Pleasantly surprised!

[vanderstok]

Hello everyone. I'm a new user of GB-PVR and dropped by to say I am very pleasantly surprised with the quality of this product.

Up to now, I have been using Mediaportal (for over a year). I started out with MCE before that. I use a dedicated media center PC; a Shuttle SN21G5 barebone with a PVR-150MCE TV card, MCE remote and LCD TV (1280x720).

I have been reading about GB-PVR yesterday afternoon and within an hour I had it running smoothly on my media center including TV, EPG, new skins and extra plugins. Sure, it did help that I have plenty of media center experience, but I was amazed nonetheless!

My first impressions:

+smooth and easy install
+performance is very good, quick response; much better than MP
+TV recording is smooth and quality good; I had no problems watching a movie over the home network while recording; with MP I have had different experiences!
+no problems running Hidef 720p movies in H264 with onboard video (but that works with MP as well)

-navigating through movies could be a little better, I like the MP solution
-no default button with MCE for aspect ratio/zoom change? I need this for watching recordings

I will try some more plugins (I miss the IMDB lookup function) and may very well replace MP with GB-PVR

[Graham]

F7 changes aspect ratios ... and if you are brave you can edit the config.xml to get any aspect ratio or zoom that you desire. Is there a way to map F7 to a button on your remote?

I don't use it but I have read kind words here about the MovieWiz plugin.

Welcome aboard.

[McBainUK]

Is there a way to map F7 to a button on your remote?

You can do this by editing the file ir.ini (in c:\windows\ I think). I've changed the "prev channel" button in the middle of the remote to "change aspect ratio".

[vanderstok]

Thanks, I'll try that. If it doens't work: I have been using HIP in the past, I'm sure that will be a solution as well...