Some observations after a week of full time use of NPVR

[kendrak24]

First of all, I want to say that NPVR works extremely well for a beta. For me it works as good, or better, than GBPVR, so I've switched completely to NPVR now.

Here are some observations/feedback:

- It looks like the recording threads (?) doesn't always end. I noted this because I have sometimes seen ParallellProcessing.bat or PostProcessing.bat in the process list several hours after the show ended, and then also the status shows that a tuner is recording the show even if it's not. In ParallelProcessing.bat I call comskip, and in PostProcess.bat I call ffmpeg. Both these worked fine with GBPVR, so I suppose this could have something to do with the thread handling.
This only happens sometimes, and I've not seen a pattern yet.

- Timeline issues during playback (at least on NMT). Nothing new, but just want to report that the problem still exists. The problems seems to be worse for longer shows (>1 hour). So far I've not seen any negative durations, but skipping can be strange, sometimes going all the way to the end, or sometimes a back skip goes forward. Problem gets worse the later in a show you are skipping.
I get these problems in perhaps 10-15% of the recordings. As I said, more in long recordings than short.

- In the Ready recordings view also currently recording shows are shown. This is a bit confusing... I assume this is on purpose, but I liked it better when only the completely ready shows were displayed in this view (as it was in GBPVR). Maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it...

- I also miss the indication in the top of the tv guide that something is recording (or is scheduled).


All in all, practically everything "just works", and also seems very stable! Super nice!

[imilne]

and then also the status shows that a tuner is recording the show even if it's not.

This is an interesting one, because in my first attempts at writing the System plugin, I was parsing the XML from the recording service that gives you back pretty much what you see in the systray app, and it also seemed to be showing finished/cancelled recordings as still in progress. But in the latest version I've been trying to work with the actual ScheduledRecording objects returned by the API, and they *don't* show as active and all appears fine. So I'm not really sure what's going on, but I thought I'd mention it as another observation.

Iain

[siliconaudio]

I have noticed on at least one or two occasions that two full-size ts files have been recorded for one single show. There is something still a bit funky in regard to scheduled recording, but otherwise, I agree with Kendrak - this is very stable software for a Beta.

[mvallevand]

- Timeline issues during playback (at least on NMT). Nothing new, but just want to report that the problem still exists. The problems seems to be worse for longer shows (>1 hour). So far I've not seen any negative durations, but skipping can be strange, sometimes going all the way to the end, or sometimes a back skip goes forward. Problem gets worse the later in a show you are skipping.
I get these problems in perhaps 10-15% of the recordings. As I said, more in long recordings than short.

Rather than just reporting problems I look forward to working with users to solve NMT problem. There is an update which will potentially solve some skipping problems here http://forums.gbpvr.com//showthread.php?...post380303 and I still am waiting for confirmation that is works a little better.

If you want to provide some more feedback in the mvpmcx2 forum and want to help I expect we can further reduce the number of skipping problems that are not related to a bad timeline.

Martin

[johnsonx42]

fwiw, I have observed everything kendrak reported; that is, some recordings just seem to go on forever (though unlike in GB-PVR, they don't block other recordings), and there are timeline issues.

However I would not be pleased if the Ready recordings list did not include currently recording shows, and wish they also showed up in What's New (they should to be consistent). Having to check multiple lists to find out what's available to watch was a major pet-peeve of mine in GB-PVR.

[sub]

- It looks like the recording threads (?) doesn't always end. I noted this because I have sometimes seen ParallellProcessing.bat or PostProcessing.bat in the process list several hours after the show ended, and then also the status shows that a tuner is recording the show even if it's not.

That sounds like its something in your ParallelProcess.bat or PostProcessing.bat that is at fault. NPVR is only responsible for starting them. Its up to you whatever runs in them and how long they take to complete.