Emulation mode testing Round III

[HtV]

Mea culpa Mea culpa,

You are right of course, I have the one on the left (edited). Don't know what I was thinking. Sorry to bother you with stuff like this. Should have been in bed..........wife is on holiday, nice bottle of wine, you can draw the picture.

cya Hans

[jksmurf]

Martin,
Tried your Alpha dongle.bin 2007-05-11 today.

Cool! Much better than last months's one, excellent work. FF works, comskip works!

Some observations and a log for you:

1. Unlike Htv, I did get it to crash once, but not repeatably. I watched a show in Xrecord than backed out using the back button on the MVP remote (I have the RH in THAT pic) and it went out of the s/w and restarted mvpmc. Logs attached. (btw does mvpmc have it's own set or uses the ones in GBPVR?)
   
2. In settings I could change Composite to Svideo and it retained the setting on subsequent starts. However SPDIF pass
   
3. thought was NOT retained?
   
4. Startup after first loading the dongle was very quick, just like my Haup dongle. If I turn it off using the green power button and try turning it on again, these subsequent tries went to attempt 14/30 approx, however I have also noticed this extended startup time behaviour (without try count obviously) with the Haup Dongle. (DONGLE_33_25032.BIN).
   
5. There is some very occasional tearing on fast sport scenes that (at least I can't remember) that I have seen with the Haup dongle. Could your dongle do this?
   
6. Channel changes in liveTV are much faster than last month's dongles, although there a few very minor blocky bits still. Much better though. Funny thing is however that it stops the video, you hear audio from NEXT channel (i.e. it has already changed channel), then you see the numbers changing the channel via the USBUIRT, THEN the video comes up?
   
7. Lastly, pressing the BLUE button (on that RHS remote, which normally brings up the OSD immediately), FIRST goes very DARK momentarily, then lightens up and shows the OSD?

I haven't managed to get emulation mode to auto-boot yet, did the share c:\mvpmc and wrote the config thingy. I need to read the WIKI some more!

Cheers,

k.

[pz1]

[4]Startup after first loading the dongle was very quick, just like my Haup dongle. If I turn it off using the green power button and try turning it on again, these subsequent tries went to attempt 14/30 approx, however I have also noticed this extended startup time behaviour (without try count obviously) with the Haup Dongle. (DONGLE_33_25032.BIN).

I had the same problem. Somebody suggested to me to let GBPVR (MVP tab) start two MVP service processes. That solved the problem.

[pz1]

Thanks, that helped and I've uploaded a fix for this. I was working with the Hauppauge server and I put in a change to erase their OSD alpha screens after 5 seconds without a change because it annoyed me. I've special cased the code to the Hauppauge.
Martin

Tried it intensely for half an hour switching a lot. It only failed once on a video, but I think that is a GBPVR or other problem.
For now this seems the most stable dongle in my setup. So I have to get autostart emulation to work. I'll report on that further in the other thread.

[HtV]

Martin,
Startup after first loading the dongle was very quick, just like my Haup dongle. If I turn it off using the green power button and try turning it on again, these subsequent tries went to attempt 14/30 approx, however I have also noticed this extended startup time behaviour (without try count obviously) with the Haup Dongle. (DONGLE_33_25032.BIN).
k.

This happens because when you turn off the mvp it takes quite a while before gbpvr notices that the mvp is down and restarts the mvp-server.
When you start 2 servers you are back immediately, connected to the other server.
I must admit you did some more thorough testing than I did so found a few more glitches, but I think it's a remarkable piece of work.

cya Hans

[jksmurf]

This happens because when you turn off the mvp it takes quite a while before gbpvr notices that the mvp is down and restarts the mvp-server.
When you start 2 servers you are back immediately, connected to the other server.
I must admit you did some more thorough testing than I did so found a few more glitches, but I think it's a remarkable piece of work.

cya Hans

Don't get me wrong, Martin has weaved some awesome magic with this. He just needs feedback.... that's where we come in... :-)
Cool, thanks HtV. Is there any downside to TWO of these instances? Will TWO trayicons appear :-)

k.

[HtV]

Is there any downside to TWO of these instances? Will TWO trayicons appear :-)

Hi JK, No I didn't get you wrong .
I guess you mean the mvp-tray-icon, I don't know how many show up. I do know that it eats extra memory. But the recovery from a disconnect/restart is almost instant.

[mvallevand]

Martin,
Tried your Alpha dongle.bin 2007-05-11 today.

Cool! Much better than last months's one, excellent work. FF works, comskip works! Some observations and a log for you:

Thanks k, I don't really understand your MVP* logs, it looks like the transcoding is failing and the server is disconnecting but I've never seen anything like it with my sample files. I probably would need one to see for myself.

