First Impression - dissapointed

[Daniel-mx]

Hello everyone

First i would like to clarify that i have been using MCE 2005 for almost a year, I have tried Media portal for a few months as well, so im not a total noob as far as HTPCs go.

I had seen GBpvr for quite some time and finally yesterday decided to give it a try, specially since im tired of MCE and media portal.

After installing and setting up GBpvr i had these issues (hopefully you guys can help me understand why i had them and help me find a way to fix them, or at least explain why they happened).

1.- Constant Freezing, the app itself froze up at least half the times i used it when navigating the root menu (tv, music, videos, pictures, settings, exit). i had to ctrl-alt-del to close and fire up again.

2.- Couldnt enter the settings menu, whenever i clicked on it , it would enter then quickly exit and leave me back at the root menu (most, if not all the crashes mentioned in "1" happened while doing this). all the other menu options worked though.

3.- Pause live TV is not instant. Whenever i hit the pause button on my remote the screen would go black for like 2 or 3 seconds, then the image would reappear paused. This is very annoying coz i basically lose those 2 to 3 seconds when it blacks out. for example, if the i was watching the apollo 13 movie on tv and click the pause button on the "7" in the launch countdown, i would get a blackout for 2 to 3 seconds then get the image paused at the "5" seconds mark in the countdown. so the time between 7 and 5 was missed during that blackout. its very annoying. In MCE 2005 pause is instant.

4.- Poor analog cable channel image. on live tv everything looks fine for most of the channels that are over channel #25+ or so, but for the channels that are below 25 most of them look horrible, with a lot of static and many of them cant even show a picture at all, all i see is static.

Now, i know for a fact that my cable signal is fine and that these channels look ok when i hook the same cable on a TV, and just for testing purposes i tried to grab the channels using the "winTV" application from Hauppauge (i have the pvr-150 card) and these channels look great.

For example tuning in to analog channel #5 on GVPVR gives me only static, and on WinTV i get a clear picture. Im guessing that it might have something to do with the channel frequencies
---------

Now i really want to get these issues out of the way, because i really like what im seeing so far, i was able to get my epg working the way i want (not so succesful at this on MCE and MP), i like the plugin support a lot also.

So basically my question is: Are these issues common?, can they be fixed?

make me a believer, help!

The post came out a little longer than i intended, but i think i adressed all my concerns.

thanks for your time

[sub]

1.- Constant Freezing, the app itself froze up at least half the times i used it when navigating the root menu (tv, music, videos, pictures, settings, exit). i had to ctrl-alt-del to close and fire up again.

I'm not aware of any other users having this problem, but reproduce the problem, then zip and attach the pvrx2.exe.log and pvrx2.exe-native.log files and I'll take a look.

2.- Couldnt enter the settings menu, whenever i clicked on it , it would enter then quickly exit and leave me back at the root menu (most, if not all the crashes mentioned in "1" happened while doing this). all the other menu options worked though.

This is a known issue in the current installer, and easily fixed by creating an empty "skin" subdirectory off the gbpvr directory.

3.- Pause live TV is not instant. Whenever i hit the pause button on my remote the screen would go black for like 2 or 3 seconds, then the image would reappear paused. This is very annoying coz i basically lose those 2 to 3 seconds when it blacks out. for example, if the i was watching the apollo 13 movie on tv and click the pause button on the "7" in the launch countdown, i would get a blackout for 2 to 3 seconds then get the image paused at the "5" seconds mark in the countdown. so the time between 7 and 5 was missed during that blackout. its very annoying. In MCE 2005 pause is instant.

GB-PVR uses live preview mode by default, where data effectively goes straight from the capture device to the screen, with no extra buffering. This gives you the fastest possible channel change time, and minimising wear and tear on hardware (no continual writing to disk).

If you'd instead prefer it to always be buffering, and able to instantly pause, then disable live preview mode in the config app. This will of course mean slower channel changes though.

4.- Poor analog cable channel image. on live tv everything looks fine for most of the channels that are over channel #25+ or so, but for the channels that are below 25 most of them look horrible, with a lot of static and many of them cant even show a picture at all, all i see is static.

Now, i know for a fact that my cable signal is fine and that these channels look ok when i hook the same cable on a TV, and just for testing purposes i tried to grab the channels using the "winTV" application from Hauppauge (i have the pvr-150 card) and these channels look great.

For example tuning in to analog channel #5 on GVPVR gives me only static, and on WinTV i get a clear picture. Im guessing that it might have something to do with the channel frequencies

If you run the tuning assistant, do you clearly see all your channels?

[steeb]

I would only be disappointed in yourself Daniel (and not GBPVR) for asking soooooo many questions that I don't believe are repliable to without a book

(or Sub who is a book)

Steeb

[Daniel-mx]

I have not run the tuning assistant, i filled up my channel list by importing an xmltv.xml file and then mapping channels where needed to match them to the ones in the xml file.

i will run it later today and see what happens.

ill get back to you

BTW, Thank you for your quick response

[sub]

I have not run the tuning assistant, i filled up my channel list by importing an xmltv.xml file and then mapping channels where needed to match them to the ones in the xml file.

