Tuning algorithm

[KenAdelaide]

Could someone explain to me how what is the tuning algorithm of gbpvr.
I have a problem with Vista’s (not alone I know) tuning algorithm. One of our TV stations (SBS Foothills) is broadcasting with a frequency tag in the digital stream which wrong compared with the physical RF frequency. VMC tunes TV like this: It looks at the designated channel frequencies along with the upper and lower offsets. If it finds a valid transmission it extracts all frequencies tags and compares them with the physical frequency. If any tags are similar to the physical then it assumes that for better or worse that the near tag must be better than the physical so it stores that number in it lookup table. If there is a large discrepantly which could happen with a rebroadcast transmission from a repeater then it disregards this part of the table building process. This latter process (disregarding) is only available with the latest patches. The net result is that SBS can not always be viewed with a Vista computer. There are instances where very non selective tuners will work with this error but albeit not very well.
My question is, if I use gbpvr will it use its own tuning algorithm like most sensible STB’s and digital TV’s or will it pick up M$’s supper smart and (stupid) scanning algorithm? I say stupid because what they do is clever if they allowed manual fine tuning but no M$ can’t trust anyone because they judge others as they assume others might judge them.

[martint123]

GBPBR uses what it finds rather than what it is told. This can slow down initial scanning, but that is a very small price to pay.
It can either scan a whole frequency range or pre-packaged lists depending on geography (although these tend to get out of date, but can be manually edited).

[KenAdelaide]

martint123,
What you tell me makes great sense. There must be literally millions of posts written by frustrated people describing or asking how to legitimately hack M$’s system to make it work in ways that even a small child would regard as common sense.

With your experience, do you think GBPVR will alongside Vista and make a good combination?

I have a GigaByte MA78GPM-DS2H motherboard with an AMD dual CPU and a Hauppauge 2200 TV card running HDMI to a Panasonic 46”, TV. There is an external sata Pioneer BD disk drive. The audio-out is via S/PDIF to a Cambridge Receiver and to serious speakers.

In addition to this I have, VGA over Cat5 and mouse and keyboard capabilities to a remote location where I use VideoReDo for editing. I would not like to have less functionality than VMC gives me.
(a) I would love to use less M$, and
(b) be able to tune to what frequencies I select without messy and time consuming work-arounds.
SBS tells me I am the only one to complain and they seem unlikely to change something which would admit it was once not correct.

After the step-less search of the RF spectrum that you describe, can I tweak the frequencies to get them spot-on with GBPVR?
KenAdelaide

[martint123]

I think it would be safest if one of your fellow countrymen answered most of this as the digital setups change around the world and may come back and bite.
I'm still on XP although there are plenty on here who run Vista and other than the occasional permissions/UAC problems it seems to run ok.

For digital transmissions, terrestrial and satellite there is a big list of ground and satellite transponders with their frequencies, polarisations etc (certainly for Europe, I'm not sure about down your way). For terrestrial you can set it to "all regions" and it will do a full dvb-t scan.
While it does a scan it writes the data to a cache file that if you really need to, can be edited. This contains freq, PIDS, names and all good things.....
You then need a program guide - this might come from the broadcasts, a listing service or wherever. The comes what may be a tedious step of mapping the EPG channels to the tuned/scanned channels. It doesn't need doing very often.


I don't know what VMC gives, but GBPVR gives plenty along with what I think is the best support for any lump of software I've come across - and without the know-it-alls upsetting newbies.

Good luck, it's certainly worth a try and any questions just ask and someone will be around to help. (i came here some years ago after trying and failing dismally with some of the better known unix offerings.

[KenAdelaide]

Hi Martin,
Hope you don't mind me coming back to you as you gave me some advice a couple of days ago and it was helpful. I down loaded GB-PVR. Followed a few suggestions about some M$ down loads which I was told I already had. I tried scanning "Australia" and "All channels" and it detected 11. That is about the right number but none of the frequecies looked anything like right. Recalling that my computer works flawlessly with MCE except for one channel I don't think that I have any of the usual unknowns when you first try these things. I selected my tuner card from a list that included my tuner.
I have looked on the config page and there where a number of questions I don't follow but I had a good guess at, obviously not good enough. I tried looking at the Quick Start page in the Wiki and I have done most of that right, most but not all it would seem. Any suggestions please. I only need pointing in the right direction not detailed help. Very much appreciate the way you have helped me todate. If you think I need more local help - any good suggestions?
Regards,
Ken

[martint123]

OK, just a few passing thoughts....

In the survival guide in the forum are a few updates that are usually wise to install, especially post 8 http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=40303

With you saying 'Australia; and 'all channels' this makes me think you have selected the analogue tuner. You should select "digital recording plugin" as this is used for DVB-T.

For analogue use, GBPVR requires hardware MPEG on the tuner board and I'm not sure if the 2200 supplies this. There are some software solutions to this, but we would have to wait for someone who uses it to let you know how to try it out (I think it uses some part of MC to do the work, but I've not had to use it myself. It isn't supported by the author (sub).

Hopefully a digital scan will get you a bit further..

Martin