Newbie questions

[nchamp]

I'm a new GB-PVR user (and new to the whole PVR thing) and am generally very pleased indeed with the software. Of course, there's somethings I'm still getting to grips with, so I have a list of questions (in order of decreasing importance to me) :

- DVD Playback. Althought "Play DVD" appears in the "'plugin" tab of the config tool, it doesn't appear on my main menu, and I can't see any other way to get a DVD to play. What am I missing?
- Playback of other recordings. I've dropped Mpeg and AVI files from other sources in my defined "video" folder, and GB-PVR sees them, but it doesn't play them - generally it throws 'something' that looks mostly blank on the screen for a few seconds, and then returns. Any ideas?
- The program descriptions in Program Guide are truncated, both in the general 'diary' screen and in the detailed program screen. Is the anyway around this?
- Internet Radio just plain doesn't work

That's probably enough to be going on with!

Thanks in advance

Neal

[reboot]

For DVD playback. Go into config, select the DVD & Remote tab.
Set your DVD-ROM drive letter to whatver your dvdrom drive is.
This is for playing DVD disks in a drive, not files on your computer.

Set up whatever folder(s) contain your files on the Directories tab.
On the Playback tab, try using "Intervideo Non-CSS decoder) for both audio and video.
Generally, if Windows media player can play the files, then gbpvr can too.

Program descriptions can be lengthy, and there's only so much space to put it all.
You can manually edit the skin.xml file inside the TV GUIDE folder, under whatever skin you're using.
Find this line: <TextStyle name="SelectedProgrammeDesc" color="White" typeFace="Tahoma" size="12" style="bold"/>
Change the size to 11, and style to "normal".
This may make it more difficult to read on a TV though, but does get a bit more info onscreen.

Check in config that Net Radio is enabled. Start gbpvr, and select Net Radio.
Does anything show up on screen?
If you see a few selections, double click one, and wait a few seconds. If you don't hear anything, double click the next one. (or hilight it, and hit Return/Enter on the keyboard).
Some of them don't always work (for whatever reason).

HTH.

[sub]

- DVD Playback. Althought "Play DVD" appears in the "'plugin" tab of the config tool, it doesn't appear on my main menu, and I can't see any other way to get a DVD to play. What am I missing?

If you using a PVR350's TV-out or an MVP, then DVD playback is not supported, so it'll hide the DVD button.

[nchamp]

Thanks for all the advice.

1. Still can't get DVDs to play. Probably because I'm using a hauppauge 350 card. Which is a bit of a bugger, cos I was hoping to replace my DVD player with the PVR. Is there any other option?

2. Playing video files - no joy either. I've got a .wmv and a .mpeg file that Media Player (v10) can play fine, in the right directory, visible to GBPVR - but it just puts up the green bar (showing a total time of 12 seconds in each case) and displays no picture of sound (for approx 12 seconds).

3. Program desc text size - thanks, works fine.

[sub]

1. Still can't get DVDs to play. Probably because I'm using a hauppauge 350 card. Which is a bit of a bugger, cos I was hoping to replace my DVD player with the PVR. Is there any other option?

As I said, the PVR350 doesnt support DVD playback.

Your only other option is to use the DVD2MPG plugin to rip you DVD's to the harddrive as standard MPEG-2 files. These can then be played by the PVR350.

2. Playing video files - no joy either. I've got a .wmv and a .mpeg file that Media Player (v10) can play fine, in the right directory, visible to GBPVR - but it just puts up the green bar (showing a total time of 12 seconds in each case) and displays no picture of sound (for approx 12 seconds).

It definitely wont play wmv/avi/divx/xvid files, since the PVR350 can only play MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 files.

I dont know why its not playing the .mpeg file you have. Where was this file from? Some software encoders or editors generate bad MPEG files, so it could just be a case of bad luck. Try some more .mpg files. Ones recorded on your PVR350 should be fine.