Why a PVR has been the bane of my life

[sub]

What can you tell me about 3.0? is it scraped

Its still a scraper the same as 2.5 before it.

I'm interested in buying a DVB-S card. Is there a dummies' guide anywhere that shows how I can use it to get a decent NZ EPG into GBPVR? Will I be able to use it as a recording source when it is not being used to grab an EPG or does it need to be dedicated to that task?

I should clarify that it is the Sky EPG that I'm after, not the freeview. Actually I guess I really would want both!

Currently GB-PVR only lets you grab the EPG for the channels available via that DVB capture source, but... I have added a utility for the next release that will let you grab all the listings from a DVB BDA capture source to an xmltv file. This could be used to grab an xmltv file with all the sky listings, which can then be used by all your analog and DVB cards.

[krypton_john]

Oooooh Sub, I think you just cost me $145 bucks! :-)

(or whatever it costs to buy a DVB-S card round these parts)

Fantastic answer, as always. I fear I am starting to take this for granted!

[stustunz]

thats good news as a backup
can never have to many sources for epg data
i will probably still use revens i find it pretty reliable i know other have problems but i have only been let down a couple of times in the past year
then when sky changed thier site it went to shit
but then version 3 so all was good again
havent missed any channels since
yes its still a scraper but it seems to work well so far
im not totally sure but i think it can automatically update the source when it starts

[stefan]

1. EPG. In New Zealand, the EPG situation is killing me. I've tried XMLTVNZ, but although the author has kindly made this program freely available, he (presumably having a normal life to live) does not keep it up to date frequently enough to cope with all the changes made to the websites it scrapes off. Therefore, I'm constantly battling to have a full EPG of just 5 channels, thats all. 5. Tv1, Tv2, Tv3, C4 and Prime. I was using a precompiled XML file that was secretly avaiable from a nice website, but that has recently disappeared. That, too, though caused me untold problems until I figured out how to use XMLTV to reformat the source file into an XML file that GBPVR was happy with. Right now, I can only get Tv1 and TV2 on my EPG. sob, sob, sob. I'm REALLY frustrated!

I haven't seen anyone in this thread mention tvxb. If you download the telstra ini file for new zeeland, you get support for tv1, tv2, tv3, c4, prime and a heck lot of other channels. Just remove the ones you don't want. The main advantage of tvxb is that it is fairly easy to adjust the ini file yourself if the website layout changes.

[jksmurf]

I haven't seen anyone in this thread mention tvxb. If you download the telstra ini file for new zeeland, you get support for tv1, tv2, tv3, c4, prime and a heck lot of other channels. Just remove the ones you don't want. The main advantage of tvxb is that it is fairly easy to adjust the ini file yourself if the website layout changes.

TVXB is good, I use it here. The guy who wrote it (Bill D) is also a Kiwi (living in HK) ...
k.

[dane]

Just a comment to gavinmetzlers frustrations.

Running Gb-pvr is like having an old car. I use Gb-pvr every day, love it and couldn't imagine a life without it. However, like with the old car, there are always some things not working. You have to spend endless nights trouble shooting, optimizing and now and then reinstalling.

Every time a new release is out. It starts over again, I have to modify a lot of things. The Danish characters are missing from the search function in the TV guide, configuration for transcoding to 3gb format has to be modified according to description in the forum, MVP crashes now and then, if I select season recording, but only want to keep one show, it still keeps them all, teletext never worked, some of my favorite old plugins are no longer supported, skins have been a mess, sometimes new skins didn't support all plugins. And so and so...
My wife keeps on asking why I once again have to spend an evening trouble shootingthe PVR.
But despite all these annoyances, we all love Gb-pvr and appreciate the great job SUB has done and continues doing. Nowhere else do you find so much help and so quick response. So if you like to do the detective work by searching the forum for solutions, spend a lot of time optimizing, stay here. If not, go for one of the off the shelf HDD/DVD recorders. For computer guys, the choice is easy. I am looking forward to the day where everything is so reliable that I can make a Gb-pvr PC for my old mother. I don't have time for two of them, so will wait a little bit longer :-)

By the way, I also use TVxb, it is by far the easiest to configure.

