Setting up the HD-PVR

[thisisnotadrill]

yeah, it has digital audio (optical) and analog audio inputs.

thus far i have just used the analog inputs because i figured it would be easier (and i only have a 2.0 sound system anyways). i may just give the digital a try and see if it works with further configuration.

[philly_phenom]

doesn't the HD-PVR control the STB itself? I haven't set mine up yet, but itsn't there some way to tell the HD-PVR what model STB you have?

[fla]

So are you happy with this product? With almost no OTA HD available where I live, my only hope of going HD and keeping gb-pvr is something like this capturing the STB component output. Do you recommend it?

[thisisnotadrill]

it has an IR blaster built-in. as far as i can tell there is no configuration panel for the HD-PVR itself, though hopefully somewhere there is and i just havent found it.

but at the very least installing the IR software that comes on the hauppauge disk (to make sure IR.exe is running and set up correctly to talk to your STB) and then setting the channel changer to a manual .exe and then the haupblast.exe under the GBPVR folder seems to work fine.

right now sound is my biggest problem and for some reason it doesnt seem to be working under the arcsoft package either so its an HD-PVR problem.

[thisisnotadrill]

its a bit too early to tell if i like it.
give me tomorrow to play with it and try to get it working correctly and then i can really make a decision.

some things i want to look for:
1) video quality. at least at the highest quality the video seemed to be equal to the STB output but i dont know if i am going to be forced to be keep it at the highest quality or if a lower quality will also be equal (at least to my eye) to the STB output. also, i want to know if i will be able to dynamically change the encoding quality (low bitrate to save space on crap that doesnt matter like news or whatever and the ability to jack up the quality on stuff i want to look good)
2) sound. haha, im sure this will be an easy fix and i am just a little tired (and starting to feel slightly hungover from afterwork beers). but yeah, i need that to work.
3) video smoothness. I have an HD3850 so theoretically i should be offloading all the video decoding for playback into it. im not sure if it is doing it now, though, because at times it looked like the video was lagging or dropping frames (ie. the motion just wasnt as smooth as it should be) and when i had the arcsoft program open in window mode and took a look at a CPU clock it was at up to 70% or so usage so something must not be right.

but like you said there aren't very many options to be able to record stuff like NFL network HD so i need to hope I do like this.

[gazoo]

I heard that it will cook you breakfast and shoot fire on command, but I could be wrong..

[philly_phenom]

ok, so i did get the IR blaster working correctly by just manually selected the haupblast.exe under the channel changer .exe option

i am oddly not getting any sound, however (though that should probably be an easy fix once i poke around). and the default encoding rate (i think its 5mb) is noticably worse than just watching the HD feed out of the STB, though even that isnt great since its a compressed comcast feed.

Don't know if this is the problem or not, but I couldn't get sound to work on the sample file floating around a while back until I removed the Arcsoft decoder.

I can play it now using ffdshow & the Haali splitter.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to play with mine yet - and I might not be able to get to it for a while since stuff came up at work that's going to take me out of town for a while.

[whurlston]

Don't know if this is the problem or not, but I couldn't get sound to work on the sample file floating around a while back until I removed the Arcsoft decoder.

I can play it now using ffdshow & the Haali splitter.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to play with mine yet - and I might not be able to get to it for a while since stuff came up at work that's going to take me out of town for a while.

Arcsofts decoders take priority over just about anything but depending on the package installed, it may not play certain formats. For example, TMT will not play AAC audio even though the codec reports that it does because certain DLLs are missing. If you install the HDHomeRun Total Media package (and presumably the Hauppauge package), you get the DLLs needed for AAC decoding using the Arcsoft filters.