How stable is Live TV with the MVP?

[mvallevand]

As some of you may know I'm working on a replacement dongle similar in theory to the gbmvp.bin that sub used to provide. Everything was going as I expected until I bought a Hauppauge PVR 150 and tried live tv. I just cannot get this to be stable. It's great for the first live tv selection and maybe for one or two channel up/downs or for watching a selection from the guide but after that forget it. I know some of this is my code since it magnifies problem, the but I cannot find a stable combination with gbpvr and the distributed dongle either to use as a reference.

98.08 seems better then 98.13 so that is were I have focused my comparison but it is far from perfect. The major problems I have found with the distributed software include (to be clear NOT using my dongle)

- channel up/down freezing
- stop key exiting gbpvr completely can't even reconnect to server
- the recording continuing after stop with the gui responding properly
- the guide indicating the device in use but recording service says sleeping.
- the problems are worse when I try inset video.

I can duplicate these easily. Am I the only one seeing this general problem?

Any suggestion on improving the stability with the standard installation would be appreciated.

Martin

[HtV]

The latest gbpvr-dongle works quite fine for me. Before that the dongle that came with gbpvr (dd 22-3-2005) was the most stable for me, I tested several others but didn't find a better one.
However, I don't use livetv much........

You do have this setting?
<MvpHighPriority>true</MvpHighPriority>

I have noticed that clicking fast with the remote might eventually lock it up/restart it. I think that depends on the server-specs too.

There are a lot of network tweaks on the wiki (by Tipstir) that might help as well.

Do you have a wired mvp? I think wireless will always be more vulnerable to connection-problems.

Edit: You might try raising the livetv-preplay-delay.

[Azimuth]

I have only been playing with gbpvr for about a week. I have however found that I can avoid crashing by selecting programming from the guide rather than just hitting live tv at the main menu.
I don't know what the technical difference is, but I have certainly experinced a huge difference in reliability.
Following is the situation i used to test these claims...

Using the live tv menu button on 3 MVP's concurrently causes one, two or all mvp's to reboot within 5 minutes. In some cases the mvp keeps rebooting repeatedly and never shows the gbpvr menu.

Using the guide and then selecting a program and selecting the watch item (on all 3 MVP's concurrently) will not cause the MVP reboot behavior. I tested this over five hours. leaving this setup running over night showed that one MVP dropped off overnight some time. two days later the remaining two MVP's were still running.

[lseats]

As some of you may know I'm working on a replacement dongle similar in theory to the gbmvp.bin that sub used to provide. Everything was going as I expected until I bought a Hauppauge PVR 150 and tried live tv. I just cannot get this to be stable. It's great for the first live tv selection and maybe for one or two channel up/downs or for watching a selection from the guide but after that forget it. I know some of this is my code since it magnifies problem, the but I cannot find a stable combination with gbpvr and the distributed dongle either to use as a reference.

Hi Martin,

Live TV on the MVP is very stable for me on 98.13 with the latest patches (gbpvr.exe replacements -- see survival guide thread). I don't run it with the inset -- I did find that to be unstable and I saw no benefit in using it, so I've not really tried to get it to work for me.

I think the key to getting Live TV to be stable may be in having a fairly large pre-play delay set. I'm using 2000 ms. I have the quality settings fairly high (VBR 6600 - 8400). I don't use wireless.

I don't normally do a lot of channel surfing, but I did try quite a few channel changes to test and could not make it disconnect. I do see very occasional disconnects, but almost never with Live TV.

I have four PVR150 tuners and four D3A MVPs.

[sub]

Its also worth MVP owners applying this patch: http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=1...ostcount=6

[mvallevand]

Its also worth MVP owners applying this patch: http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=1...ostcount=6

I just started looking at 98.13 with the patch and I do think this resolves at least 90% of my reproducable stability issues and I am really glad to go back to it. I also look forward to trying the suggestions being offered to make things even better.

Also, given the negative message on another forum, I hope this thread is not being taken out of context. I am comparing the GBPVR and Hauppauge server software, stopping and starting each up to 100 times a day, and I see things that most people should never encounter in daily use.

I am also a bit extreme while testing the functionality since I actually try to break things, all on top of using a work-in-progress dongle, but I have absolutely seen marked improvements in stability with each release I have tried over the past 8 months, and going backwards with gbpvr has never proven to be beneficial.

Martin