Confused About Hardware Choices

[brandon]

Hi All

I've been reading about GBPVR for a while. I've read a lot, but I'm still not clear about video capture cards.

The scenario is I have analog cable channels, "digital" cable channels and OTA HDTV channels. I say "digital" cable because thats what Comcast, my cable company, calls them.

I want to be able to record all three types of channels. I understand how to work with analog cable channels, you just get a capture card that can take a coax input.

The "digital" cable channels require a cable box, so I'm looking at a channel changing solution. I get that part. I need a card with a composite input, and I put the cable box video out into it. Then I'll have an IR blaster/remote to change the cable box channel.

I'll probably need an HDTV card with an external antenna for OTA HDTV.

What I don't understand is how to make the combination work. Do I use three cards? A Dual Tuner card plus an HDTV card?

I don't fully understand recording multiple shows simultaneously. How does GB PVR figure our which encoder to use? For example, if its scheduled to problem two shows at the same time, and they are both on analog channels, is it smart enough to get one show off the analog tuned, and the other off the cable box?

When watching live TV, how do you switch between the different tunes?

Thanks for reading.

[David]

I understand that if you want to record three shows concurrently you need three "tuners" or capture sources. Note that when a single "tuner" allows for multiple inputs (coax, rca, s-video) you can only use one input at a time. You would not be able to connect the analog cable to coax and digital set top to the rca/s-video input of a single tuner and record two shows at once. It sounds like you would want three tuners, though you may be able to go with using only two tuner cards; the dual tuner and HD card.

My HD cards can also record analog, but not HD and analog at the same time. I gave up on the analog side since they do not support hardware encoding and the software recorder plugin is difficult.

[brandon]

BTW, I did read this too

http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Config/DefineSource

I'm unclear. If I have two season passes set up, and they are at the same time, GB PVR will just figure it out the best it can with available devices?

[brandon]

I understand that if you want to record three shows concurrently you need three "tuners" or capture sources. Note that when a single "tuner" allows for multiple inputs (coax, rca, s-video) you can only use one input at a time. You would not be able to connect the analog cable to coax and digital set top to the rca/s-video input of a single tuner and record two shows at once. It sounds like you would want three tuners, though you may be able to go with using only two tuner cards; the dual tuner and HD card.

My HD cards can also record analog, but not HD and analog at the same time. I gave up on the analog side since they do not support hardware encoding and the software recorder plugin is difficult.

Hey thanks for the tip! Yep, I do understand the difference between types of inputs and the actual tuner on the card.

It sounds like I should just load up my PC with supported cards and just go from there.

[David]

I have two HD devices with identical EPG data, and one analog. While I have a channel 2 with virtually identical programming on all three devices, the two HD cards consider their channel 2 as different from the analog card. When I schedule a digital recording, GB-PVR picks which HD card to use automatically, but it does not roll over to the analog source to pick it up if the two digital are busy.

I would expect that your analog and digital cable channels would come from a single EPG download, so it may be possible that your analog and digital channel 2 could both be used to record a show, with GB-PVR selecting the tuner it will use. Your OTA will likely be a different EPG source and channel 2 there will be its own thing.

I am not sure if there is a way to get GB_PVR to think all three channel 2's are the same for recording purposes. I would not want that anyway.

[brandon]

I think I get it.

Since I need to use the STB for the digital channels do I even need a digital cable capture card? I'm going to run the STB composite out to a a card composite in. Doesn't sound like I need one of those cards, but a couple analog cards (plus one for OTA HDTV)

I'm still a little fuzzy on how PVR picks which device it will record from. I don't want to make you repeat yourself. It sounds like this is one of those things I'll learn as I go along. GB PVR has a certain way of doing things, so if this is what I want to use I have to learn its rules.

How do you handle getting the proper sound when playing back Tv shows, music or DVD? Do I just drop a 5.1 sound card in, and stereo comes out as stereo and DVD's come out 5.1?

What kind of video card do you do your watching on? for now I'm just going to output it to an older Sony Trinitron. Probably through the composite connectors.

I'm pretty excited to try this out. I have a dual p3 1.2 ghz thats been sitting in the corner doing nothing for a couple years.

[stefan]

Make sure you get hardware encoding capable capture cards. http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=24731

Your assumptions are right, you'd need two analog cards, one ir blaster (usb-uirt is widely used, as well as the hauppauge pvr-150 with an ir blaster, or the mce 2005 remote), and one digital card. The other possibility is to get a hauppauge pvr-500 (it has two analog tuners), but I'm not sure whether it has composite (oh, by the way, if your STB has s-video out, that's the way to go) inputs?

However, your computer is (probably) not horse powered enough to do HD OTA, so I wouldn't go there if I were you. I say probably because I'm uncertain what the dual part can do for you, but...

How gbpvr knows which card to use? It's magic

You set up your capture sources, and define which channels are available on which card. GBPVR then merges these into one channel list (with no duplicate channels), and from that point you don't need to know which card has which channels. GBPVR will know that for you.

So when you schedule a recording, basically what happens is that gbpvr checks for available capture sources in order from the list of capture sources. The first one that has the channel is used. When watching live tv the same thing applies, but gbpvr reverses the order in which it checks for available capture sources. This means that the capture card which can receive the fewest channels should be defined first, so that you don't "hog" the capture source with all the other channels when you want to record something. (The extreme case would be that you only have channel 1 on capture source A, and channels 1-100 on capture source B. If you record channel 1 from capture source B, then capture source A is useless )

Hope that gets you started, and welcome to the forums!

[brandon]

Well thanks for the help!

I understand what needs to be done now.

I also took a look at the MCE 2005 remote. It looks like a really nice remote. I have my eye on the MCE Keyboard too. It's not officially supported by GB PVR, but I read people are using it so it might be worth a try, or maybe just a regular wireless keyboard too.

[SickBoy]

The PVR500 I have, has composite inputs, if that answers any questions. I know there have been some newer generation cards that have become available in the time period since I purchased mine (almost 2 years ago now) so I can't speak for the newer ones.

STB -> video in on an analog card would seem to do it for you (you'd not even need a "dual" tuner card unless you wanted the ability to record a digital channel and an analog channel or 2x analog channels simultaneously). Plus a HD card.

HD doesn't require a ridiculous amount of PC horsepower, but I did discover in my travails that a hardware DX9 video card is likely required. (it is for the HDTV wonder, but that is [admittedly] not the best HD card available).

[stefan]

STB -> video in on an analog card would seem to do it for you (you'd not even need a "dual" tuner card unless you wanted the ability to record a digital channel and an analog channel or 2x analog channels simultaneously).

On the other, hand, that's exactly what he wants

Plus a HD card.
HD doesn't require a ridiculous amount of PC horsepower, but I did discover in my travails that a hardware DX9 video card is likely required. (it is for the HDTV wonder, but that is [admittedly] not the best HD card available).

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