New user new install and a few "issues"

[Jimdish255]

I decided to give this a try after my TotalMedia crashed prematurely during a recording session with my TVWonder 750U USB card. Gateway laptop Windows 7 Home Premium.

So far I have the program installed and a successful channel scan. TV picture is fine but I have no volume. Is there a volume control I don't see in my interface? Or do I need a specific set of codecs as I haven't loaded this laptop up with much yet?

Secondly, there is like no program info in my guide. I didn't install XMLTV because I'm not clear on how to set it up with the program. That's a must for recording.

Finally the picture is nice but I'm also not sure what keystroke to use to change channels without going back to the menu. So no channel or volume control on-screen. What am I missing here?

Thanks for any tips you might have.

[johnsonx42]

First, please read the Getting Started sticky at the top of the NPVR support forum.

You will need to install AC3Filter (http://ac3filter.net) and select it on the Decoders screen in Settings. Almost all US digital broadcasts use AC3 audio, and the Microsoft DTV-DVD Audio Decoder does not work for AC3 in 3rd party programs.

For the EPG, you simply setup one of the EPG grabbers I listed in the support sticky. Once you have an XMLTV file with your epg data in it, go to the Channels screen in settings. Point your first channel to the XMLTV file, then map the rest using Bulk Map. Finally hit Update EPG to load the schedule.

There is no on-screen volume control yet. You will need to control volume outside of NPVR.

For channel changing you can using the, up and down arrows to bring up a mini-guide (press Enter to change channel), or press F1 for a full-screen TV Guide (assuming you have applied the patch zip from post 2 of the sticky, which you should). You can channel surf with the +/- keys, or pageup/pagedn. Finally you can just change channels directly by keying in the desired channel number.

[Jimdish255]

Thanks for the detailed reply. While you were replying, I installed the AC3 filter and found the arrow for changing channels while watching. And yes I have been studying the sticky, but I'm really new to this setup. Volume is on and channel changes fine.

Moving ahead to the EPG "Once you have an XMLTV file with your epg data in it". I've "installed" the program but I'm not fully clear on that last bit. I will try the next steps.

Thanks again.

[johnsonx42]

The EPG is a little confusing at first; just jump in. Configure your EPG grabber according to their instructions; once you've set the options correctly and executed the grabber, it will produce an XMLTV.XML file (or with a similar name). MC2XML is pretty easy to set up, because it provides a GUI the first time you run it and then stores your options in a .dat file; any time you run it after that it just downloads the EPG and sticks it in your XMLTV file. If you don't get the options right the first time, just delete the .dat file, run it again and select your options.

Only after you have produced the XMLTV.XML file do you involve NPVR. That's when you go to the Channels screen in NPVR Settings, select your first channel and click "Details". There you specify XMLTV as your source and point it to your XMLTV.XML file. You also pick which channel in the EPG matches the physical channel. Once you've done the first channel map the rest with Bulk Map; for each channel just click the "XMLTV Channel" field and pick the channel in the EPG that matches the physical channel. At the end of all of that you click "UpdateEPG" to have it load the whole file.

To automate the EPG update each night, create an UpdateEPG.bat file in the NPVR\Scripts directory (that's the data directory, not program files). Just put whatever command you need to update your XMLTV.XML file. For MC2XML it would be as simple as this:

Code:

cd \path\to\mc2xml
mc2xml

[Jimdish255]

Not having much success figuring out how to integrate XMLTV. In the channels list I go to details and select XMLTV. It then needs a path to an xml file which I cannot find in XMLTV unpack. Searching...

[johnsonx42]

You won't have the XMLTV.XML file until you actually run the XMLTV program and tell it what data to download; only then does it produce the XMLTV.XML with YOUR EPG data in it.

[Jimdish255]

Clearly I'm having a problem figuring out how to run the program. The only executable file listed after unpacking brings up a box which quickly disappears.

[johnsonx42]

which one are you running? XMLTV I think is strictly command line based; you'd have to read the docs and determine what to put on the command line to grab the desired EPG data. XMLTVGUI and MC2XML have a GUI that makes it much easier.

MC2XML is the only one I've ever used; I used it a couple of years ago to grab Media Center and TitanTV listings, and now use it for Schedules Direct listings since NPVR doesn't read SD data directly yet.

[johnsonx42]

By the way, if you're using an antenna for digital TV you can also try the broadcast EPG option instead of XMLTV. When I first tried it a couple of releases ago it didn't work well at all, but I didn't care to troubleshoot it since I had Schedules Direct anyway. It probably works better now.

[ga_mueller]

I had this problem too with an older version of mc2xml, just a quick screen flash. This version works: I just tried it!