Most difficult part of your GB-PVR system?

[imagn]

I also, like Reven, need to find out how to get the green button problem taken care of, but I figured I will wait until I get a new remote.

Is this different in Win 7 than vista?

Also you may want to try out LM remote mapping application, it like enventghost but i have found it much easier to set up and i works better for me. there is a free version and a donor version.

http://www.lmgestion.net/@en-us/4/22/60/article.asp

obviously you need to diable MCE services in Win 7 for this to work properly

[Satori]

I guess I am one of the few with HW issues. My setup works flawlessly with the ATI MPG codec, ATI Mux, Cat 9.6, and an ATSC antenna. I have very occasional interlacing artifacts, but only on certain channels and only sometimes. It never happens on HD, only old analog feeds so I ignore it. HD looks incredible, I guess I am lucky there. Look at my sig for the HW, for DVDs I use powerdvd 7.3 with anydvd HD and it works perfectly.

My issues are all HW related. I had occasional USB failures waking from S3 that froze the USB tuner. I had my remote, the VFD, the readyboost drive, and the USB tuner connected and they would all croak occasionally. It cleared up when I removed the tuner and USB drive, however. I tried it with just the USB drive everything still died. I am not willing to just try the USB tuner given I can't risk missing recordings anymore due to WAF. Also I had the ASUS tuner that came with the GM5664 die. I now have the two 1250s and they perform well. Even with those I had occasional "No tuner available" messages waking from S3 (even with the latest driver), but it hasn't happened in a couple weeks now, hopefully it is gone.
I use eventghost which has worked perfectly with my remote. I disabled the MCE services by renaming the MCE directory folder, then I used EG to run PVRx2 when I hit the green button.

[BigMoose]

Not so much difficult as extremely tedious - mapping satellite channels

You're dead right there. I was so annoyed when I moved from xmltv to xmltvgui and it renamed all the BBC/ITV channels (1=ONE etc) and I had to manually remap the lot. There's a few of them I just never bothered to map. PID changes etc is annoying as are scans and borrowing other people's scans to add manually to your scan file. Again it's easy, just tedious if you have to do it too often. I'm not sure I ever got round to fixing the BBCi channels after they last changed settings....

[Ted the Penguin]

to be fair, I only had issues with tuners because I had signal strength problems.

[zehd]

The (hidden) point of this poll was to see if parts of the wiki could be improved.

I don't have any problems. When I do, I write a wiki page. Everything's there that *I* need !!!

[zehd]

I would bet that moving into Digital recording, mapping digital channels, etc will be the biggest challenge. It's what's been keeping me back a bit. That and I don't have many QAM/ATSC channels available.

I have no doubt that if I had as much a PITA with remapping channels, I'd have written something already...

Codecs discussion sucks the most. So many choices and preferences. Sometimes I wonder if Henry Ford's idea is best "You can have any color as long as it's black".

[mvallevand]

Excuse my long winded reply, but I don't think the poll capture the essence of the problem, and some of the replies make it sound too easy, especially for a new user so I didn't vote. If feel the primary issue isn't HTPC vs GBPVR, it is the digital transition and the move to HD. If someone took any HD compatible machine, my $400 ION based machine proves it doesn't have to be too expensive, installs Windows 7 RC1 on the bare metal and then runs my 600k NMTInstall problem, 10 minutes later you can have GBPVR running with all the relevant patches and even optionally PCH client support all mostly by point and click.

Afterword's is where it gets tough. If it was like the old days (two years ago) you'd be able to easily decide on a PVR 150 (cheap and well supported) and continue to configure the tuner, and here in Canada/US, add Zap2it. Using Win7 you don't even have to worry about bad Hauppauge drivers or quartz dll and have the perfect PVR solution with a PC and a PCH or client easily in under 30 minutes. Add another PVR 150 or a PVR 500 and you'd have so much power all your friends are jealous and the WAF is high.

No you wake up to the fact it is 2009. Because Zap2it no longer exists, you have to do some more research, register on Schedules Direct, select your channels and configure GBPVR and, add another hour into the process. If you don't want to spend $20 a year or if you live where you can't use Zap2It, you have to research XMLTV options and figure out how to get guide data for free. If you haven't done this before it can take many hours.

Here in Canada we still live in the dark ages with analog cable 2-69 and analog OTA for the next couple of year but being greedy we still want more. You debate between an HDHR and an Hauppauge tuner, probably wasting hours deciding which one, and then order it, install it, and after spending another hour on Schedules Direct selecting for the hundred of channels (probably selecting too many), you can't scan because GBPVR crashes. This is one fundamental problem that sub continues to improve but this is still work in progress. Add a couple of hours and several posts to the forum if you have a crashing scan. If only GBPVR was like TSReader or DVBViewer....

If you actually can scan, but the scan doesn't find any channels, add many more hours and more posts. Especially with QAM this is a big problem. You probably are also kicking yourself for buying the wrong capture device. Finally after all of this, and with a good scan, you have to map channels. Add another couple of hours for mapping QAM if you have 30-50 channels.

After everything is mapped an you go to watch a digital recording and say "what great quality, why did I ever like analog recordings anyway", and you are so glad you used Win 7 because it plays TS files and there are no issues with the standard mpeg decoder... but you don't get any sound. Add more research posts and time to install an ac3 decoder. If sub can add ac3 support like WMC in WIn 7 that will be great. However you have to add more time if you are in a country using a form of AAC

However you are still greedy. you don't just want basic cable, you want the premium channels. You do more research and have to decide between and HD-PVR or SD capture from the STB. When you decide what to do you spend more hours on research and configuration of and IR Blaster or maybe with the HD-PVR spend hours on firewire too.

What used to be thirty minutes can now easily take several days, and that's with a fresh install. Add the mess with older machines, XP, underpowered video cards and you can easily be in codec hell. To go from analog to digital you need newer hardware or a PCH client or you need to add days or weeks of frustration.

And that's without GBPVR plugins, or formats requiring new codecs.

In the end GBPVR has always been for the technical user, now it is for the technical user who wants to spend a considerable amount of effort installing and then maintaining their scans as the channels move around. None of this is technically difficult, unless you are trying to eek out hardware acceleration from a video card that doesn't good driver support but it is a big undertaking with a lot of forum and google research being required.

Martin

[soccerdad]

Martin, it is like you have been sitting in my office (computer work area) and watching me for the last 4 years! That is why I call it a hobby and a challenge. Tivo or cable DVRs are for "common folk" that want a "good enough" solution. The convergence with PCs and TVs will continue and some things will get easier and some harder.

Today, scanning (digital tuner configuration) and clients talking (and playing back) correctly are my biggest issues, but yesterday it was dvbs and the day before it was EPGs....

[philly_phenom]

My biggest issue is getting all the different file types to playback.

I have three different tuners & they all record in different formats. If I get one working, the other doesn't - although they can all play back in WMP & WMP classic...

I haven't killed myself on it though since we've pretty much exclusively use our PCH's for playback now & my server is tucked away in the study.

[McBainUK]

mvallevand: SD only here so thanks for the post - good to see other's views.

I wonder how many of those steps could be part of a walk-through guide? To save on the 'research' part.