is using an MVP easy?

HarryH3 · 2008-03-19, 12:49 PM

Fuzzy, I have 2 of the D3A's from the Radio Shack clearance sale from a few years back. They work awesome with GBPVR. Smile

Deusxmachina · 2008-03-19, 01:36 PM

I don't know why some people have to re-encode audio and things while mine doesn't need it (does it on the fly, apparently). I can play basically anything on it except live TV. ATSC, AC3, h.264, avi, mkv....

I never did anything for the install except change the number of servers in Config to 1.

JimF · 2008-03-19, 02:24 PM

Deusxmachina Wrote:I don't know why some people have to re-encode audio and things while mine doesn't need it (does it on the fly, apparently). I can play basically anything on it except live TV. ATSC, AC3, h.264, avi, mkv....

If you use the MVPMC dongle, it will play AC3. But you will get severe lip sync problems unless you are careful. I have posted some suggestions:
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=33591

For me, it is easier and better to use VideoReDo, since I have to use it anyway to edit my videos. It solves the lip sync problem entirely.

FuzzyPapaBear · 2008-03-19, 04:34 PM

Thanks for the info everyone. I appreciate your time. I setup my MVP last night and everything went pretty much as other have said; almost plug and play. I noticed a couple of things though:

When using the default dongle getting the MVP to connect at 100Mbps was hit or miss. Most of the time it would connect at 10Mbps / Half-duplex. PQ is not as good as the Nvidia FX5200 I use in the PC all though there were no "hesitations"; even when I skip ahead or back. Bringing up the TV guide only caused a one second hesitation in playback where I get a good 8 to 10 seconds of "choppiness" on the PC. Generally everything is more responsive than the PC where I'll push a button on the remote and it'll take a few seconds for the action to execute. The choppiness and responsiveness are the reasons why I never put GB-PVR into "production". WAF was very low; bordering on hate. Sad

(and I was not fond of the flying remotes aimed at my head.)

When using the mvpmc dongle the MVP consistently connects at 100Mbps / Full-duplex). No noticeable "chopiness" even when I bring up the TV Guide and it seems to be even more responsive (2 sec or less from button press to execution). However, PQ is worse than the default dongle.

I also tried to play a WMV file hoping that the PC would transcode it but I guess the transcode only works for Divx/xvid?

mvallevand · 2008-03-19, 04:49 PM

FuzzyPapaBear Wrote:hen using the mvpmc dongle the MVP consistently connects at 100Mbps / Full-duplex). No noticeable "chopiness" even when I bring up the TV Guide and it seems to be even more responsive (2 sec or less from button press to execution). However, PQ is worse than the default dongle.

A noticiable PQ difference is very unlikely since it decoded by the mvp's hardware. I would check simple things like your cables and the source file.

The network speed differences you are seeing are normal, Hauppague actually tried mvpmc's network settings and their performance was worse probably because of timing issues in their code. This in itself is not always a problem unless your network doesn't like it, which could be the case for you.

Martin

FuzzyPapaBear · 2008-03-19, 05:25 PM

mvallevand Wrote:A noticeable PQ difference is very unlikely since it decoded by the mvp's hardware. I would check simple things like your cables and the source file.

That's what I was thinking. If the hardware is doing the decoding then there should be no difference in PQ. However, when I pause on a screen showing large handwritten text I can plainly see more "jaggies" with mvpmc. Kind of like when you have the de-interlacing turned up to much on the old Nvidia cards. I do have all the cables lying around all willy nilly like. :o I'm going to rearrange them when I get home. (Of course, I was setting it all up at 2:00 am last night so I can't rule out eye fatigue. :p)

mvallevand Wrote:The network speed differences you are seeing are normal, Hauppague actually tried mvpmc's network settings and their performance was worse probably because of timing issues in their code. This in itself is not always a problem unless your network doesn't like it, which could be the case for you.

Martin

The network seemed ok. It was just bothering me to seeing all those collisions on that segment when using the default dongle. The mvpmc dongle had no issues (that I could tell) on the network. You've done some pretty good work.

BTW, color saturation seems to be better too. I'm constantly "tweaking" the Nvidia card but the colors always seem to look flat. The color reproduction on the MVP looks pretty good. Especially considering it is not HD.

Deusxmachina · 2008-03-19, 08:22 PM

JimF Wrote:If you use the MVPMC dongle, it will play AC3. But you will get severe lip sync problems unless you are careful. I have posted some suggestions:
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=33591

I'm guessing the MVPMC dongle is a specific Hauppauge install file. If so, I never manually installed it. I literally took the MVP out of the box, plugged in the router cable, s-video and RCA audio to TV, set GBPVR server config to 1, rebooted the router, and that's it. And then later cranked up the play delay because someone here said to do it.

Beats me.

zehd · 2008-03-19, 08:30 PM

Deusxmachina Wrote:I'm guessing the MVPMC dongle is a specific Hauppauge install file. If so, I never manually installed it. I literally took the MVP out of the box, plugged in the router cable, s-video and RCA audio to TV, set GBPVR server config to 1, rebooted the router, and that's it. And then later cranked up the play delay because someone here said to do it.

Beats me.

The preplay delay was probably increased to help with transcoding

fluffykeith · 2008-04-09, 07:36 PM

Progress so far.

Well I got my MVP from ebuyer and done what Deusxmachina did. Unwrapped it, connected to a screen, plugged in to the router, set PVRX2 to 1 MVP and waited for what seems ages - a few mins, for it to start up.

Looks just like the PC however one problem so far. Any video is very choppy and slow. When I play its puts up the CPU use on the server to 15% (it was also recording a show at the time).

I put up the pre-play delay but not the transcode delay.

When looking at the network use from task manager on the server it is only about 2.5% with odd peaks 5%.

I have a 30m cable to it cat6 but that should be ok.

Any ideas?

***sub*** · 2008-04-09, 07:50 PM

Quote:Looks just like the PC however one problem so far. Any video is very choppy and slow. When I play its puts up the CPU use on the server to 15% (it was also recording a show at the time).

What type of video file was it? MPEG2 or an AVI or something else?

Do you have wired connection or wireless?