Anyone using the Vista View Saber DA-1N1-E Combo Tuner?

[whurlston]

Loomy, all your QAM recording issues will be solved by changing <BDACheckSignalStatusDuringRecording> to "1" in the config.xml and restarting the recording service. QAM recordings will not work without that change.

Upon starting up gbpvr.exe: Recording status shows that the SECOND device is doing live tv. Shouldn't it be the first device? It started on a channel that they both have in the EPG.

See sub's post above. LiveTV starts at the bottom of the tuner list. Recording starts at the top.

... and then the image is offset to the left by 1/4 with a fraction of a second of the missing part looping on the right hand side from when the signal was first displayed.

This sounds like a decoder issue. Try using a different decoder (or possibly a different renderer).

Going to live tv takes seconds to load from a black screen ... Quitting live tv and re-entering brings up a "signal not detected" screen with full strength bar and an empty quality bar, then moments later the quality bar skips up and the live tv comes on

This is normal behavior. It takes 5-7 seconds to initialize the tuner in QAM mode. Once initialized channel changes are much faster than that though.

I await sage advice!

Sorry, I can only give you GB-PVR advice.

[Loomy]

Thanks for all that, whurlston. I think I've nailed some of these problems to the BDA mux on the encoding side, rather than the decoder. I'm using the mux that comes with windows xp. What product do I have to get in order to have the best BDA mux? Cyberlink-something?

[whurlston]

The DVR-MS mux should work just fine. I don't use the Cyberlink mux so I can't really say if that will work better for you or not. What issues are you still having?

[Loomy]

Recorded video plays back with a corrupted look. Skippy at times, going crazy pixellated.

As well, starting a manual recording locks me into that channel such that changing channels doesn't work. I have to exit live tv, re-enter live tv, and then change channel in order for the second tuner to be used.

[Loomy]

FYI, Cyberlink PowerCinema 5 includes two mux .ax files that are picked up the the gbpvr bda mux checker, in this order:

Found: CyberLink MPEG Muxer
FILE: C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerCinema\Kernel\VideoProcessor\MDMpgMux.ax
VERSION: 5.0.1727

Found: CyberLink MPEG Muxer
FILE: C:\Program Files\CyberLink\PowerCinema\Kernel\DV\PCMDV_MpgMux.ax
VERSION: 5.0.2221


I still have a problem with skippy botched recordings however :[

[sub]

If you have access to a webserver, can you post a small sample video you've recorded? Just a minute or so long.

Since you're an ATSC user, I'd stick with the DVR-MS mux.

[Loomy]

http://www.ihaveabadfeelingaboutthis.com/gbpvr/

There you see three manual recordings of no particular size, one with each major mux. TS mux, dvr-ms mux, and the mpg is either that old cyberlink mux that you can get free from some tuner company, or a newer cyberlink mux... I forget which. I tried playing them on a different machine with with smplayer, vlc, mpc with ffdshow, and wmplayer for kicks... just to make sure it wasn't the decoder. The files come up as pretty sketchy formats in gspot, so I figure they are just getting encoded in a strange way :O

[sub]

5) When setting a recording up can I make the 'steps' less large than 10 minutes for the start and end time? I'd like this to be in increments of 1 minute instead

What is the output of Mux Checker on your machine?

[sub]

Having looked at the the .ts and .dvr-ms file, it seems you're having signal reception problems. The device isnt receiving a good enough signal, so its not able to deliver all the packets on to the mux filter for writing to disk.

[Loomy]

I would have said that too if it wasn't for the normal playback being fine more often than not. That said, after some further testing I do notice it get sketchy when recording both feeds, but the sketchiness comes and goes... though that would also be blamed on signal issues.

If you think what you see is to blame on the cable and the tuner alone, I'll ditch the tuner. Even though the cable is fine elsewhere and it comes out of an amplifier, it isn't worth further hassle. When it comes to the magical voodoo of electromagnetic signals, I throw in the hat :[

Maybe a PVR500 with only analog inputs would work better, even though it looks like trash.