hauppauge hd-pvr

[smajor]

In a recent post you wrote "As such, I'm not interested in devices like Popcorn Hour, or other media jukeboxes." but be aware I have enjoyed thousands of flawless hours of playback on the NMT since NPVR first came out.

Martin

I still am not interested in those devices, at least I don't think so... I just put this all together in the last two weeks, you can also find the thread where I was asking about experiences others have had doing just this. I have extra PCs when I upgrade or the kids have one in their room that (now) double as their "TV". Now they are all doing double-duty without having to buy any additional equipment.

Great for you that you've had all that luck, but I'm afraid I don't see how that has anything to do with the HD-PVR or its codecs.

NPVR uses them to record and Live TV playback (on the server) if I decide to do so. Using the 4 PCs as clients, they don't even use those codecs for playback since it's streamed to them. I've used Microsoft's DTV (on Win 7) and ffdshow on the older PCs for playback on the clients. And that works well. Again, I suspect the codecs on the server are part of the issue.

Am I missing something? Does the NMT allow control of my STBs and offer the same functionality as described above with recording/playback of LiveTV as NPVR? I haven't looked at them for years, so I honestly don't know! If so, that might be an alternative as I'm in a rural area with no over-the-air HD, so I'm locked into my cable provider's STBs and the HD-PVR for HD TV.

[mvallevand]

Great for you that you've had all that luck, but I'm afraid I don't see how that has anything to do with the HD-PVR or its codecs. ... Again, I suspect the codecs on the server are part of the issue.

HD-PVR recordings don't need codecs, codecs are only used for playback, so each of your streaming clients needs them. My positive experience with the HD-PVR seems to indicate the problem is the client not the HD-PVR recordings.

Am I missing something? Does the NMT allow control of my STBs and offer the same functionality as described above with recording/playback of LiveTV as NPVR?

Of course you get LiveTV, Recordings playback. comskip etc and control of the STB (using NPVR on the server). That's why people use them.

Martin

[smajor]

HD-PVR recordings don't need codecs, codecs are only used for playback, so each of your streaming clients needs them. My positive experience with the HD-PVR seems to indicate the problem is the client not the HD-PVR recordings.

Of course you get LiveTV, Recordings playback. comskip etc and control of the STB (using NPVR on the server). That's why people use them.

Martin

Clients and NMT's aside, when the HD-PVR records a program, or you are viewing Live TV, of course it is using a codec. Isn't the definition of a codec a "coder and decoder"? It's encoding that stream from the STB into HD-PVR to disk. Recorded or live, it's pretty much the same because with NPVR Live is now just time shifted on disk. The wiki article on the HD-PVR seems to indicate such: http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

Plus, you can adjust the bitrate of the encoding with the TME software and NPVR seems to honor that.

I'm well aware that the clients need them, I mentioned above I've used a couple of different codecs on the clients with good results.

With all clients off and just the server running, I've had recordings fail. Just stop in the middle for no reason.

My point is I'm curious if different codecs at the server are at issue and that's why I'm asking if someone has tried different ones at this point. Your experience is good information, maybe the server or one of the HD-PVRs is flakey, I don't know. That's why I'm asking for opinions.

So the NMT's don't actually do more than a client PC to NPVR, they have no *direct* control over a STB. I still need NPVR as a server and the HD-PVRs. Yup, they do exactly what I thought - still not interested.

[mvallevand]

It's encoding that stream from the STB into HD-PVR to disk.

Totally wrong, the actual mpeg-2 h264 encoding is done by hardware on the HD-PVR and DirectShow is what NPVR uses to store them to disk with its high quality ts recording components. That part is the same for everyone and the PC could be headless PC with no codecs installed. There will be some Win7, Vista and XP driver differences.

Martin

[smajor]

Totally wrong, the actual mpeg-2 h264 encoding is done by hardware on the HD-PVR and DirectShow is what NPVR uses to store them to disk with its high quality ts recording components. That part is the same for everyone and the PC could be headless PC with no codecs installed. There will be some Win7, Vista and XP driver differences.

Martin

Ah, excellent. That helps in my troubleshooting. Thanks!

[tonyimp]

Sorry for the delay in responding... I am running Windows 7. I tried all flavors of Windows, Mac and Linux with an elegato, the HD-PVR and HDHR.
I am happy to report that my current system, the HD-PVR, a Win 7 box with a Sempron 140 (dual core for free ), has been up for at least a month (which in my book is 'stable').
As far as the client, I am running the HD-PVR using the Happauge scheduler and Total Media Extreme. It is very old school and featureless, but it has been pretty reliable, with a simple, fairly reliable web scheduling component (titan tv). For now, I am using the embedded Win 7 as my media management system.

All in all, I am happy to report that my HD-PVR has been proven to be more reliable with recent drivers and rig. I have been busy this summer, but I will try to revert the whole system back to use the NPVR client for everything.

Six months ago I would have given the HD-PVR a C- as a grade. As a result of stability, it has risen to a B+. You still have to dedicate a Cable STB with an IR blaster (or equiv). For instance, the STB that i use for recording does double duty as the kitchen tv. I was watching Toy Story 2 with the kids, and all of the sudden - the recording channel was changed, and sports center came on. I must have come into the kitchen and changed the channel while I was recorindg Oh wll - it is pretty good all around, and does what it advertises. not the best solution, but it makes good on its commitments.

[stefan]

Thank you for all your answers. They make me confident I'll get this to work the way I want it. To be the webshop it is!