[stu8080]

Running Gb-pvr is like having an old car. I use Gb-pvr every day, love it and couldn't imagine a life without it. However, like with the old car, there are always some things not working. You have to spend endless nights trouble shooting, optimizing and now and then reinstalling.

I wouldnt say this was the case...juggling all the things going on in a htpc is your car analogy, using GBPVR is the bit that makes it sane!
It has to be said that 99% of my problems are caused because i try to 'optimise' things, in my case usually for the worst!

I cant comment on gavins guide or tuning problems, but the PAL compatible BURNDVDX2 is worth looking at. It required no setup either and burned perfect DVD's straight off.

My old htpc power supply gave up the ghost and ive not had funds to replace it until recently... 6 months of watching whatever old rubbish is on tv, endlessly channel skipping to avoid adverts is not fun! now with my new system, everything ive tried has worked perfectly (admitedly im using mvp's which simplifies things). So dont give up, just remember that all the time saved not watching adverts gives us time to get stuck into a book once in a while!

[ACTCMS]

GB-PVR is the latest project in a long line. It's also only the second one ever that my good lady wife has approved of (the first was downloading the IKEA kitchen planner to design a new kitchen a couple of years ago), which means I get to spend a bit of cash on it. So why does this one get the approbation? - simple, she gets something out of it. She's a big fan of the lifestyle programs and UKTV Bright Ideas was her favourite - then they pulled it... :mad:

So now I record most of the lifestyle stuff from the other channels which are mostly on during the week when she is at work, I spend half an hour every couple of days editing out the adds using MPEGStreamclip and stick them in the Video Library. It took her all of 30 seconds to figure out how to use the MVP, so now she has a library full of stuff to watch whenever she wants.

Looks like GB-PVR is here to stay...

PS I get my Red Dwarf and stuff - and my video jukebox - and I get to play with my machines...

[Deusxmachina]

I wouldnt say this was the case...juggling all the things going on in a htpc is your car analogy, using GBPVR is the bit that makes it sane!
It has to be said that 99% of my problems are caused because i try to 'optimise' things, in my case usually for the worst!

Heh, yeah, it seems more like a car that works pretty well but then you start modifying it to make it better but in the process have to scratch your head once in awhile as well as risk breaking things that always used to work.

"Hmm, my car is pretty good, but I think I'll add bigger fuel injectors and turn up the turbo boost... uh oh, now it doesn't idle right and the extra boost is blowing the intercooler pipes off."

[dane]

I am not talking about modifying GB-pvr just to make it look better. I am talking about simply modifying it to make the basic things work, like:
-I cannot view my wifes favorite sat program "Duna TV" without modifying the 0130.ini file.
-transcoding to 3gp format doesn't work if you don't modify a line in config.xml
-When I search in TV guide the last three letters in the Danish alphabet are missing until I add them to searchpopup.xml in
-The Danish thanslation is incomplete and some words are mis spelled. Several words in the plugins are hardcoded and cannot be translated.
All these are basic functionalities, most of them have been discussed in the forums, and most of them are easily fixed. Every time a new version of GB-pvr comes out, I have to correct a lot.
Then comes all the bugs and missing functions:

-The FM radio on my hauppauge HVR-3000 is not supported.
-Some of the scheduled recordings were offset one hour after we changed to winter time.
-Teletext never really worked. Once I saw "100" on top of the screen, that is the closest I ever was to watch teletext.
-Then comes all the times the PC needs to be rebooted because it suddently hangs, or refuse to record or refuse to connect to trhe MVP's.
-Sometimes it is impossible to view or record one specific show. It comes every morning, and every morning for a long time I couldn't see it live or record it. All other shows are available. Suddently the problem was gone.
-Plus several other small bugs.

But my point is that despite all these small problems it is still a great piece of software. Where else would i get a PVR server that can stream to three different TV's in my house for such a low price? One PC and three MediaMVP's cost nothing compared to a windows media center and three X-boxes! And where else would you get so much help.
But don't tell me that it is rock stable and has no bugs.