Kudos on NPVR

[scott1256ca]

I recently bought one of those avermedia duet dual atsc tuner cards. At the time I didn't understand their (stupid) marketing scheme and bought the "whitebox" version which requires xp media center edition, which I of course don't have. When you use that version, their own media center software doesn't work. I could rant excessively about what I think of that, but I'll spare you .

So anyway, I did a search and found out that you could use XP with SageTV and the "whitebox" card. But my requirements are basically to just record, so I can edit and watch commercial free later, so paying an extra $100 for Sage seemed excessive.

So I decided to try NPVR. I'd experimented with it a bit for other reasons.

NPVR isn't the easiest software to install, but with a bit of perseverance I got it done. BTW, this patch, which I found on this forum was required to get dual tuning to work. Otherwise I could only record at most 15 min. before a crash.

Anyway, the one thing I wanted was to be able to record shows with a bit of padding so I wouldn't lose either the first or last minute of a program. So I was mightily pleased when I discovered that when recording 2 consecutive shows on the same channel, NPVR was smart enough to pad both shows with an extra minute or two at both beginning and end.

I was also pleased to find that once I had selected my shows to record, I could leave nrecord.exe in the background and close the main window. That means while not recording there is 30 meg or so being used. Compare that to WinTV (I also have a hauppauge 1250) which needs 2 background processes using something more than 100 meg, just to sit there and do nothing until it needs to record.

I haven't actually tested recording 3 channels at once yet, but am confident that it should be fine.

Thanks for the good work.

[Reddwarf]

Johnsonx42 are you paying attention? Include the mentioned patch in your sticky please

[johnsonx42]

it's not an NPVR patch, rather it's a windows patch to fix an issue in certain versions of XP. I think this is the old psidec.dll issue that's been floating around for awhile, or something similar. I might include mention of it somewhere, or maybe someone should put it on the wiki. I really don't even know the exact conditions under which it should be used.

[Reddwarf]

It has something to do with crash during channel scan, so you might just refer it and say that it might help? Like when doctors say that "a glass of red wine in the evening would probably do you good"

[mvallevand]

It has something to do with crash during channel scan, so you might just refer it and say that it might help? Like when doctors say that "a glass of red wine in the evening would probably do you good"

This is not really an NPVR thing, sub has been talking about it for many years. My guess is some of the old mpeg mux files partially hid the problem. If it isn't there it should on the wiki as a required XP file though, and Reddwarf I am sure if you ask, steeb or McBainUK will get you a password so you can update it yourself.


Martin

[steeb]

This is not really an NPVR thing, sub has been talking about it for many years. My guess is some of the old mpeg mux files partially hid the problem. If it isn't there it should on the wiki as a required XP file though, and Reddwarf I am sure if you ask, steeb or McBainUK will get you a password so you can update it yourself.

Martin

Read this thread earlier but I wasn't sure whether this was a wiki worthy thing or not so let it ride to see if any further comments. But looks like it should be there. Both McBainUK or myself would of course be most happy to provide author access to anyone who would like to add this to the wiki if they do not already have an account

(My wiki work has slowed down for a while as am trying to get the new webpages finalized and trying to learn some coding in VB )

steeb