HD Streaming with GB-PVR, WinTV-HVR-1250, TVersity, and PS3

[ttfitz]

I've been messing around with this for a while, thought I had a solution, but have still run into problems, so I thought I'd look for help. I'm posting this in a number of support forums for the various parts of the equation in hope of finding a solution SOMEWHERE.

As the title says, I am using GB-PVR to capture (and convert) Clear-QAM HD broadcasts on a WinTV-HVR-1250 tuner card, streaming the results wirelessly using the TVersity media server software to my PS3. The problem is finding a reliable setup to do this.

I have tried the variety of capture options with GB-PVR (DVR-MS,TS-Mux, Full-TS, a couple Cyberlink muxes) in combination with a few conversion procedures (Xvid, MPG2, using ffmpeg, mencoder, other things I can't even remember now), and thought I had finally come up with a working model using TS-Mux converted to Xvid with ffmpeg, but I've had some gliches with that, so I'm looking for help.

The captures all seem to work okay, I think - some of them don't play well with Media Player 9 on my XP system, but they all seem to be there - the trouble seems to be a conversion that works streaming to the PS3. The plain capture files aren't good enough, as I need to at least convert down the bitrate in order to stream wirelessly, and I keep getting "corrupt data" messages when I try to use TVersity to stream the TS files, anyway.

So, is there anyone out there who has something similar working who can give me some clues as to what to try? With network premiere season upon us, I'm sure someone is going to program 3 shows I am interested in looking at opposite one another, so I'd like to have this working.

Thanks,

Tim

[ilovejedd]

Why not convert to .mp4 using MeGUI/x264? There's a built-in PS3 profile...

I still haven't found the time to convert my caps so when I want to watch on the PS3, I just remux to .m2ts using TSRemux, albeit, using wired LAN.

[ttfitz]

Why not convert to .mp4 using MeGUI/x264? There's a built-in PS3 profile...

I hadn't seen MeGUI before, so I downloaded it and gave it a try. Had a few problems I was able to overcome, but in trying to convert one of my files, it keeps bombing off with "x264.exe had to end abnormally" message, which is beyond me. Now, maybe it was just that one file, but it was also REALLY slow, which makes me reluctant to spend much time with it, and if it isn't fairly reliable, it won't work that well for me.

I still haven't found the time to convert my caps so when I want to watch on the PS3, I just remux to .m2ts using TSRemux, albeit, using wired LAN.

I've done the same, and it appears to work fine, except like you said, with the wireless connection it is just too slow to play the full bitrate version that gets captured.

Tim

[ilovejedd]

In MeGUI, you can edit the profile to make encoding faster. For example, instead of using "Automated 2-pass", use "Constant Quality" (crf 22).

For the file you can't convert, are you sure that the file itself doesn't have problems (e.g. pixelation, audio breaks, etc)? Even with clear QAM, I occasionally encounter such problems due to signal strength/quality issues and this can cause problems when transcoding.

802.11g (54mbps) has enough bandwidth for OTA HD streaming (19mbps). I've tried it with a laptop sitting a couple of feet from the wireless router and it works just fine (HDHomeRun + LiveTV using VMC). The problem with wireless is it's darned unreliable and the farther you are from the router, the worse your connection is.

Seriously, your best bet is likely to just run ethernet cable from the router/switch to the PS3. With the time required to convert a single HD video, and the hassle of finding a solution that works 100% of the time, connecting your PS3 via wired LAN will probably end up being much simpler and time/cost-effective.

[ttfitz]

In MeGUI, you can edit the profile to make encoding faster. For example, instead of using "Automated 2-pass", use "Constant Quality" (crf 22).

Yeah, I did that, but it still seemed very slow to me. Maybe I'm just impatient.

802.11g (54mbps) has enough bandwidth for OTA HD streaming (19mbps). I've tried it with a laptop sitting a couple of feet from the wireless router and it works just fine (HDHomeRun + LiveTV using VMC). The problem with wireless is it's darned unreliable and the farther you are from the router, the worse your connection is.

Exactly - for my router vs. TV placement, experimentation has shown that anything over 10-12 Mbps for the video causes studdering.

Seriously, your best bet is likely to just run ethernet cable from the router/switch to the PS3. With the time required to convert a single HD video, and the hassle of finding a solution that works 100% of the time, connecting your PS3 via wired LAN will probably end up being much simpler and time/cost-effective.

I have considered that, but once again, given the placement of my computer and my HDTV, free ports on the router, etc., stringing cable isn't going to be a simple process, either. I thought as close as I seemed to be in getting this working, it seemed a shame to give up now.

Eh, maybe I'll just stick to transfering the files over to the PS3 overnight before playing. It's not like I foresee doing a whole lot of this, anyway.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Tim