyCherry]

MC001,

 You must have picked a bad time of day to put the question in - sub's not woken up yet, and the rest of us are just about getting home from work!

 Anyway, to answer some of your questions:

1) LiveTV - with easily configurable channel changing on STB

Haven't got Sky but GBPVR supports external channel changers (IR blasters) for changing satellite channels.   It supports IR2000L, Girder, and USB-UIRT natively, and can support a third party IR blaster if it is in .EXE format

2) Pause/Rewind Live TV like Sky+

Yes this can be done - you can do ff/rew and skip forward/back plus pause

3) Integrated EPG (I'm familiar with Xmltv)

Yes - for the UK you can get your listings from bleb.org (when it's back up) or from any other source - on the forum there is a Teletext grabber program that can get it directly from the teletext stream off the PVR350.

4) Scheduled Recording
5) Season Tickets would be nice too

Yup - just click "OK" or press enter on the programme in the TV guide and select either record or season record.  You can also do manual recordings (custom start/end times)

6) DVD Playback from DVD drive (don't use ripped files)

Doesn't do this at present - biggest issue is extending this functionality onto the PVR350 TV Out (doesn't do encrypted MPEG streams)

7) Music module to playback Windows Media Player music library

Yup...

A couple of questions while I'm at it:

Does the EPG update automatically via windows scheduled tasks? or via a service?

The recording service runs as a permanent service, and this sorts the EPG update out at 3am each day - you can use a file called "update.bat" to run a script with it - mine extracts the data from bleb.org using "GrabEPG" and then GBPVR imports that into the TV guide.

Do I have to teach GBPVR my sky remote commands or use girder?

Can use Girder.  

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Andy

[MC001]

Thanks Andy for the response,

I installed last night and am mightily impressed, within an hour I had achieved all of the criteria I mentioned above. Even managed to put the machine into standby, go to bed having set it to record an episode of "Little Britain" expecting it not to have worked this morning. But I woke the machine up this morning to find my recording there (ok it hadn't actually recorded BBC3, but that's probably down to me putting the wrong channel number into the config screen!

I think the best part of the configuration for me was the ability to easily set up the channel numbers. I had a lengthy list to go through and it was a lot easier to edit them in a grid than to have to page up and down through a text file. It'd be nice to have pre-set channel profiles for different TV providers (Sky,NTL,TeleWest etc in the UK) that you could use as a lookup table to fetch the STB's channel number when importing the EPG. I do a bit of VB6 coding for my sins so maybe I could look into doing a small utility - I gather the channel data is stored in an mdb file? Is that correct?

I just need to somehow stop my channel change events being sent from girder as I use the remote to navigate the menus outside of LiveTV... Not sure how I do this yet but I'll work it out.

Also, does the music module only support mp3? All of my small library is wma format so far.

Congratualtions to sub and the other developers on this project, you are doing excellent work! I'm a convert for sure.

M

[AndyCherry]

No problem!

Just checking - you have access to an XMLTV file? There is a link between the channel in the XMLTV file and GBPVR, so you won't have to change the channel numbers every time you upload - only if you've deleted the channels (e.g. updated to a new release of GBPVR)

For example, I have BBC1 at channel 39, BBC2 at 45, ITV1 at 42, CH4 at 66, and five at 35. In config I import the XMLTV file on the very first use of GBPVR, and change the channel numbers that appear to match the frequencies above. On subsequent imports of new XMLTV files, the channels (frequencies) stay as they are even though they are not stored in the XMLTV file.

I seem to recall that you can also define an ID in the XMLTV file that corresponds to the frequency so that the load is done in one pass, but this didn't seem worth the while given you only have to do this once.

If you don't have an XMLTV file/feed, you can still create the channels using a home made XMLTV file and include the correct frequencies - then just load this as normal, and hey presto - channels in place (just no TV guide!.

I'm afraid I don't know how the relationship is done between the STB channels and GBPVR is done - may be sub or someone else with an STB can help on that one.

Cheers,
Andy

[MC001]

Afternoon Andy,

Yeah I have access to XMLTV using XMLTVupdate.

There's a table called SOURCE_CHANNEL_MAPPINGS in gbpvr.mdb which seems to map the channels imported from the TVData.xml to whatever you want them to be. This must be the source for the digits used by whatever channel changer you use.

I'm just looking at doing a little util that :

1) Asks who your UK Provider is Sky, NTL, Telewest
2) Tries to automatically match up the imported channels from a list for each provider using the channel name
3) Then Does a best guess at the exceptions and lets you confirm from a list of likely looking matches.

Someone, somewhere might find it useful...

M

[AndyCherry]

Just to clarify though - you only have to do this once right? So it would be a tool to ship with GBPVR that allows the user to easily configure their STB - as once it is done once (providing you don't uninstall the app) you won't need to do it again.

Am I missing something?

If it is the above, it sounds like a very good idea - it would really help with the setup process.

Cheers,
Andy

[MC001]

Yeah I realise that. It would just ease the setup process for those wanting to integrate with a STB.

M