An easy MVP Q

[Elmo Putney]

This should be an easy one.

I have my HTPC in the lounge running gb, in our bedroom we have a crappy freeview box that I need to replace cos it freezes and needs power cycling to sort out.
If I bought a wireless MVP to replace the freeview box would I get the whole GBPVR experience from my bed as well as in the lounge where the pc is?

Sorry for the basic question but I know nothing about the mvp side of gb.

[martint123]

Without the word "wireless" then I would have said yes, no problem.

Myself, I would save the cash from a wireless MVP and get the wired one and a pair of homeplug wireless 13A plugs and use the mains wiring for a more reliable connection.

[Elmo Putney]

I used to stream from my work computer (wireless) to a wired Medigate mgs35 (well Freecoms rebadged one) without any issues. So why would MVP be an issue?

or is it simply cheaper to go for net over mains and a stadard wired mvp?


Anyway the main thrust of my question is, will the HTPC be able to act as an mvp server and still be usable in the lounge?

What happens if Wifey decides to watch something in bed and I'm watching the PC in the lounge?

[martint123]

You can certainly try wireless, but I'd make sure you get a good signal first. I'm only going by some of the comments on here. AFAIK gbpvr isn't a true streaming protocol, so there is more to and fro to the traffic.

You should not notice any difference on the server at all when an MVP is in use - it probably places less demands on the server than playing recordings on your machine as the decoding of the mpeg stream is done in hardware on the MVP.

I used to run two MVPs along with 2 PC clients from the server and it worked fine.

[mvallevand]

If you MUST go wireless rather than the wireless MVP I'd go with a wireless bridge it will likely be cheaper, more reliable, offer better security be usable when you decided to replace the MVP.

Martin

[bgowland]

A couple of points - if you have visualizations enabled for listening to music, they won't appear on the MVP.

If you record DVB to dvr-ms format, you can't playback an 'in-progress' recording on the MVP...well, my setup doesn't like it anyway.

Cheers,
Brian

[mvallevand]

If you really want to achieve a high WAF I don't think the MVP is the best device for playing digital DVB files. Give her the HTPC and you take the MVP.

Martin

[Elmo Putney]

Had to google WAF.....got it.

Ok, I will sit and mull over options, new £30 set top box, mvp + bridge or mains, or wirless mvp.

TBH I am just lazy, as the cat5 that comes from the loft to the lounge pass within 10cm of the tv in the bedroom, it really wouldnt be much trouble to drop another socket down, but the older i get the lazyer (sp?)

Thanks for the opinions

[Elmo Putney]

Another question, i just looked at the Haup MVP specs, and it says that it has onboard mpeg2 decoder, but what happens when i play a xvid file via gbpvr. Does the server (i.e. HTPC) do the conversion from mpg4 to mpg2 then stream it?

[Etacovda]

yep, it does it on the fly. Obviously fastforwarding whilst its transcoding isnt recommended. Some files it doesnt tend to like, either - and obviously, the htpc is pretty heavily stressed whilst its busy building the file for the mvp so playback can suffer (im sure theres some way to set the priority lower, but i havent found it a problem)