The reason why GB-PVR is such a boring software

[peterl]

Hi,

for several weeks now i was looking at a lot of different HTPC programs. Installing them, configuring them and always thinking how to get the most out of them with plugins etc. It even started to be a hobby for me and i spend a lot of time in it.

Sadly i discovered GB-PVR last Friday and installed it.
Well ... now my hobby is gone ... everything works like i want it to work ... what am i going to do in my spare time now ? :-)

Now here is a list of htpc Software i tested with advantages and disadvantages ... feel free to add your experience:

-Showshifter 1-3.x : The best recording profiles of all htpc software and it uses very little ressources ... great for software capture cards ! However no real support for standby,hibernate and a very slow development. The modules (music,pictures) have very few features

-GotTV : Didn't work stable for me .. a lot of crashes. Bad GUI. The configuration was also not very easy

-SageTV : It didn't work with my PVR 150 MCE PAL. It is a known bug with the PAL version of this card. From what i could see i didn't like the user interface very much. Besides it is expensive.

-BeyondTV : I didn't look at this piece any closer. Its also pretty expensive

-Meedio : Looks promising but still a real beta and not working stable for me

-TVCentral : This is the german version of a htpc software based on the meedio core. It currently looks better then meedio, has a good user interface, supports standby (with sleeptimer plugin). I was close to buying it but didn't like the politics of the company. For example club user get reduced prices, epg with all channels costs 2,50Euro / month instead of less then 1 Euro etc ). Its biggest disadvantage was, that you couldn't do manual record at all ! The support was/is bad and the CPU usage was very high even with hardware card (50%)

-MediaPortal : Very good and open source software !!! Worked very well with my software hauppauge WinTV PCI FM card. Great search features in epg (in description or categories). However after i bought my PVR 150 MCE i discovered, that it records only in dvr-ms format with hardwarecards which is simply crap ! Only WindowsXP can read this format out of the box (and only with MediaPlayer 9/10).... no easy DVD burning etc.


So my conclussion is, that GB-PVR is simply the best htpc sofware for cable users. I wonder why so few useres are in this forum. I discoverd GB-PVR only by chance and i think many people just miss it because it is not really advertised. There is only one software i know of which is better and its called LinVDR. However its a Linux system and the it only works with Full Feature card which cost more than 200$ in germany. It is also only really usefull for Sat users since at least in germany we have only very few digital cable channels.

I want to thank the developers and especially sub very much for their great work and of course i will donate for this great software ! Actually this software is worth more than all the commercial software out there and not donating something is a crime imho. Even a student can earn 10$/hour so there are no excuses !

The only things i still wish for GB-PVR is, that it also lets search you in the description and that we get a new release where the epg in the TVGuide shows something after 2.2.2005 :-).

The last wish which will most likely never become true is a faster channel switching. As it is now i will use GB-PVR never for fast zapping. This is the only thing all the other htpcs software do better but its a architecture problem i think. I also like the 0 % cpu usage while recording very much which compesates for this.
I even tried to use a ramdisk because i thought that this would allow me faster channel switching but it didn't help !?!

By the way what does GB (in GB-PVR) stand for ?

[MicroSark]

And another one joins the fold!

I too have been through all the other PVR offerings you mentioned, including Beyond TV, SageTV, MythTV etc etc...

As you say - there just isn't anything else that comes close.

To think, I almost flamed you for the thread title!!

[Ericwiz]

LOL I was ready to flame too

I tried a bunch as well before sticking here. The only thing I haven't tried that I would like to is MCE.

[aegisx]

Yea, gbpvr is causing me to cancel Tivo. GBPVR's true feature (in my opinion) is that it works with the MediaMVP. I don't know about everyone else, but I don't want a computer by all my tv's

[Lucas_24]

I actually bought 2 PVR 250 cards and 2 MVP's after I found the software. I'd been looking for a solution like this and didn't realize it existed until last summer. Hauppauge owe's GBPVR for selling 4 pieces of hardware. MVP is the most imnportant thing for me also, I don't even have the PC connected to a TV. It's basically a server.

[reven]

GB-PVR what does it stand for? GB = subs initials.

sub you should add this to the FAQ

[Scooby]

Did you try TVedia (Joveplayer) ?
What did you think ?

I have been using TVedia with my X-card and a NOVA-T DVB card for a while and I quite like it.
Although now GBPVR also supports DVB (as of v0.9 today) I plan on trying this as well to compare.
For me having X-card support was important as nothing can touch it for picture quality, except if you have a TV with DVI / VGA input.

[Lucas_24]

no didn't realise there were rebates. I bought all the hardware seperate though, 1 piece at a time. The MVP's are really hard to find in Canada. I've only found 2 online stores which carry them. I wish I could find them locally so I didn't have to pay for shipping. Now I have to buy another fancy remote since I only have 1 with the MVP I ordered last week.

[jorm]

Your wishlist


1) Search Description.
Download and install the fast find plugin. Hit ctrl-Y or yellow button twice. Can now search by description.

2) TV Guide
see the newest release.


3) Fast Channel Switching
see the newest release.

[capone]

I just came back to the fold after one day in MCE (so really dind't leave).

I really like the things they have the Windows polish on: the interface is fun, the photo/music functions are easy, the PiP is cool, the movies currenlty playing w/ their posters (very nice touch), etc. The compression they use for video was very impressive.

But, it was obvoius the first time I paused that a machine that there was a reason their premade boxes are so high-end. It never came out of it properly. It also had my favorite MS failure of not being able to FF/Rew certain formats at all (and you've got how many billions?).

As well, it lacked...soul. It looked and worked great, but I could do very little to to personalize it. It just seemed very confining on the whole.

By sundown, I was back to gbpvr. I am keeping MCE for things like the featured media section (I like they have indexes of radio programs, etc), but it's clearly the shelved of the two.

Props on good work.