Npvr with windows home server 2011 and windows 7 clients...

[neura]

I am new to npvr, but am familiar with SageTV. I had a WHS v1 install and win7 workstations for SageTV.

My server primary drive decided to die so since I was going to have to rebuild anyways I figure this is the perfect chance to upgrade hardware etc and switch to npvr.

So I have been working on this for a few days now and I have noticed a few things.. and need some help getting some things running.

1st thing: NPVR is very slow to load or do anything with compared to SageTV, the primary server is a e2200 and has 8 TB of storage, running windows home server 2011. I did notice running the latest patchs for npvr is that npvr spikes to 50% cpu when IE is open and IE also spikes to 50% cpu causing a lockup condition. I am thinking this is because I am using the onboard video card that does not fully support dx9. one of my win7 workstations has a newer ati radeon hd 42xx series and it does not seem to behave this way. (that I have noticed yet).

2nd: My cable provider is Shaw and I have STB's down at the server, previously I used Exemultituner and HIP to control the boxes, I noticed in the device config I can send command to an external source, but what is actually being passed by npvr? exemultituner did a pause, channel, device since I have 2 Win-TV-PVR150's using composite.

3rd: for some reason I have yet to get the ehome infrared usb-uirt device working with NPVR, this may also be a windows home server 2011 issues, not sure yet. :confused:

4th: would be nice to have a channel preview in the device config area so you can make sure channels are being seen, most of the time the channel is coming back as garbled when I am viewing or it is choppy, or missing blockes almost like a rendering issues, does this on the server and on the workstation. my lan is running 1GB Full Duplex, so network speed is not an issue.

I have installed the codec pack from saf, but again because this is all win64 stuff not sure if something else is causing the issues.

I think my wife is starting to get annoyed :mad: with me playing with this setup and just wants to watch TV again.. so I need some help

[sub]

1st thing: NPVR is very slow to load or do anything with compared to SageTV, the primary server is a e2200 and has 8 TB of storage, running windows home server 2011.I did notice running the latest patchs for npvr is that npvr spikes to 50% cpu when IE is open and IE also spikes to 50% cpu causing a lockup condition. I am thinking this is because I am using the onboard video card that does not fully support dx9. one of my win7 workstations has a newer ati radeon hd 42xx series and it does not seem to behave this way. (that I have noticed yet).

Can you zip and attach your npvr.log? You're probably right about it being the video card. There is a bug in the current release which causes high CPU when directx is not available. This bug is fixed in the next release due in the next couple of days.

2nd: My cable provider is Shaw and I have STB's down at the server, previously I used Exemultituner and HIP to control the boxes, I noticed in the device config I can send command to an external source, but what is actually being passed by npvr? exemultituner did a pause, channel, device since I have 2 Win-TV-PVR150's using composite.

If you just point to a executable, and dont specify any command line parameters, then it'll default to passing the channel number as the only parameter. Alternatively you can specify your own command line using command using the {channel} token where you want the channel number, or {channel_d1} {channel_d2} {channel_d3} {channel_d4} if you want to work with individual digits that make up the channel number.

3rd: for some reason I have yet to get the ehome infrared usb-uirt device working with NPVR, this may also be a windows home server 2011 issues, not sure yet. :confused:

Are you trying use a regular MCE remote via ehome receiver, or are you trying to use a USB-UIRT (http://www.usbuirt.com/)? The former should just work. The latter can also be used, but would need you to use software like HIP or IR Server Suite or EventGhost to monitor the USB-UIRT and send the appropriate keystrokes to NPVR.

[neura]

I will attach logs when I get home tonight, I know it isnt find directx9 on the server, checked the logs al lready for that.

I will try just using the executable with no params associated and see what that does.

It is a MCE remote and for some reason does not work, I think it is because MS dosnt officially suport the mce ehome transciever on win2k8 / whs 2011. I did set it for a microsoft mce remote for teh driver and it isnt errored, so I still need to figure out what is going on there.

Any idea what might be causing the video playback to basically be useless under liveTV? it has black spots, choppy, etc, happens on the server and the client, so I dont think it is hardware related. I have different codecs on the server and on the client as well. Intervideo windvd9 codec use to work really well, but now it isnt, so not sure what is happening. could this be related to the High CPU at the server?

[sub]

It is a MCE remote and for some reason does not work, I think it is because MS dosnt officially suport the mce ehome transciever on win2k8 / whs 2011. I did set it for a microsoft mce remote for teh driver and it isnt errored, so I still need to figure out what is going on there.

There isnt really much that can go wrong in NextPVR with the MCE remote. I suspect this is more of an operating system / drivers problem.

If your remote is in a functioning state, you should be open notepad, then press some numbers like 1234 and see them show up. You should also be able to press the left navigation arrow and the cursor will move left back through those number.

Any idea what might be causing the video playback to basically be useless under liveTV? it has black spots, choppy, etc, happens on the server and the client, so I dont think it is hardware related. I have different codecs on the server and on the client as well. Intervideo windvd9 codec use to work really well, but now it isnt, so not sure what is happening. could this be related to the High CPU at the server?

It could be the video decoders or maybe hardware. Have you tried a variety of decoders.

Is playing back recordings just the same?

[neura]

Okay I got the MS Remote working on Win2k8r2. You need to self sign the drivers to get it working. I can post the information or the link to the site to get that working.

Now seems HIP dosnt really want to work properly on win2k8r2, so I either need to figure that out or replace it with something else that will work in 2k8r2 properly. Also I can't seem to tell if npvr is actually passing the to hip. I do have it configured for "c:\program files (x86)\hip\hipsend.exe" {channel} 500 3 1 now I am trying to figure out if npvr is actually sending the information correctly, so I tried changing this to "c:\windows\notepad.exe" {channel} 500 3 1 but I can't seem to locate where it is putting this. I need to verify that npvr is actually sending the information in 2k8r2, it may not be ineracting with the desktop properly even though the recording service is checked to allow that.

Corrected some of the issues I was seeing by installing a Radeon HD4230 video card in the server, this seems to have made liveTV run a bit better but it is still choppy. Recording's are doing the same thing as well. I did notice that the NPVR Recording service is using 17-20% CPU, and the Disk I/O is extreme, up to 5 seconds in the Disk Write Que on 2k8r2, I am using Seagate 2TB Green Drives, so that may be an issue. Maybe I can turn on some advanced logging so we can see if we can narrow down what the issues are if running this in a server/client environment with 2k8r2 as the server.

[sub]

Now seems HIP dosnt really want to work properly on win2k8r2, so I either need to figure that out or replace it with something else that will work in 2k8r2 properly. Also I can't seem to tell if npvr is actually passing the to hip. I do have it configured for "c:\program files (x86)\hip\hipsend.exe" {channel} 500 3 1 now I am trying to figure out if npvr is actually sending the information correctly, so I tried changing this to "c:\windows\notepad.exe" {channel} 500 3 1 but I can't seem to locate where it is putting this. I need to verify that npvr is actually sending the information in 2k8r2, it may not be ineracting with the desktop properly even though the recording service is checked to allow that.

You can look in the nrecord.log for the "Running blaster:" line, which will show the command line that gets run.

[Reddwarf]

The server version of windows is really not intended for running apps like npvr, HIP etc. You could always manually install all features, services and things missing but the easiest way is to run a standard windows edition if you want to run apps.