Purely for Live TV?

[sun4384]

It seems my wife doesn't care about recording programs. She wants just the Live TV, and I have to set it up to justify the purchase of HVR-1600. Here goes a few questions:

1. Is there a way to start PVRX2 directly into the Live TV mode?

2. When in windowed mode, is it possible to remove the title bar?
3. Is it possible to minimize PVRX2 when in full-screen mode? Is using Alt-Tab not possible when using VMR9 Fullscreen Exclusive?
4. Is it possible to switch between full-screen and windowed mode?

5. Is it possible to "sleep" Live TV (not playing video/audio - hence minimal CPU consumption, but staying tuned to the current channel for quick response), instead of pausing (which records current channel to HDD)?

6. Is it possible to run PVRX2 without the tray icon and recording service? It looks when the recording service is stopped, Live TV doesn't start.

7. Does the key mapping work with Mouse events? If so, how? BTW, there is no mute key mapping, right?

8. Strangely, No codec except Intervideo (including HCW, ATI, MPEG) worked with HD channels. Simply no video on HD channels (sound is ok), though there is no problem with SD channels. The symptom is consistent regardless of renderer or mux. Any idea? (I do need other codecs because one very important SD channel is displayed corrupted with InterVideo codec: green bar on top and green noise smudging from the top green bar, while showing good with other codecs.)

[sub]

The answer is 'no' to several of those. Your list of requirements makes it sounds like GB-PVR is not really the best app for you needs. You'd probably be better off using a simple TV viewing app like the Hauppauge WinTV software or ChrisTV or something like that.

[blackpaw]

Sounds like you'd almost be better off with a plain HD settop box. Unless you want to use the media center aspect of it to play DivX's etc.

[sun4384]

Well, WinTV just can't handle HD channels (choppiness building up), and it does not have EPG integration. Actually I think even just for the TV watching purpose, GBPVR wins in many criteria - EPG support, wide spectrum of supported tuner cards, nice OSD ... (that's why I'm sticking .)

For many of the questions, I might have workaround. For the question 8 - no HD channel when using codecs other than InterVideo - is one serious issue I face. Actually I remember, though not exact, HCW codec did work with HD channels before. (Ah, previously I was using NVidia 6150 onboard graphic chip. Now I'm using 690G onboard graphic chip. Well, that can hardly be the reason I believe... Maybe ATI driver.)