Sheduled Recording

[djtaylor]

No worries, it's all a learning curve but I can't help but think that some of the time the hype about upgrading the aerial is a conspiracy to make jobs for the boys. Old aerials have old cable which is more lossy than newer double screened, old cable is often terminated with faceplates and bad connections.

The other thing that you should avoid is any joins. Don't be tempted to cut the cable, add faceplates etc, just run a continuous cable, don't kink it, don't crush it and a smooth radius on turns.

This is a key difference between analogue and digital, you can watch a crappy analogue picture, digital on the other hand just tends to either work or not work and if you're on what's known as the edge of the digital cliff, you think it's all working fine then next minute you've fallen off the edge and it has all gone wrong. I can't wait for the fallout with this whole digital thing when it gets turned off here and all the blocks of flats with communal aerials need their distribution sorting out, likewise portables need a completely new solution because sticking a set top antenna on top of a TV when you're 30km from the transmitter isn't really a workable solution. With analogue you can often bear it but with digital it just won't work.

Sorry, that's another rant. Welcome to gbpvr, it gets infectious. Don't forget to buy an MVP so that you can stick the noisy PC somewhere else and stick a nice little box by the TV, many brownie points to earn with the wife there

David.

[dazzyb2k3]

Agreed. I can't overstate the importance of good cabling. I've learned this the hard way after spending ££££'s replacing hardware I thought was faulty just to find it was a dodgy or cheap cable somewhere in the loop.

I always find it kinda ironic that we spend hundreds of pounds building/improving our HTPC's and then scrimp on what actually transmits the signal!

[dchurch24]

How does the Hauppauge MVP work with GBPVR? (I have just earned many points with the wife - managed to get her a payment from her bank of just over £3k because of their error - long story for a different day - but the by-product is that if I act fast and push it through with the old 'A PC in the front room would be TOOO noisy, we need one of these - I might just get the go ahead ;-)

From what I've read, it seems to have it's own software.

Would it eliminate the need for a new graphics card if I can't get the tv-out sorted out?

Yours, confused!!??

[neilraymond]

The other thing that you should avoid is any joins. Don't be tempted to cut the cable, add faceplates etc, just run a continuous cable, don't kink it, don't crush it and a smooth radius on turns.

djtaylor - slightly ot, but just wondering if you can help. i've bought a reel of WF100 to replace my existing aerial downlead, and i was planning on running it to a wallplate in the living room made by gluing a female-female f connector to a blank wallplate, and using f connectors on each side. a bit like this: http://www.neilraymond.plus.com/stuff/diagram.JPG (sorry about the rather poor artwork). my question is, would the join using the f connectors have a seriously detrimental effect on the signal, or do you think it would work ok?

cheers

neil

[djtaylor]

How does the Hauppauge MVP work with GBPVR?

Dead easy, you just run a cat5 network cable (read cheap and easy to install) to the MVP, then connect the MVP to the tv via its SCART connector.

You get the same interface on the MVP on the TV as you do on the PC. The gbpvr software replaces that which comes with the MVP although you do need to install the hauppauge bit because a bit of it gets reused.

So I said to my wife, while watching via the MVP...

"How would you like another one of those little silent boxes next to the TV in the bedroom so that you can watch the same recorded shows upstairs as you can downstairs and you can access all the same music too?"

Instant budgetary approval.

Kudos to Sub for creating such wife friendly software to provide a proper overall solution, thank you!

Of course, when you do this, you'll then need another couple of tuners in the PC because they will get used

David.

[djtaylor]

i was planning on running it to a wallplate in the living room made by gluing a female-female f connector to a blank wallplate, and using f connectors on each side.

Pop into B&Q, they already have them as a faceplate with a female/female f connector It's angled downwards too so you don't stress the cable and make a kink at the faceplate.

As to affecting the cable, *any* discontinuity will cause an impedance mismatch and a reflection. Whether it will cause you a problem, probably not, maybe. That's the great thing about digital, unless you have the right tools, you're probably never going to know. It's like the old days of thin ethernet, we used to put a time domain reflectometer on the cable and you could see where each T piece was by a blip in the printout. You could map them out distance wise and see if someone had put an extra connector on the cable. In an analogue system, you'll see a reflection, in digital, it will work or it won't or some of both some of the time.

Simply put, if you don't need to cut the cable then avoid it, if the wife insists, upgrade from wife 1.0 to girlfriend 1.1 but don't install both at the same time as they are incompatible on the same platform. If your wife insists that the cable is untidy, make damn sure she cleans the house twice as much every day because you find the house untidy

I'm not going to suggest it won't work, just don't do it if you don't have to that's all.

David.

[neilraymond]

cheers for the advice, will definitely think about the wife/girlfriend upgrade - sounds like the best route

[dchurch24]

Dead easy, you just run a cat5 network cable (read cheap and easy to install) to the MVP, then connect the MVP to the tv via its SCART connector.

You get the same interface on the MVP on the TV as you do on the PC. The gbpvr software replaces that which comes with the MVP although you do need to install the hauppauge bit because a bit of it gets reused.

So I wouldn't need to get a TV-Out card (or one that works anyway)?

This is sounding interesting. I already have a network set up throughout my house - some wireless and some cabled, so running another cable is not a problem.

[djtaylor]

So I wouldn't need to get a TV-Out card (or one that works anyway)?

This is sounding interesting. I already have a network set up throughout my house - some wireless and some cabled, so running another cable is not a problem.

Correct, no TV Out card, no running s-video or composite cables round the house, just plain old cat5. If you've already got cabling then you're set.

Do it, you'll wonder why you didn't get two (unless you buy 2 in the first place!)

David.

[dchurch24]

Excellent - well that's me sold then. I'm onto dabs/ebuyer as we 'speak'.

Thanks for the advice chaps!!