NMT/HD-PVR question and Only 1 MVP server

[mvallevand]

drbenjamin, I noticed in your thread on EWA that you seem to leave your MVP and/or NMT on all the time. I don't recommend this with HDMI, unless you also leave the TV on all the time. You are breaking a digital connection and mvpmcx2 only fully initialized HDMI when it starts up or comes back from play a non-mpeg file. You could also switch to analog but there preference is definitely to power off which you can do with the EGreat or exit back to the NMT screen.

Martin

[drbenjamin]

Martin
Thanks for that - I was just about to upload my logs but your comment is entirely consistent with what I've been observing. I had left the NMT on all day, turned on the TV and GB-PVR was working but as soon as I went to play a show - no video. I've seen the same thing when I'm playing a show on the NMT and have my receiver switch to a diff source; when I go back to the NMT, no video.
As long as exiting back to the NMT screen will prevent this, I'll be a happy camper. It is very quick to load GB-PVR from that screen. Do you think that would work or do I need to power down? We've been spoiled for a long time with our MVP/mvpmc setup, which we leave on always!
tks

[mvallevand]

I think exiting to the NMT screen will help a lot. mvpmcx2 will reinit HDMI when it starts up. USB Eject followed by Delete will do a forced video reset too but I don't think it is as reliable.

Martin

[drbenjamin]

Martin - one last question (for tonight!) I rebooted the NMT and watched a few SD shows. Around 21:27 I started watching an SD show, after 2-3 min I hit the skip key (to skip a commercial) and got a black screen w/ audio. Exited to GB-PVR, opened an SD show, and everything worked fine. I'm attaching the logs, hope there is some clue in there. I appreciate your time, I"m optimistic that I"ll get this setup working!
One thing I"m wondering about, does cpu load on my GB-PVR system play a role? I've never worried about it before w/ my MVPs, but I've noticed that comskip really uses a lot of cpu of the HD shows. Plus the shows themselves are larger, so presumably streaming them to the NMT takes more resource.
I also am getting the impression that the NMT caches the video files. I've seen instances where once a show crashes, I can play other shows but the original show will keep crashing until I restart the NMT. Any evidence that NMTs cache the files played by GB-PVR?

tks

D

[mvallevand]

Martin - one last question (for tonight!) I rebooted the NMT and watched a few SD shows. Around 21:27 I started watching an SD show, after 2-3 min I hit the skip key (to skip a commercial) and got a black screen w/ audio. Exited to GB-PVR, opened an SD show, and everything worked fine. I'm attaching the logs, hope there is some clue in there.

Could you be clearer and use real show names? I didn't see any SD problems, but I think you might have had problems with Lost recorded from HD PVR

I appreciate your time, I"m optimistic that I"ll get this setup working!

I think you will continue to have problems with the HDPVR as long as you record from the STB at more than one resolution. I saw this 1080i and 480p initialization,

2010-04-26 21:10:20.202 VERBOSE Device reports resolution: 1920x1080 (fps:30)
....
2010-04-27 15:59:00.264 VERBOSE Device reports resolution: 720x480 (fps:60)

One thing I"m wondering about, does cpu load on my GB-PVR system play a role? I've never worried about it before w/ my MVPs, but I've noticed that comskip really uses a lot of cpu of the HD shows.

Not really, mvpmcx2 streaming by http, doesn't demand a lot of cpu.

Plus the shows themselves are larger, so presumably streaming them to the NMT takes more resource.

HDPVR aren't that much bigger than mpeg2 to have an impact on streaming bandwidth but that would be see as stuttering or audio breaks.

I also am getting the impression that the NMT caches the video files. I've seen instances where once a show crashes, I can play other shows but the original show will keep crashing until I restart the NMT. Any evidence that NMTs cache the files played by GB-PVR?

No it doesn't cache files.

Martin

[drbenjamin]

Could you be clearer and use real show names? I didn't see any SD problems, but I think you might have had problems with Lost recorded from HD PVR

Sorry Martin, it was late and I mistyped. You are correct, it was the Lost HD version that gave trouble, between 21:27 and 21:30. I had recorded both SD and HD versions of the show, so at 21:30 I started watching the SD Lost with no troubles.

I think you will continue to have problems with the HDPVR as long as you record from the STB at more than one resolution. I saw this 1080i and 480p initialization,

2010-04-26 21:10:20.202 VERBOSE Device reports resolution: 1920x1080 (fps:30)
....
2010-04-27 15:59:00.264 VERBOSE Device reports resolution: 720x480 (fps:60)

I had seen your comments on this in an earlier thread. At the time I went through my STB menus and couldn't see how to fix the output resolution, but prompted by your reply here I broke out the manual and think I"ve figured out how to do it, so I'll give it a shot with 1080i output all the time. Thanks again for the help. I'll report back after mroe experiments

[mvallevand]

No problem with the name I was happy investigating and seeing how accurate the mpg positioning was. I opted for 720p for the smaller size as a good average and it totally changed my original poor impression with the HDPVR. I also found using TME that I had one USB port that wasn't stable.

One thing I noticed for Lost is HD and SD files shared the same edl file. D:\Lost\Lost_20100427_21002202.edl

Good luck.

Martin