Normally people would never need to run the tuning assistant, but it will at least give you an idea what channels your device is able to tune in clearly.

[Daniel-mx]

This is a known issue in the current installer, and easily fixed by creating an empty "skin" subdirectory off the gbpvr directory.

After doing this Issues #1 & #2 got fixed.

If you'd instead prefer it to always be buffering, and able to instantly pause, then disable live preview mode in the config app. This will of course mean slower channel changes though.

Awesome, pause now works as i wanted it to. Thanks!

If you run the tuning assistant, do you clearly see all your channels?

ok, i had a chance to try out tuner assistant last night and heres what i got.
Just to clarify i live in Mexico (NTSC) and i have analog cable (no STB), my tuner card is the Hauppauge! pvr 150.

In the tunner assistant theres no option for Mexico, so i chose the closest one in the list (USA), and chose the "Cable" option - and clicked on scan.

-I will use channel 5 as an example-
Tuner Assistant Test #1
The tuner grabs channel 2,3 and 4 (with bad quality btw) and then skips channel 5 and takes me to the next channel.

one thing i did see was that while it was trying to get channel 5 i was able to see a clear image of the channel for a brief moment but it didnt stay on and skipped the channel (as if it had passed through the channel's frequency very quickly without stopping)

the rest of the channels up to the mid 20s were tuned but had a bad image quality, the rest after the mid 20s up until the last one 67 looked great.

Tuner Assistant Test #2
I decided to try it again just to double check my results, but i chose by mistake "Antenna" instead of "cable" and started the tuning test.

Pretty much the whole test was the same regarding the image quality on channels from 2 trhough mid 20s, but

CHANNEL 5 was tuned perfectly!! , it showed as channel 5, frequency: 77000000

Tuner Assistant Test #3
I ran another test but now chose "cable" again , and i had the same results as test #1.

It failed to grab channel 5 but like in test #1 the channel was displayed for a brief instant moment but failed to tune it and skipped it. however if im not mistaken and my eyes didnt deceive me, i was able to see that while it happened it tried to grab channel 5 at the 78000000 frequency.

Tuner Assistant Test #4 - 9
I did several other tests using different countries, i used countries that to my knowledge use the same standard that we use in NA (ntsc), i tried chile, brazil, canada , australia and new zealand.

all of them came out with very different results, which tells me that each country has their own assigned frequency assignments.

Like i said in my OP, all of my channels (from 2 through 67) look great and are tuned correctly by Hauppauge!'s WinTV app. so i know for a fact that the tuner works and the signal is ok.

What do you think could be the problem?

Is there a way to manually assign channel frequencies in GB-PVR?


This is the only issue left from my original 4, and is by far the most important since basically i cant see 1/3 of my channels, so i really appreciate your support

[zehd]

all of them came out with very different results, which tells me that each country has their own assigned frequency assignments.

They do, though US and Canada follow the same scheme and I was sure Mexico followed the same scheme too.

Like i said in my OP, all of my channels (from 2 through 67) look great and are tuned correctly by Hauppauge!'s WinTV app. so i know for a fact that the tuner works and the signal is ok.

Yes that eliminates a lot of things.

Are you able to get a correct EPG for your area? Or are you fudging a different area's epg?

Maybe your PVR150 is in PAL Mode or some other none standard setting normally used in NA...

[betlit]

Is there a way to manually assign channel frequencies in GB-PVR?

yes, there is. open regedit and go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune\

within this registry key, you will see that there are a number of sub keys with the following format: TSXX-0 or TSXX-1. TS stands for tuning space.
XX is the country code based on the international dialling code prefix (in my case 41 for switzerland). 0 or 1 indicates the signal type, 0 is for analogue antenna and 1 cable or satellite.

in the correct sub key, create (if it does not exists already) a DWORD value with the channel number as name (e.g. 5) and enter the frequency in the (decimal) format
e.g. 273250000 for 273.25 mhz

edit: be sure to (re-)start gbpvr after you created the registry key

[HtV]

You can also enter the frequencies in gbpvr-config-capture sources-edit direct recording plugin. Threre in the right column (under channel number, in stead of the channel number)) you can enter the frequencies, like e.g. 184000000.

Hans

[sub]

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\TV System Services\TVAutoTune\

I suspect some software you've run in the past has tweaked these registry settings, causing the problem you're seeing. The WinTV software isnt affected because it tunes using its own channel/frequency tables rather than relying on the Microsoft default tables (which GB-PVR does).

Just so you know, in the capture source channel list you can type a frequency instead of channel number if you want (77000000). When you do this, it bypasses those Microsoft channel/frequency tables.