Hang on video playback

[HK Phoey]

I'm useing a Hauppage PVR 150MCE and the latest version of GBPVR. My video card is an ATI Radeon 9550, though currently using the Omega drivers recommended in this forum. I have both Nvidea video decoder (default) and Cyberlink Video/SP decoder installed, both demo versions

I can display live tv, pause it, play it again. I can record live TV and an MPEG file is produced. If i double click the mpeg file from Windows explorer it plays fine in Cyberlink PowerDVD.

However, if I try to playback from GBPVR I hear about 1/2 second of audio from the file then nothing, whilst the screen goes to black and hangs. If I kill the GBPVR application in task manager I see that the file GBPVRexe.log has gone to about 10Mbytes, with the last thing being :

09/01/2005 00:00:36.781 VERBOSE [2] getValue: /settings/InternalSRTDisplay : true
09/01/2005 00:00:36.781 VERBOSE [2] getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/SubtitleDelay
09/01/2005 00:00:36.781 VERBOSE [2] getValue: /settings/SubtitleDelay : 500
09/01/2005 00:00:36.781 VERBOSE [2] getValue() loading new key/value into cache: /settings/AutoSkipCommercials
09/01/2005 00:00:36.781 VERBOSE [2] getValue: /settings/AutoSkipCommercials : true
09/01/2005 00:00:36.781 INFO [2] playFile()
09/01/2005 00:00:36.875 VERBOSE [7] Weather plugin could not find 300 mile doppler animated weather map for CHXX0049; looking for zoomed out map instead.
09/01/2005 00:00:36.968 VERBOSE [2] About to play file: C:\Manual Recordings\Star World_20050831232000.mpg
09/01/2005 00:00:38.796 VERBOSE [7] Found weather URL for CHXX0049 of http://www.weather.com/maps/local/local/...mated.html
09/01/2005 00:00:40.187 VERBOSE [2] Playback started: C:\Manual Recordings\Star World_20050831232000.mpg
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 7
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 7
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 7
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0
09/01/2005 00:00:40.375 VERBOSE [2] Received event code: 0

Those event code 7s and 0s carry on for ages, until I killed the ap.

I'd be very grateful for any pointers on where to look next for this. I've tried the various VMR9 / 7 / overlay settings, and swapped the quartz.dll file a few times - currently on 6.05.2600.2508 09/01/2004 1,287,680b which I guess is not the older one - seems to have reset itself.

Any ideas?

Cheers

HKPhoey

[sub]

All I can suggest is that your try some different audio and video decoders and hopefully it'll go away.

[jksmurf]

Hi HKPhoey

Can't help your particular problem but I thought I'd say Hi as I'm based in HK too. Been hammering away at GBPVR for over a month, am getting there.

Tried first with a Lifeview TVWalker Mini (only works on PC,the GBPVRRecording Service always (repeatable) hung on the Mux file (there's another thread on that http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=7722). Would recommend not buying one of those, even though it has MPG4 (also called SINOVideo here) until the bugs are sorted out!

Sub was very patient and did what he could, but it doesn't fault on his one. I even got the error after a complete WinXP reinstall.

So I bought what you have, the PVR-150MCE.

I have managed to get HK Broadcast (Aerial) Channels setup in the EPG using TVxB, but am having some problems with the NOWBroadBand channels as the TVxB country.ini files for those appear to have changed since BillD (TVxB author, also HK based) posted them, so maybe we can put our heads together and get those sorted out sometime?

I really only want 4 channels, mostly for Star Sports, but the multitude of parameters to choose in TVxB are pretty confusing, there is a 90 page developers pdf file which I'm trying to get my head around.

Some HK-Specific Tuning Tips are here http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=7721

Cheers

k.

[HK Phoey]

Good to hear of someone else in HK trying this. I think I'm a week or two behind you in development.

I haven't played around too much with the EPG, but TVxb seems to be the way to go. I still have a bit of work to do mapping the channels to the right order, but I have something up for the broadcast channels, Star and Now Broadband (except the Australian channel which seems to have a complicated web page). I'll look at it a bit closer, though can't receive star sports at home. Guess I don't need the channel to see the EPG.

Top priority though is to get video playback working. Am I right in thinking that a fresh install of GBPVR won't play video until we find and install a software MPEG2 player? And that those cost about US$20. Which one do you use?

My problem may be related to having a trial version of the video players - when I double click the file in Windows Explorer I do have to click a few nag screens about buying the product before the video plays. Before i put that on though it seemed to work fine in Windows Media player

HKP

[jksmurf]

Funnily enough I was playing around with PCCW NOWBB's ABC (Aus) this a.m. and I "think" I got it going, with descriptions. DW (Deutsche Welle) + ESPN + Star Sports too. I had to delve into the "developers" Manual for TVxB, which is scary :-)

The Aerial (Broadcast) Channel descriptions don't work too well though, at the moment.

btw, when you are trying new parameters out in TVxB.ini, you do not need need to delete the html files in the TVxB/html dir as TVxB appears to just parse the existing listings as they are. Suggest you empty the EPG though when testing, use C:\Progra~1\devnz\gbpvr\gbpvr.exe -OnlyEmptyEPG, then force an EPG update with C:\Progra~1\devnz\gbpvr\gbpvr.exe -UpdateEPG or C:\Progra~1\devnz\gbpvr\gbpvr.exe -OnlyUpdateEPG.

You can d/l the Station Logos from http://www.satlogo.com/tvcountry/hk.html
Put them in C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\media\ChannelLogos with the exact same filename as the Channel Name in your EPG.

Am I right in thinking that a fresh install of GBPVR won't play video until we find and install a software MPEG2 player? And that those
cost about US$20. Which one do you use?

Yes. GB-PVR, as you will no doubt read uses OTHER players (and codecs) to play BACK recorded Videos. wrt Decoders, I use NVIDIA's at present, which seems OK but I am still experimenting. When I find a GREAT one, I will buy it.

I have a pretty basic old PC which I am using, so it does make a difference, although I a bought a Cheapo FX5200 Graphics Card to give it some more grunt. Call me cheap, but I am somewhat loathe to put newer components in a Machine where everything else is older :-) ..goes against the grain ...

I attach some channel icons from http://www.satlogo.com/tvcountry/hk.html and my (JUST FINISHED right now) Two TVxB.ini 's for you to have a play around with. No Program Descriptions working on Broadcast yet, but the 4 NowBB channels I want to use all get good descriptions. Those Zap2it guys have it easy!

Cheers

k.

[sub]

Am I right in thinking that a fresh install of GBPVR won't play video until we find and install a software MPEG2 player? And that those cost about US$20

They included with just about every PVR hard supported by GB-PVR.

You can download a free one from http://sourceforge.net/projects/gplmpgdec

[jksmurf]

swapped the quartz.dll file a few times - currently on 6.05.2600.2508 09/01/2004 1,287,680b which I guess is not the older one - seems to have reset itself.

There's some details recently added to the WIKI re the quartz.dll file
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FAQ/Codec#toc6

See also:
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Config/Playback

Cheers

k.