Streaming: the revenge

[daniver]

After more or less giving up that I'd ever get remote TV viewing working, without doing anything different, my living room PC will happily act as a server to the five other PCs I've been trying to get to act as servers! Why?

GB-PVR v1.0.8 works fine on all six PCs with a USB DVB-T tuner plugged in, but only the living room PC lets the other PCs view live TV or recordings remotely. I shared the necessary drives, turned off all firewalls, etc. but remote streaming still didn't work, except on the living room PC. Most of the PCs are on a 1Gbit Ethernet, the remainder are connected to 100Mbit.

What I've obversed when remote viewing doesn't work is that the client can view the TV guide or list of recorded programmes, but when I select a programme to watch the screen clears, there's a brief period of disk activity, the OSD display shows information about the current programme but then I just see a black screen with no sound. On the server, a tuner is allocated and it starts recording the programme the client was trying to view into a file and continues until the client stops trying to watch the programme. However, sometimes the client and/or server locks up and have to be killed using the task manager.

Even on the working living room PC, the process isn't perfect and the picture occasionally freezes for a few frames or skips. I'm hoping to be able to fix this my increasing buffer sizes.

Is streaming on GB-PVR really this hit and miss?

[sub]

It works pretty well for me.

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

[daniver]

Client and server logs attached.

In terms of machine hardware, the living room PC, the only one that allows remote clients to connect successfully, is a dual-core Athlon X2 with two USB external DVB-T tuners and an internal analogue tuner that's not been tuned in yet. All other PCs are a mixture of core 2 duo, core duo or Pentium 4 with an external USB DVB-T tuner plugged in when trying to get them to act as a server. All running a mixture of Windows XP Pro and home editions.

I normally have Zone Alarm running as my firewall, but it doesn't make a difference if its running or not - the living room PC works happily as a server with it running, for example.

I had to manually kill the recording service on both client and server before winzip would let me zip up the logs, just if there's any odd error messages at the end of the logs.

It would be great if I could get streaming working reliably and thus fulfil my dream (I know, sad isn't it) of been able to view Sky TV anywhere in the house.

[sub]

2007-08-20 08:27:03.781 VERBOSE Using DVR-MS mux

The Microsoft DVR-MS mux is incompatible with stream. You'd need to install the Cyberlink or ATI mux so that you're creating .mpg files instead of .dvr-ms files.

[daniver]

Hmm. BDA Mux Checker reports this:

GB-PVR has detected the following multiplex filters on your machine:

Found: CyberLink MPEG Muxer
FILE: c:\winxp\system32\mpgmux.ax
VERSION: 5.0.1307

Found: CyberLink MPEG Muxer
FILE: I:\Downloads\Apps\GBPVR\mux\THMpgMux_5.0.0.2022_.ax
VERSION: 5.0.2022

In Config the BDA Multiplexer is set to Cyberlink. What else do I have to do before GB-PVR will actually use the Cyberlink Mux?

[sub]

2007-08-20 08:27:03.640 VERBOSE FindFilterByName failed to locate filter: CyberLink MPEG Muxer
2007-08-20 08:27:03.640 VERBOSE FindFilterByName failed to locate filter: PP MPEG Muxer
2007-08-20 08:27:03.671 VERBOSE FindFilterByName failed to locate filter: SnapStream MPEGMuxer
2007-08-20 08:27:03.750 VERBOSE FindFilterByName failed to locate filter: ATI MPEG Multiplexer

I can see the recording service is definitely not able to find the Cyberlink mux, or any other mux, other than the dvr-ms mux.

Is you I: drive a network drive? If so, then its like the recording service is unable to see this drive.

[daniver]

Nope, my I drive is local. I hate computers; I program them for a living. They are meant to be deterministic yet Microsoft somehow seem to be able to break this rule. Two Cyberlink muxes are registered but GB-PVR can't use either of them for some reason.

During my previous attempts to get streaming working I downloaded various versions of the Cyberlink mux and a copy of the ATI mux, but never tried it. Just registered it now, changed the config to use it and now the PC will act as a server! You are a superstar!

There must be something wrong with the Cyberlink mux(es) I have installed - I thought I was using the recommended "vintage". I got a version of the Cyberlink mux in the past by installing a trail version of Power Cinema, I wonder if this screwed something up? I'll have another play around with the Cyberlink muxes again tonight to see if I can track down the problem.

Thanks again for your help,

Gary

[stustunz]

have you placed the mux in system32 folder?

[daniver]

Nope. I didn't think it had to be. The ATI one, which is now working, isn't in the system32 folder. The Cyberlink mux, which was in the system32 folder, didn't work. There is something odd about the Cyberlink mux because when I attempt to unregister it, regsvr32 claims it has, but it still shows up in BDA Mux Checker. I've manually renamed the file now - still shows up in BDA Mux Checker, but it can't work out its version; later I'll reboot my PC and hopefully that will be the end to the broken Cyberlink mux...

[stustunz]

ok dunno never had that happen
it says where its found it are you sure you are unregistering the right one