Unlike Htv, I did get it to crash once, but not repeatably. I watched a show in Xrecord than backed out using the back button on the MVP remote (I have the RH in THAT pic) and it went out of the s/w and restarted mvpmc. Logs attached.

Actually I realize that using the back key as stop is not a good idea with emulation mode right now. I never really tested it and I have to fix it so use the stop key.

(btw does mvpmc have it's own set or uses the ones in GBPVR?)

Yes it can but it requires the configuration of a network share. They do help me a lot.

In settings I could change Composite to Svideo and it retained the setting on subsequent starts. However SPDIF pass thought was NOT retained?

mvpmc never "saves" settings. Composite vs svideo is from flash. If the hardware detection for passthru isn't working you will need the command line -o passthru

Startup after first loading the dongle was very quick, just like my Haup dongle. If I turn it off using the green power button and try turning it on again, these subsequent tries went to attempt 14/30 approx, however I have also noticed this extended startup time behaviour (without try count obviously) with the Haup Dongle. (DONGLE_33_25032.BIN).

As mentioned the extra autostart does help, but in reality it should only impact you during testing, since most of the time you won't power off and on in the period that is causing the problem. There is a small memory footprint, probably dependent on your plugins and you only get debug logging on the first session, which can be good or bad, debug output can impact performance.

There is some very occasional tearing on fast sport scenes that (at least I can't remember) that I have seen with the Haup dongle. Could your dongle do this?

More than anything else network speed would cause video problems. Any tearing problems I saw, were fixed when I lowered the mvp priority in the config.xml

Channel changes in liveTV are much faster than last month's dongles, although there a few very minor blocky bits still. Much better though. Funny thing is however that it stops the video, you hear audio from NEXT channel (i.e. it has already changed channel), then you see the numbers changing the channel via the USBUIRT, THEN the video comes up?

I tried not to delay the stream at all so the first second or so can be odd. If you are seeing the numbers on the mvp screen you probably should turn off the level of OSD detail, this might make your performance worse.

Lastly, pressing the BLUE button (on that RHS remote, which normally brings up the OSD immediately), FIRST goes very DARK momentarily, then lightens up and shows the OSD?

I think I talked about this before with someone else. I treat the menu change command from gbpvr as a screen dim, since I don't know what else sub wants me to do with it.

I haven't managed to get emulation mode to auto-boot yet, did the share c:\mvpmc and wrote the config thingy. I need to read the WIKI some more!

Actually I hope that if this dongle starts working for GBPVR users someone updates the mvpmc wiki, it is decidedly mthtv centric.

Martin

[jksmurf]

Thanks k, I don't really understand your MVP* logs, it looks like the transcoding is failing and the server is disconnecting but I've never seen anything like it with my sample files. I probably would need one to see for myself.

LOL, OK. You emulator folks ... :-)

Actually I realize that using the back key as stop is not a good idea with emulation mode right now. I never really tested it and I have to fix it so use the stop key.

OK

Yes it can but it requires the configuration of a network share. They do help me a lot.

Is that the same share where the dongle.bin.config resides C:\mvpmc ? if so, how do I do the log thingy for you?

mvpmc never "saves" settings. Composite vs svideo is from flash. If the hardware detection for passthru isn't working you will need the command line -o passthru

Hm. OK. When I first installed it, composite was the default. Then Svideo was the default after I changed the setting in settings, and it didn't change back. SPDIF did. That's why I thought it saved it....

As mentioned the extra autostart does help, but in reality it should only impact you during testing, since most of the time you won't power off and on in the period that is causing the problem. There is a small memory footprint, probably dependent on your plugins and you only get debug logging on the first session, which can be good or bad, debug output can impact performance.

OK

More than anything else network speed would cause video problems. Any tearing problems I saw, were fixed when I lowered the mvp priority in the config.xml

OK. Thought so :-). Wireless...

I tried not to delay the stream at all so the first second or so can be odd. If you are seeing the numbers on the mvp screen you probably should turn off the level of OSD detail, this might make your performance worse.

OK.

I think I talked about this before with someone else. I treat the menu change command from gbpvr as a screen dim, since I don't know what else sub wants me to do with it.

OK...sub?

Actually I hope that if this dongle starts working for GBPVR users someone updates the mvpmc wiki, it is decidedly mthtv centric.

OK. Still working in it. pz1's settings re Guest not in my machine, so it's not that... will keep trying dongle.bin.config!

k.

[pz1]

I do know that it eats extra memory. But the recovery from a disconnect/restart is almost instant.

On my machine I have 2 GPBVR processes, each eating about 110-120 Kb.