help setting up dual recording before tonight!

[sub]

I'll have to go back and fix that, but my main problem is that my new card works fine, but my old one only shows static.....like the cable wire is unplugged, but as i mentioned..i changed the wires around and same result, so i know it's getting a cable feed. They are both pvr-150 cards, identical, and i named them "pvr-150-1" and "pvr-150-2" and one is set to tuner#1 and the new one is set to tuner#2...

I'm not really sure off hand, but this is a pretty common setup that generally works well, so it must be some simple stopping it working.

Are you sure this switch thing you mentioned above is doing exactly what you said? If its just showing static, then it sounds like its just not receiving any signal. Did you try taking this device out of the picture?

There's no way to recover all my scheduled and reoccuring recordings from the capture source i removed, right?

No - you'll need to reschedule any pending recordings.

[nv40]

not getting a signal is the first thing i thought also, since it simply looks like static on a tv that has the cable unplugged. As i mentioned though, I switched the wire going to both card around and the new card pulled a signal just fine off the wire that WAS on the old card, while the old card showed static off the cable wire that was just working on the new card. I'm about to go start ripping the whole thing apart and start from scratch.....but i was just curious if i was missing something simple that jumped out at you....I'm baffled because as you said, this should be a very simple setup, especially since i didn't touch anything hardware wise except install the new card, and add an extra splitter to feed it a signal.I'll update after going tear through this from scratch. Oh, is there any way for me to speed up my testing process since i'm going to unistall and reinstall these cards (possibly) several times, the long wait occurs whenever i have to do a manual epg update so gbpvr will pull up a channel so i can see whether it's static or not. Is there any way to load a channel for testing purposes manually, without having to do epg updates until i've figured the problem out???

[HtV]

Looks to me like your splitter is defect or not installed right or the cable from the splitter to the tvcard. But I guess you figured that out yourself.

[nv40]

Looks to me like your splitter is defect or not installed right or the cable from the splitter to the tvcard. But I guess you figured that out yourself.

well...this just got a little more confusing, as it definately seems to be a computer problem, and not wiring. Here's what i did:

1. I took the 2 cables going to the 2 cards and plugged both into TV sets, and both sets shows tv.....so i know all my cable wiring is correct, and working.

2. I noticed that gbpvr was showing my second card as playing a tv show when i went to live tv, but when i unplugged the cable wire to the second card......the signal never went away. This really confused me, so i plugged it back in, and unplugged the wire to the first card, at which point the tv went to static. I have no clue how, but it appears that my first card is the only one putting a signal up to the screen, but gbpvr is saying that's it the seond card that is putting it up there. Until this, i've been believing gbpvr, and thinking it's the old card showing static.....when according to this, gbpvr has the cards confused. This still doesn't explain why one is showing static, and one isn't....but it has to be related to this. Also, when i configure both cards....do i pick pvr-150 in the list for both of them...or should it show 2 pvr-150's on the list (whenever i tick the box for 'show only hardware installed in this system'). I was assuming it would either show "pvr-150 and pvr-150 2' or just show 2 entries doe "pvr-150", but it doesn't...could this be the problem?


edit: by the way, just on a hunch.....i'm going to move the cards away from each other in the computer, as currently they are side by side in pci slots. I'm also going to remove all capture sources from gbpvr when i do this, move the cards...and then add capture sources back in.

[nv40]

WOW...this has been horrible, i missed some very important recordings, and trashed my scheduled recordings to get to this point.....but it looks like i've found the problem.------ THE D@MN CARD THAT I BOUGHT IS BAD!!. I finally decided to isolate each card, left only 1 capture source in gbpvr, then i pulled out the new card and tried to watch live tv on the old card...worked fine. Then i shut it down and swapped the cards out, booted up, live tv----static!!!!. I'll update after getting to the store to swap these cards out.


p.s. Just to make sure, there's no way to switch these cards back and forth between PAL and NTSC is there? just making sure it's not a jumper issue and i'm an idiot.

[nv40]

well...new card, same problem. Is there any way this can be a driver issue.....my old card is about 2 years old at this point, maybe the old drivers are causing problems with this new card?

[nv40]

Ok, I'd probably have a capture source set up for each card, with full EPG giving 100 channels, and an additional capture source on the one card, with the EPG source set to 'none' and manually create a channel called AV1 (or Digital Cable) or something similar. This capture source would be set for 'fixed channel, external tuner' with the constant channel number set to 3.

After that, this 'AV1' channel will show up as a channel that can be used when scheduling manual recordings etc.

I FINALLY GOT THEM WORKING!!!!! It was a driver issue the whole time. Apparently even though the cards were identical, they were different revisions and needed a driver update. Only thing left to do is to apply the setting you mentioned above, but i'm a little confused on this. I went through them, but when i go to manual recording, what channel should be showing up for me to choose using your method....cause i don't see any 'special' channel. maybe a step by step on this 1 more time for me, thanks sub....been a great help with all this. donation on the way.......

[sub]

I went through them, but when i go to manual recording, what channel should be showing up for me to choose using your method....cause i don't see any 'special' channel.

Re-read the steps I posted. For the way you're trying to use it, the key was setting the EPG source to 'none', then manually creating a channel (via the 'Add' button) called something like AV1 or 'Digital Cable'. This special channel will now show up in the channel list, with whatever name you gave it.

[nv40]

Re-read the steps I posted. For the way you're trying to use it, the key was setting the EPG source to 'none', then manually creating a channel (via the 'Add' button) called something like AV1 or 'Digital Cable'. This special channel will now show up in the channel list, with whatever name you gave it.

thanks sub.....i got it. I forgot to go in and ADD the channel, just like you said. Well, sorry to post so much garbage, but maybe somebody else out there will read this a remember to always check for updated drivers, even if everything seems fine, lol. One last question if i can. Now that i have this setup, I'm curious as to how smart the logic is that you built into the program when recordings shows. Let me give you an example, I only have 1 tuner that can record the digital cable boc channel i manually added.....so let's say i have a recording i set for that manual channel at 7:15, and i have another recordings on a regular channel at 7:00...so they overlap each other. Now, since both tuner cards have the ability to record the show at 7:00, is gbpvr smart enough to know that only 1 can start the show at 7:15, and pick the other one to record the show starting at 7:00. I'm assuming it's not, and that it simply looks at what's availabe at that exact moment, regardless of what it may need 15 minutes(or more) down the road....is that correct? I need to understand this so that next time i have a PPV event come on and need something else recorded that may come on just before it, but overlap with it, that i can figure out a way to force the program to use the 2nd tuner, so that the first one will be availabe when the PPV starts. The only way i can think of doing this right now, is to simply adjust the pre-padding on whichever one comes on later so that it needs to start at the exact same time (or slightly before) as the first one....so that gbpvr will be forced to use the correct tuner since it can see that only one is available for that manually set up channell.

[nv40]

anybody other than sub familiar with the logic for this? (i know he stays busy).