Most difficult part of your GB-PVR system?

[mvallevand]

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

My comments about the time apply equally to digital SD and HD. Anyone having trouble with basic mpeg-ps hardware analog captures, should have no trouble on Win7

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

I think saving the research and posts that everyone would be the best thing that could be done. The wiki is good and has some valuable info but it is not a place where I'd send my father if he wanted to try GBPVR.

Martin

[BigMoose]

I personally think digital (DVB here) is way easier than analog. No messing about with encoders and poor quality signals, crappy aspect ratios. DVB captures the raw signal and that's that. Perfect recording, no messing. Silky smooth playback is no harder with digital than analog, you still need a good mpeg decoder. H264 is another matter though! (still easy to record, just smooth playback is a bit more tricky).

[Jaggy]

Originally setting up (many many moons ago) I had problems with the first PC that had integrated video not liking using an AGP card & crashing.... resulting in me building a new PC that kept blue screening & crashing......resulting in my building yet another new PC with a different chipset & deciding to go the MVP route so I didn't need to worry about it playing back file....best decision I ever made (I have now upgraded one of the MVPs for a NMT) & I am still using that PC for my server now. The only thing that stopped me from giving up on the whole thing was all the other users on here that had got it working for themselves.

[zehd]

My comments about the time apply equally to digital SD and HD. Anyone having trouble with basic mpeg-ps hardware analog captures, should have no trouble on Win7



I think saving the research and posts that everyone would be the best thing that could be done. The wiki is good and has some valuable info but it is not a place where I'd send my father if he wanted to try GBPVR.

Martin

Very good posts, Martin.

Yes. A setup program that handles much of it, and a wiki walkthough so easy the (insert technically challenged family member here) can use...

I understand how some people are still having codec hell, and thank goodness that Win7 is on the horizon to help with that.

Out in Western Canada, there is so few digital channels (not counting satelite or encrypted QAM) that it's been very difficult to justify jumping into the digital revolution. Indeed, we Canadains get another 2 years. I'm sure that many things will be ironed out in the next couple of years, but I'd love to help with that.

Personally, I wish I could be more on board with this.

PS. Martin, have you got that post where you iterated your computer specs?

[McBainUK]

I understand how some people are still having codec hell, and thank goodness that Win7 is on the horizon to help with that.

In what way will Win7 help B-PVR/HTPC users? Prehaps a new thread though.

[LewE]

In what way will Win7 help B-PVR/HTPC users? Prehaps a new thread though.

I do know that when I installed GBPVR on my new Windows 7 machine (starting with a freshly formatted disk) Windows had the drivers for my Hauppauge card and I didn't have to go through the hoops I went through before on my XP machine to install some of the Hauppauge software but being careful to not run all of it.... or something like that... I just remember it was not trivial to get the Hauppauge card to work under XP. With Windows 7, it automatically recognized my 1600 capture card and I didn't have to do anything else.

[BigMoose]

Likewise Vista though, the Hauppauge card just worked. I am interested to know if Windows 7 is better for GBPVR than Vista, but given all the reports I've read that the windows codecs are useless and you have to hack it to use something else I'm not convinced. That said, if it's less resource hungry than vista maybe HD playback will benefit. I realise i'm going OT and perhaps a new thread would be more appropriate...

[pcostanza]

I've personally had more luck with GBPVR in W7 than in Vista. Granted, I've worked at it more and kept my drivers updated. I still have some of the same problems as in Vista such as 0 size files with my HDHR but I'm not convinced that it's the OS's fault.

[CornStopper]

Not so much difficult as extremely tedious - mapping satellite channels (and to a lesser degree DVB-T)

I reckon that someone with more coding knowledge than I could create a standalone app that could simplify this. And maybe a re-scanner to spot transponder/PID changes.

I am the same, SKY have a nasty tendancy to change its channels numbers, which buggers GBPVR up as my PVR150 changes the channel on the STB.

As Martin said, not difficult to sort, just tedious

[Ted the Penguin]

with the whole issue with digital EPGs... I think it would be REALLY nice if GB-PVR could tie into the silicondust channel listing
http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun/channels
I think that would save a HUGE chunk of time!