Should it work

[bkterry]

Greetings, I have bought a second hand HP Pavilion Slimline PC with Vista premium and have tried to get GBPVR to run on it. I can get the epg loaded, and listen to radio, and record a program (but not replay it), and cannot get Live tv. I have spent considerable time adding dongles (it says the default dongle is incompatible with Vista) and generally playing, but still no live tv. Most of the forum posts are in a language I do not follow too well, as I am not that well versed in the intricacies and depths of computing as spoken, so if you reply, can you please couch it in laymans terms. I dare ask if the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1200 should do the job, even although it is not listed on your list. The list goes from 1100 straight to 1300, so hope that 1200 is not a lone one that does not work. The software that may be relevant says Hauppauge MCE XP/Vista Software Encoder (2.0.25180).
Any help would be most welcome. Thanks.
PS I am using version 1.1.7

[sub]

The HVR1200 should work for digital channels, but not analog channels. What type of channels are you trying to watch/record?

[johnsonx42]

1. Why are you adding Dongles? Unless you are using a Hauppauge MediaMVP for playback (which you certainly didn't mention), then you don't need to worry about the Dongles.

2. The Hauppauge MCE XP/Vista Software Encoder is strictly for recording Analog channels using cards that don't have hardware encoders. GB-PVR doesn't officially support doing that, but it can be made to work. That is to say, sub added software support for the hauppauge software encoder a few releases back, but he doesn't support it beyond that. If you are trying to record digital channels, then you don't need it.

3. When you say you are using 1.1.7, I presume you mean 1.4.7? I'm not trying to be ticky-tack, just making sure we are indeed talking about the latest release.

4. What version of Windows are you using?

5. Your playback problem is almost surely due to a lack of a proper video decoder. I don't know too much about video in new zealand though... I gather it's MPEG-2 for standard def digital channels, and something more exotic for HD channels? What video decoders do you have available on the Playback tab in config?

[bkterry]

Thanks. This explains why, as my TV is still analogue, though at some stage I will have to change to digital. Shame really, as GBPVR seemed to answer all of my needs. If I was to put another Hauppauge card in, which one would be the top of the line currently?

[bkterry]

Thanks for your time in replying.

1. I only started on dongles, as the config said it was incompatible with Vista, so figured I needed one of these, without knowing what one of these is.

2. I am still on analogue TV, so perhaps this older release may work? If so, how would I get and install this?

3. Sorry, typo, 1.4.7

4. Vista Home Premium.

5. List from Playback/video decoder tab: CyberLink Video/SP Decoder, Microsoft MPEG-2 Video Decoder, CBVA DMO wrapper filter, PDR MPEG1/2 Video Decoder

[johnsonx42]

2. The current release still has whatever support Sub added before. It's just that Sub himself isn't really interested in supporting the software encoder, so beyond making the basic code changes to make it work, that's all the support there'll be for it. Call it an unsupported feature. Sub could explain his position better than I.

As to your particular card though, the only thread I can find about using it with the software encoder is a tale of only partial success: http://forums.gbpvr.com//showthread.php?...t=hvr-1200

I believe the card that sub wrote the software encoder support for was the HVR-4000, and since then it's been shown to work for the HVR-900 and HVR950 cards as well (those are the three now in the standard direct.ini file). In theory it should be possible to make any Hauppauge card work with the software encoder, in practice perhaps not.

The list of supported tuner cards will be any with a hardware MPEG-2 encoder. You can look through the direct.ini file in the gbpvr directory to see which cards are supported. You'll probably want one that does both analog w/encoder and digital.

5. The Cyberlink and Microsoft decoders should work fine, I don't know anything about the PDR decoder.