PVRPowerTray for GBPVR - enhanced GBPVR tray application

[A_Brass]

I too got my LED PPMonitor working. Thanks in part to PVRPowerTray. I'm going to install mine inside my case(which sits under the TV) When I get the chance.

Now, as far as the wife is concerned, it can truly replace the VCR. I will label the Recording LED as "REC" on the outside of the case. She will be so happy.

I wonder if the REC LED should be green, yelllow or amber. Better check with the wife. What makes sence to me, might not make sence to her.

Remote Recording Service:
I did a search of my Reg. I found two places where it give the path to the GBPVR.MDB. If I were to change those path's to the location of my GBPVR server do you think PVRPowertray would be able to monitor my PVR remotely?

[kaiger]

Thanks. I can be your guinea pig if you want to test multi-tuner support.

[jimh]

I too got my LED PPMonitor working. Thanks in part to PVRPowerTray. I'm going to install mine inside my case(which sits under the TV) When I get the chance.

Now, as far as the wife is concerned, it can truly replace the VCR. I will label the Recording LED as "REC" on the outside of the case. She will be so happy.

I wonder if the REC LED should be green, yelllow or amber. Better check with the wife. What makes sence to me, might not make sence to her.

Remote Recording Service:
I did a search of my Reg. I found two places where it give the path to the GBPVR.MDB. If I were to change those path's to the location of my GBPVR server do you think PVRPowertray would be able to monitor my PVR remotely?

I'd suggest you make a note of any changes you make to the registry beforehand. You certainly can try the current version of PVRPowerTray to see whether you can fool it into checking your remote PC - because PVRPowerTray does not make any changes to your .mdb file, there is no harm.

You will need to turn OFF the option in the configuration that monitors the file size during recordings because PVRPowerTray will not look at the correct drive letter for the recordings directory. PVRPowerTray reads the config.xml file from the same gbpvr directory that contains the .mdb file it is monitoring to determine where recordings are being written to. That config.xml file will contain the local drive letter, not the remote drive letter, so it won't find the recordings that it is expecting.

If you are able to get PVRPowerTray to monitor remotely, please let me know whether the refresh rate (currently fixed at 2 seconds), is too frequent for your wired remote connection to handle. When testing a new beta version on my system (wireless G), 2 seconds is a bit too often for it to open and close the remote connection repeatedly - I think 5 or 10 seconds would be more reasonable. Of course, the next version will allow you to set the polling frequency that works best on your system.

- Jim

[jimh]

Thanks. I can be your guinea pig if you want to test multi-tuner support.

Thanks kaiger, I'll probably take you up on your offer. I'll need about a week or two before I will have the time to get the next beta release together.

- Jim

[pknighton67]

First - Thanks for a powerful addition to GB-PVR. Excellent work & a great time-saver.

After about a week's testing, one feature I would ask you consider enhancing is to build in an optional feature for "unattended handling of failing recordings".

By this I mean extending the existing feature which detects a recording file is not growing as it should, and if not the user is interactively informed so they can do something (which is invariable re-start the recordingservice & the tray).

My experience has been that daily I have this problem occur 0-4 times. Once I returned to my PC to find a screenful of such pop-ups cascaded when a recording was not growing as it should but I had been away from the PC to detect it (quite a lot of pop-up windows had accumulated!). It is for this reason that I ask you to consider this enhancement. :-)

My suggestion would be an user-selectable feature along the following lines, including possible configuration options:

[t/f - default false] automatically handle recording errors (i.e. files not growing at rate should). If true, do not display the pop-up warnings & handle internally.
behaviour options:

1. restart gbpvrrecording service
2. optional [t/f] exit powertray, unload from memory & restart powertray

Maybe step 2. may be redundant - you would know better than I if it is required after a restart of the gbpvrrecordingservice ??? I've done it in the past as it seemed to be the only way to re-schedule the failed recording and so start it recording again.

Many thanks
Paul K.

[sub]

My experience has been that daily I have this problem occur 0-4 times. Once I returned to my PC to find a screenful of such pop-ups cascaded when a recording was not growing as it should but I had been away from the PC to detect it (quite a lot of pop-up windows had accumulated!). It is for this reason that I ask you to consider this enhancement. :-)

I think you'd be better off to fix what is causing your recording problems...

[jimh]

I think you'd be better off to fix what is causing your recording problems...

My thoughts exactly...

I'd love to help you find a workaround, but I have to agree - in the long run you will be much better off finding and resolving the source of the frequent failed recordings.

- Jim

[j3flight]

Great little app. You obviously spent a lot of time on it....

I think a lot of people are forgetting the "service" nature of GBPVR and expecting 4000 features be built into this little app. One of GBPVR's greatest features is the fact that you DON'T have to be logged in for recordings to happen and EPG to update - it's the only PVR app I know of that is like that. BeyondTV, MediaPortal, ShowShifter all run as user applications and if you ever get logged out - POOF - no more recordings.

Please don't feel obligated to add every feature people want into this. It is a monitoring and status program first and foremost and a couple hooks like "update EPG" etc etc are cool. I say lean it out and make it clean (with a low memory footprint) rather than adding bells and whistles.

Jason

[linfor]

Can someone post a link on how to make the led box?

[jimh]

Can someone post a link on how to make the led box?

Here's a link to the thread that started it all...

LED Status Monitor

- Jim