Changing Stream Quality for Live TV

[ziggyk]

How can I change the quality of the Live TV in GBPVR? I would like to change the quality so that it takes up less bandwidth so that Live TV is watchable. I don't need time-shifting capabilities - just Live TV.

I am currently going across my network with GBPVR installed on my server using a PVR-150 Hauppauge card (which has a hardware mpeg encoder). I have GBPVR installed on my client machine and have it set to connect to the share on the server that I created (\\server01\GBPVR).

I've tried changing the quality settings in Webadmin but it still is trying to transmit full quality tv.

I am accessing live TV on my client PC by right-clicking the G icon in the system tray, clicking start GB-PVR and then clicking Live TV.

I appreciate any help. I've spent at least two hours looking through the documentation and searching the forums and everything I have tried hasn't changed the quality.

[sub]

How can I change the quality of the Live TV in GBPVR? I would like to change the quality so that it takes up less bandwidth so that Live TV is watchable. I don't need time-shifting capabilities - just Live TV.

Assuming bandwidth is your problem, you can edit the direct.ini file on the server, and lower the bitrate specified in [SETUP-LiveTV Quality] section.

[linene]

sub,

I think you told me that editing the direct.ini file for video quality only changes for analog sources?

[sub]

Correct, but the above said mentioned a PVR150, which is an analog device.

[linene]

Sorry about that sub...though i was just commenting on ziggyk's post.

[ziggyk]

I've changed the direct.ini file and have not had any luck. I also changed the setting in the Capture settings under Live TV to no avail. The quality is still the same. I've attached a screenshot of all my settings that are on the server side.

I've also encountered a problem when I am viewing from the client when I attempt to change channels it will only let me change the channel once. After that the client locks up and I have to end the process. Time-shifting is still enabled on the live tv feed even though I don't care to use it.

I can only get the streaming to work on the client. If I set the capture to file sharing it does not work. I don't get an error, it just sends me back to them main gb-pvr screen where I can view the guide and anything else but live tv. I've heard that this usually doesn't matter so I'm not worried about using stream or file sharing.

After I view a live tv feed from the server my TVBuffer directory shows an mpg file that is huge. I don't know how GB-PVR works exactly but that is probably the file that my client is using during playback and why I can't get the size down.

Here is a list of what I have:
Server:
Windows 2003 Server Standard
Hauppauge PVR-150
GB-PVR 9905

Client:
Windows XP SP2
Stream configuration
GB-PVR 9905

The last bit of info that I have is that I attempted to use SnapStream BeyondTV with this card but it said I couldn't because it was a hardware based encoder card. There was no way to encode the TV to be played through the Live TV feature in BeyondTV. I've used BeyondTV before with my ATI AIW and it worked great for the Live TV portion. It seems that the hardware encoding can't work and I heard that GB-PVR could do it. So, could the hardware based encoder be the problem?

Let me know if you need any other information to help me figure this out. Thanks in advance.

[sub]

Reproduce the problem, then zip and attach the client and server logs and I'll take a look.

The last bit of info that I have is that I attempted to use SnapStream BeyondTV with this card but it said I couldn't because it was a hardware based encoder card. There was no way to encode the TV to be played through the Live TV feature in BeyondTV. I've used BeyondTV before with my ATI AIW and it worked great for the Live TV portion. It seems that the hardware encoding can't work and I heard that GB-PVR could do it. So, could the hardware based encoder be the problem?

I dont think so. If its a PVR150, it'll be using the hardware encoder.

[ziggyk]

Sub, thanks for your help. Here are my logs.

Another note, when I have to bail out of the client GB-PVR software the G icon on the server stays green until I restart the service.

[sub]

Have you tried changing the audio and video decoder?

[ziggyk]

I tried changing the decoder on the client to both Nero and Intervideo and I still get full quality mpeg video.