Newbie with a few small problems

[WerewolfTA]

Hello. I've had gbpvr running for a few weeks now and love it, as does the wife. However, I've encountered a few small problems that I've been unable to resolve by searching the forums or reading the wiki.

Sometimes a recording appears to record all the way through, as indicated by the hard drive activity light, but when it gets done, I have only a few minutes of show. Looking in the file system, it is indeed a small recording of only several megabytes instead of several hundred megabytes. I rem'd out retime from my postprocessing bat yesterday, thinking that might be a contributor, but all that produced was a show that was all out of whack, and this with the newest pvr-150 driver from hauppauge's website. It happens less often since upgrading from a 30GB storage drive to a 160GB, around 1 in 10 versus 1 in 3 before. Is this maybe a lack of RAM issue?

Also, sometimes recordings do not show up in the recordings screen. They'll be present in the file system. I can drag them into the video library folder, where they play just fine. However, this moving of files is a bit beyond what the wife wants to do, and requires manual cleanup afterward to eliminate the containing folder and accompanying text files. I have no idea what might be causing this. In both of the above issues, I've had it happen when we were watching recordings and also when nobody was using the TV.

I have set my zap2it account to only give me the channels I'm subscribed to (basic cable, only; there are a bunch of channels available that I don't get). I've also unchecked all those channels that I don't get in the capture source section of config. On the TV guide, I only see the correct channels. However, in the search guide, I get results for all the channels offered. Is this something I can change? It's not a huge deal, but it does take longer to scroll through the offerings, and I have to remember to check the channel before telling it to record.

Last, I find that my, ahem, backup DVD's play just fine, but originals won't. I thought that I read that it uses media player, so I tried through that. It says, "Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because a problem occurred with digital copyright protection." It's on version 9. My DVD player is an older DVD-ROM/CD+/-RW. I would switch over to media player classic, but I seem to recall seeing somewhere on here sub saying that gbpvr won't use that.

If it helps, I'm using the sqlite db. If anybody needs some logs, just let me know. There are a bunch of them, so didn't want to stick them all up here. Thanks in advance for any help or guidance you can provide me.

[replaytv]

I noticed that you use comskip and retime with the PVR150. The problem you describe might related to the timestamp issue (see the sticky in the community announcement). You can do a couple test without using the comskip and retime to see the timestamp is correct or not by pausing the video while viewing to see if the full length show up.

comskip and retime work best with continuous timestamp.

Dan L.

[HtV]

Last, I find that my, ahem, backup DVD's play just fine, but originals won't. I thought that I read that it uses media player, so I tried through that. It says, "Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because a problem occurred with digital copyright protection." It's on version 9. My DVD player is an older DVD-ROM/CD+/-RW. I would switch over to media player classic, but I seem to recall seeing somewhere on here sub saying that gbpvr won't use that.

Your dvd player is probably set to the wrong region. There are programs for that. e.g. Anydvd or regionfree....(something like that): http://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=25#25

edit: It might be wise to upgrade to wmp 10, I have seen sub advising that several times

[WerewolfTA]

Thanks for the replies. I finally got a chance to screw with it.

I noticed that you use comskip and retime with the PVR150. The problem you describe might related to the timestamp issue (see the sticky in the community announcement). You can do a couple test without using the comskip and retime to see the timestamp is correct or not by pausing the video while viewing to see if the full length show up.

comskip and retime work best with continuous timestamp.

I thought retime was there to fix screwed up timestamps. I think I definitely have issues with timestamps. I did a test where I rem'd the retime stuff out of my postprocessing.bat. Before, all shows would start at the beginning and go until the recording ended, however long that happened to be. When I rem'd out the retime, my sample program (on playback) started almost at the end, showed that there was only 0:31 worth of show taped, but continued to play beyond the 0:31 mark while the inverted triangle time indicator just sat at that mark. Much worse than with it enabled. Within the file system, the sample program showed the right size for a full show, whereas the others with the retime were smaller. If not retime, what should I be using to correct my timestamp problems?

HtV,
I hadn't remembered seeing sub recommend the upgrade to 10, but I gave it a shot anyway. No dice, same error message (damn drm). However, your mention of anydvd (for which I have a license) may have been the key, one that I hadn't thought of. I installed it and am letting it run in the background. It did show that my drive is a region 1 drive, which is what all my movies are. However, I'm letting it strip out the garbage. I've tried 2 original discs so far. American Pie locks up gbpvr, no remote control, can't select items with the mouse through vnc (oddly, though, it will play with wmp). No problems at all with Scary Movie 4. I'll run some other discs and see how I fare.


Does anybody have any ideas about my other issues? Thanks.

[sub]

When I rem'd out the retime, my sample program (on playback) started almost at the end, showed that there was only 0:31 worth of show taped, but continued to play beyond the 0:31 mark while the inverted triangle time indicator just sat at that mark.

Yes, that sounds like the PVR150 timestamp bug to me. Have you applied the newer drivers, and the associated timestamp fix registry settings?

[WerewolfTA]

Yes, I had downloaded and installed the newest release drivers from hauppauge's website after uninstalling the old. I also updated the decoders from their website. I didn't see any mention there about registry changes, but I just did a search here and found where you talk about that, so I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

[WerewolfTA]

I made the registry changes a couple of weeks ago, and everything seems to be going good. Haven't had any weird timing issues. I also haven't noticed any recordings dropping off my list. I suspect the database was going through its automated cleaning cycle while the video was temporarily renamed and deleting the entry. Thanks, sub!

I also resolved my zap2it issue. I hadn't gotten all those channels deleted from my profile with zap2it, so even though I'd go in and delete the channels in config, they'd reappear at the next epg update. If I just unchecked them, they wouldn't appear in the TV guide, but all the programs would appear in a search. Now that I've gotten them deleted from everything, they don't appear anywhere.

And I definitely have a lack of RAM. I 3-finger saluted the computer with gbpvr running, and my running processes were almost 600MB. It still runs pretty smooth, even though it exceeds my RAM. I'm getting another 512MB for Christmas, so hopefully that clears up the occassional short recording.

Thanks for all the help.

[nitrogen_widget]

I didn't know about the PVR-150 driver & reg-fix combo.
I have been using an older driver without problems.