Hauppauge 1600/vista/gbpvr=misery

[genalex]

I'm your newest newbie and loaded with technobaggage.
I have a new lenovo 3000 with 19"lcd running amd athlon 6400x2 @2gig with 1 gig DDR and 250GB sat drive. Runs great. Shows the windows media center pool table intro video in breathtaking hd and color.

Now my problems begin:

I am piping in my DishTV signal which outputs rf on ant. channel 60. The box is in another room and I control it with a uhf remote. I had been viewing this signal successfully on a tv/vcr lashup, but thought it would be nice to get tv and analog video inputs on the computer screen for record and edit and burn use. (And maybe even play around with on-air hd.)

Neither Hauppauge, vista media center nor gbpvr s/w will allow a successful setup. They can't just let me set the card for ch 60; they insist I be tied into a program guide and they scan for my signal on typical cable box output connections like ch 3 or 4, or video jacks. I finally was able to force the card to 60 using the Hauppauge IR remote. I can now get video via vista media center. However, vista won't let me access the hd tuner because it doesn't know of any hd transmitters in my (Phila/South Jersey) area. (There are 8 or 10 according to Titan. )

The video I am getting is solid, without jerkiness/lost frames. However, it is not as crisp and sharply defined as the old tv screen setup. The record function appears equally good.

Any suggestions you guys can offer will be really appreciated and may keep me from returning the card within the 21 day CompUSA limit.

[sub]

I dont think GB-PVR is the best software for what you're trying to do, but you can certainly get GB-PVR do it.

For the analog side of it you can create a capture source, set the recording source to the 'direct recording plugin', select the HVR1600 as the card type, select the 'fixed channel, external tuner' source option, and set the constant channel to '60', then 'OK' out of this screen. Set the EPG source to 'none', then click 'Update EPG' to force it to save the capture source - the 'add' button should now be enabled. Use the 'add' button to add a channel and give it a name something like 'DishTV'. No when you access live tv you should see the 'DishTV' channel showing whatever your Dish receiver is tuned to.

GB-PVR is obviously better suited to having a real EPG, so features like the TV Guide work, but you can do what I describe above.

[sub]

You can do pretty much the same thing for the digital side. Create a capture source, set the recording source to the 'BDA Recording Plugin', select the HVR1600 card, 'OK' out of that screen. Set the EPG Source to 'None' then hit Update EPG to save the capture source. Click add and create a few channels with the names of the digital channels you hope to receive, then hit the 'map digital channels to EPG channels' button. It'll scan and hopefully find some digital channels. You can then map these to the channels you created.

[genalex]

Hi, sub. Thanks for the detailed instructions. I followed them very carefully and they helped me understand the workings of gbpvr. However, I'm still stuck. When I attempt to run the program and go to live tv, I get "No channels have been selected...and it sends me back to config, where I repeat the add of channel 60, but to no avail. I even re-installed the program for fear of a corrupted file, but that didn't help. Any suggestions?

[sub]

That sounds like you've added the digital capture source, but didnt do the 'map digital channels to EPG channels' step. When you go to this screen, it'll do a scan, then on the left of the screen you need to click on the 'tuning request' column next to each channel, and select which channel it maps to.

If you dont do this, then the channels arent mapped, and are automatically disabled.

[genalex]

Did that for the digital case, though the scan found no signals. (No surprise since my antenna is indoors at ground level.)

But my problem is in the analog, where I've added my DishTV as channel 1, 2, 3 and 4 , but it isn't being recognized.

[sub]

A couple of vista users have had a problem like this. The problem related to the way Vista tries to protect the files.

If you're running Vista, you may find you need to look in you "MyDocuments\Local\VirtualStore\program files" or something like that and delete any devnz directory you find below that directory.

When you run the config app - right click on the icon and run as administrator.

[genalex]

vista won't let me delete devnz directory--says "program is open in another program." Don't know what that might be. I turned off gbtray program which had started on startup. Didn't help. And "run as admin. is grayed out when I right click on config icon. Oh, woe is me.

[sub]

Sorry, I dont really have an answer for you. I'm not running Vista here yet.

[pastro]

vista won't let me delete devnz directory--says "program is open in another program." Don't know what that might be. I turned off gbtray program which had started on startup. Didn't help. And "run as admin. is grayed out when I right click on config icon. Oh, woe is me.

I'm not running Vista either but did you stop the recording service? Do you see any processes listed that have GBPVR in them?