Need Help - USA Dig Cable HDHR

[whurlston]

Yeah, the channels don't get mapped automatically. They just get renamed so that you can identify them.

[techhome]

Thanks Whurlston & Martin. I do realize that GBPVR is a community project and it's amazing what you folks have accomplished as a spare time effort. My comments are not quite fair as I don't have any expectations that it should be as easy to set up as the commercial PC based PVR aps. My concern is that Comcast is in the middle of a transition to all digital. I expect that the channel lineup will not be a constant and I fear having to repeat the mapping process every time Comcast shakes the channels up.

irt being lucky, I guess you're right. I'm amazed at the number of stations myself. Many are duplicates, home shopping, music channels and other stuff I'll filter out. From where I sit now, I'd rather have a smaller list of worthwhile programming than this huge selection of junk to sift thru.

I won't give up, however, I do have a question. As a trail, I'm setting up GBPVR on a laptop PC. If I like it and want to move it to my "deployed" HTPC/server, is there a file I can copy over to transfer the channel mapping?

TechHome

[whurlston]

All the mappings are stored in the gbpvr.db3 file. That and config.xml basically hold all settings and configuration. You can also use JavaWiz's WizBdaChannelTool to export the mappings and import them on another machine/capture source: http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Utility/WizUtilities

And just for the record:
GB-PVR is actually a one man show (sub), not a community project. We in the community do create plugins and try to help with support, but this baby is all sub's doing.

[techhome]

Meanwhile don't give up just yet.

Martin

Checkin' back in. I spent some time w/ the Sage trial and liked it. But, I have a large # of DVDs ripped as ISOs so that my NMT would play them w/o stutter. Sage will require me to save em all in the DVD folder format. Plus, w/ Sage, I'd have no use for my A-100 NMT and would have to spend $$ for the program plus one or more HD extenders.

So I re-visited GBPVR, mapped several channels then spent some time using it. Bottom line, is I'm impressed! The interface is kind of basic, but is quick compared to XPMCE, it doesn't have a low limited number of channels for my HDHR (MCE is 86 iirc) and it supports just about any video codec thru the NMT, right? XPMCE to my XBOX360 in extender mode is limited to dvr-ms, MPEG1, MPEG2 and wmv; no ripped DVD support, xvid, avi, mkv, etc. As soon as I have a free block of time, I'll be setting up GBPVR on my "production" HTPC/server and learning how to make it work on the NMT, adding plugins, etc. I stuck with MCE far to long, but am very excited to be moving over to GBPVR. I now understand why this project has such a strong following and community!

Thanks Sub and the plugin developers!

[mvallevand]

Your DVD's and media formats that the NMT plays can be played using the NMT's players right from the GBPVR Libraries. The exception is that mpeg-ts and mpeg-ps files will be played with the mpvmcx2 player which is controlled by GBPVR and uses the GBPVR UI. For audio all audio is played by mvpmcx2, mp3's directly all other formats are converted to PCM.

It's funny how personal the UI is. I don't like SageTV's UI at all, and for a bit of spice I use the Mayhem3 skin with GBPVR.

Martin

[whurlston]

What's funny is that when I first got my HDHomerun, SageTV was the only PVR app that supported it. I absolutely hated their UI and didn't want to pay for it. I tried many other apps and absolutely loved GB-PVR's UI and features. My very first post to the forum was to ask if it supported the HDHR. sub had never heard of the HDHR at the time so of course the answer was "no". There were also no BDA drivers available at the time, so I downloaded the code for the Software Recorder plugin , bought a book on C# and started writing my own recording source plugin for it. I got recordings and (I think) Live TV working and almost had timeshift working (was having a problem reading the files while they were growing) when the BDA drivers were released.

[techhome]

Ok I'm back. I've made significant progress on the laptop and went to make GBPVR the default on my HTPC. After getting channels fairly well mapped on the laptop install, I copied the gbpvr.db3 file and config.xml files over to the HTPC install. After some additional effort, LiveTV and the guide worked. But I found several errors in channel mappings, some channels w/ no sound, others with no video. Back to the channel mapping config to clean up, which is where my problems re-surfaced.

1. Preview window doesn't display on either the laptop or the HTPC
2. Once the mapping window is closed and reopened, it forgets the station names it gets from the internet after I submit my Zip code.

With the preview window black, I made the original mappings based only on the station names. Now with the station names gone and no preview window, I'm stuck. Looked into Codecs, decoder checkup utility shows Purevideo as the default. Went to the Playback tab. Changed from system default to Pirevideo for video and audio and AC3 Filter for AC3 Decoder. Still no preview window. Note that TV, video, 2-ch and AC3 audio are fine in GBPVR. Any hints on wht to try?

I've seen the end result and I like it. This Channel mapping stuff is very painful, however.

TechHome

[techhome]

Looks like it was a codec issue w/ Purevideo. I uninstalled Purevideo and installed mpa and mpv and all is working, including both audio & video previews in the digital mapping preview. Took 1/2 day to identify and map all the channels, but it is now done. I also got my Popcornhour A100 working, except for dvd rips, that is...

Thanks to all who helped.

TechHome

[mvallevand]

Popcornhour A100 working, except for dvd rips, that is...

The syntax is tough to get correct. If you post a message in the mvpmcx2 sub-forum with your log when you attempt to play one, I can offer a suggestion.

Martin