Brand new Media Centre setup - software advice appreciated
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2008-03-18, 07:33 PM
Satori Wrote:Somewhat. I am trying to determine if my P4 2.66ghz CPU is sufficient for playing live TV ATSC and Blueray if I get a 3450. I will have 2gb of memory and a SATA drive. Playing a .mkv file through Media Player Classic with all options to default (Overlay renderer) moves between 50-70% processor usage, and 50MB of memory, or therabouts.
2008-03-18, 07:38 PM
hmmmm...
Sounds like I will need a CPU of at least 3.2ghz and a 3650 or better. Going to have to save a little longer then.
Gateway GM5664 with Vista Premium SP1 Transferred to Antec Fusion HTPC case
AMD Phenom 9600 Quad Core 2.3GHZ, 3GB PC5300 667MHZ Memory 3 Tuners: Avermedia Duet PCIe, HVR-1250 PCIe LG GGC-H20N Blu-ray / HDDVD ROM Drive, Visiontek HD 3650 512 MB Graphics (Cat 9.6) Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer, Gyration Media Center Remote Control HDD: 30GB OCZ Vertex SSD - OS, 1TB (2x500GB) - Recordings GBPVR: 1.4.7, Plugins - SuperSimpleArchiver, GBPVRCLi/LCD Smartie for VFD, Music Plugin
2008-03-18, 09:35 PM
sub Wrote:Try increasing the <NoSignalPopupDelay> setting in config.xml. Changed that from 5 to 10 first, didn't have any effect, but going to 20 seems to have solved the problem. It does take a while for Live TV to kick in on this system - longer than when using a different renderer - but since the picture quality is excellent I'm happy to live with that (unless there's something I could try to speed this up?) Another slight problem that I had with the previous release, but never got round to sorting, is with the recording of two programs on the same channel, one starting as the other finishes. I had both recordings set to 2 minutes Pre-padding, 6 minutes post-padding. Ideally, what I'd want is for the second tuner to start the recording of the second program before the first has finished, rather than it 'neglecting' the post-padding on the first recording. Any workaround to this? Thanks again
2008-03-18, 09:39 PM
Freakitchen Wrote:Changed that from 5 to 10 first, didn't have any effect, but going to 20 seems to have solved the problem. It does take a while for Live TV to kick in on this system - longer than when using a different renderer - but since the picture quality is excellent I'm happy to live with that (unless there's something I could try to speed this up?)Basically that setting needs to be set to longer than it takes your machine to lock the channel and start playback. The duration varies from machine to machine. Mine is pretty quick, which is why the default is 5 seconds. Quote:Another slight problem that I had with the previous release, but never got round to sorting, is with the recording of two programs on the same channel, one starting as the other finishes. I had both recordings set to 2 minutes Pre-padding, 6 minutes post-padding. Ideally, what I'd want is for the second tuner to start the recording of the second program before the first has finished, rather than it 'neglecting' the post-padding on the first recording. Any workaround to this?You should get the best use of padding on a multi-tuner setup with the following settings in config.xml: [SIZE=2]<[/SIZE][SIZE=2]PreferAlternatingCaptureSources[/SIZE][SIZE=2]>[/SIZE]false[SIZE=2]</[/SIZE][SIZE=2]PreferAlternatingCaptureSources[/SIZE][SIZE=2]> <[/SIZE][SIZE=2]TryToHonourPaddingIfPossible[/SIZE][SIZE=2]>[/SIZE]true[SIZE=2]</[/SIZE][SIZE=2]TryToHonourPaddingIfPossible[/SIZE][SIZE=2]> [/SIZE]
2008-03-18, 09:50 PM
Sub, that's how things were set as default when I made the test recordings this afternoon. As soon as I made my last post, I had a feeling I'd asked the question before, turns out I did!
http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=30226 Never got a chance to try that solution, but in it you say Prefer Alternating Capture Souruces should be set to TRUE rather than false (which would be a change to the default) as you suggested above. Which should I go for?
2008-03-21, 01:12 AM
Just wanted to bump this for some confirmation of the above, I've got the dual-tuners set up as follows:
<PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>true</PreferAlternatingCaptureSources> <TryToHonourPaddingIfPossible>true</TryToHonourPaddingIfPossible> Wanted to confirm that this is the right way to go about things. I've only managed to do a couple of test recordings since - the first being two shows on the same channel, one ending as the other starts. This worked as I had hoped, utilising both tuners to make an overlap. The second test was tonight, same as the above, except the two shows were on different channels. The first show recorded fine, the second strangely recorded the first 6 minutes and then stopped. This could be down to me - think I was using the PC at the time for web - but I figured I'd ask anyway in case the above config setup is wrong. Is there anyway way for me to check in the logs as to why that recording finished early? Thanks all
2008-03-21, 01:45 AM
I usually recommend
<PreferAlternatingCaptureSources>false</PreferAlternatingCaptureSources> <TryToHonourPaddingIfPossible>true</TryToHonourPaddingIfPossible>
2008-03-24, 05:18 PM
Wanted to resurrect this thread to ask a more detailed question about getting the right Video Renderer / Video Decoder combination. For all the ones I have installed, there's actually only ONE combination - Overlay Renderer with 'Intervideo NonCCS' Decoder that works properly. VMR 9 and EVR, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, both tear on playback with any decoder.
The picture quality with Overlay is okay, but displaying Live TV takes noticeably longer with this than VMR - about 12 seconds. What I was wondnering is whether there was any way to improve on this startup time, or perhaps better, is there any way to stop the tearing using VMR9 or EVR? Thanks, FK
2008-03-24, 05:21 PM
Quote:or perhaps better, is there any way to stop the tearing using VMR9 or EVR?A faster videocard, or using VMR9 Fullscreen Exclusive renderer are the most common fixes to this.
2008-03-25, 12:38 AM
Aha, I hadn't bothered trying fullscreen exclusive until now - on the previous release it gave me the problem of 'ghosting' the GB-PVR desktop onto the windows desktop when the program was exited. This still happens with a couple of decoders I tried, BUT not with MPV. This combination seems to work perfectly with every type of video I tried, which is excellent. Won't tempt fate but things look good at this point
 Out of curiosity, what sort of spec video cards do you do your developing on? I bought an ATI 3450 for this machine, which although bargain-basement at £23, is supposedly designed for HTPCs and video playback. Many thanks for your support on this, Sub. The women in this household complain when things don't just 'work right' first time, but I think I've got the best setup here. A donation is on its way, keep up the good work 
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