I have no idea what you're talking about - where do I start?

[jayess99]

I've gone round and round the wiki page, getting started page, etc., etc., it's just a continuous loop, with no end in sight. I have a laptop, installed NextPVR on it. What do I do next? Do I hook the laptop to the TV, can I watch television shows on the laptop, how does the nextpvr interact with the laptop? do I need HDMI cables for anything? You folks talk about getting started but you seem to be starting in the middle, not the beginning. And if I use the laptop and connect it to the TV (I have no idea how to do this), do I then have to get up and walk to the laptop every time I want to change the channel, or use the TV guide, or whatever? This all probably sounds stupid to you, but I was not born knowing this stuff. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance. jayess

[mvallevand]

You can watch on your laptop screen or if you have HDMI port and cables you can watch on an HDMI TV.

If you don't want to use a mouse/keyboard you can buy infra-red (IR) remote controls for your PC. ie http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6880101007

Setting up a tuner card and an EPG can take hours though, so prepared to do a lot of research.

Martin

[steeb]

Martin is quite correct.

You would need to do some research. I do not personally believe that the wiki starts in the middle, it starts presuming that you do have a little background knowledge. I understand that this could be frustrating if you do not have this knowledge but understanding NextPVR does require a basic understanding of what it can do for you and what you are trying to achieve. If you bought an electric kettle would you need to know that you needed to put water in it before you turned it on?

cheers

steeb

[Zeb]

Hello jayess99. Are you currently getting TV signals from cable, satellite or antenna? Do you have a TV tuner for the laptop?

[gEd]

What do I do next?

It might be a good idea to describe what is it that you want to achieve and then people can advise you on how you can go about doing this.

Do you want to record TV? If so, as Zeb said, how do you get your TV feed at the moment and do you have a tv tuner to receive the signal.

As an example, I have a PC in a black box under my TV. It has an internal TV tuner card into which I have an aerial feed (the aerial is split to feed the PC and the TV).
The PC sends the video output from the graphics card via a HDMI cable to my TV.
It has a USB infrared sensor so I can control nPVR using a PC remote control.
I download the program guide from the web so I can see what's on TV and then schedule recordings which I can then playback on the TV.
I can put a DVD or bluray disk into the PC and play that on the TV.

Is this the kind of thing that you want to do but with a laptop instead of with a full-sized PC?

[jayess99]

Hello jayess99. Are you currently getting TV signals from cable, satellite or antenna? Do you have a TV tuner for the laptop?

I don't mind doing the research, I just need to know what I should be looking for. Here's the deal on me: I'm 68 yrs old, not stupid or slow but a little behind the tech curve. I kissed Directv goodby, now I'm strictly using an antenna for whatever I can receive, and I also have a Roku box. That's it. If there is now some way I can record, stop, pause and whatever else, I'm up for it. I just need to know where to start. The suggestion of HDMI to the TV, and the remote for the laptop will help immensely. Anything else you can add will be appreciated. Thanks, js

[johnsonx42]

Do you have a TV Tuner for your laptop yet? I'd suggest the HVR-950Q as it comes with a remote: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/d...r950q.html
The remote is a goofy little thing, but it will get you started; you can always program the codes into a more normal universal remote later on.

Are you sure you want to use your laptop for this though? You're going to want a computer that's always connected to your tuner, antenna, and TV... is the laptop also your regular use PC?

[dshoup]

So, it sounds like you want to record and watch tv using your laptop as a DVR (digital video recorder...essentially a hard drive based VCR). As others pointed out, this works quite well, but it will require a device that records TV on your hard drive (such as the one johnsonx42 suggested...I'm a big fan of the Hauppauge products), and if you want to see the recordings on a TV, your laptop needs to have a video output (can be VGA, DVI, HDMI s-video, etc. ...almost all laptops have something like that as an output) that matches an input available on your TV.

Here are some simplified steps (or at least what I hope will be simplified) to follow to get this all working:

1. buy a TV tuner device, plug it into your computer, and install it according to the device's instructions (i.e., it needs to have drivers installed...it may also come with its own recording and watching software which you may or may not need, but I would just set the whole thing up to be sure all the drivers get installed so the device will work).

2. Install nPVR. It sounds like you managed to get that far, so I assume you figured out how to do that...on most systems it is as straightforward as runing the installation program.

3. Run nPVR and right-click somewhere on the screen to bring up a menu...select "settings" from this and then click on the "devices" link on the left.

4. You should see your device listed here (if you do not, post a help request and someone can help you with debugging this). It might show as multiple devices if it has multiple recording inputs (i.e., my tuner has both an analog and a digital tuner, so it shows 2 devices with a very similar name, but one has ATSC (digital) as the type, the other says Analog). Click on the device you want to use (probably the digital/ATSC one) then click "device setup".

5. Make sure your TV antenna or cable feed is plugged into your tuning device and then click the "scan" button and go get a cup of coffee (it may take a good 15-20 minutes or so to scan for channels). This will identify all the channels you can receive and record their tuning information. Then click Ok as needed to get back out to the main settings window

6. Next you will need to set up an EPG (electronic programming guide...basically your TV listings in nPVR that allow you to say what you want to watch or record). Instructions for doing this vary depending on what you use as your TV listing source. An overview of the process is available at http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...ration.EPG. Clicking on the link for " XMLTV EPG page" will show you some options for different sources of TV listings. If you are in the USA, I recommend using mc2xml as it does the job pretty well and is free. Click the link for whichever source you plan to use and follow the instructions there. Most of these will involve adding some lines to an updateepg.bat batch file...just do what the instructions say. Once this is set up, your TV listings will be automatically downloaded once a day.

7. To speed things up (rather than waiting 24h to be sure nPVR updated your listings), you can force the TV listings to download manually by running your updateEpg.bat file (double click it in the file explorer window and it will run). Wait until the batch file completes (dos window will close on its own), then right-click on the nPVR screen and open the settings menu again. This time, click on "channels" on the left, then click on update EPG. This will read in the file that the updateEpg.bat file created containing your TV listings.

8. You then need to map the TV listing channels to the channels nPVR found when it scanned for channels on your tuner device. This is necessary as your downloaded listings may use slightly different channel names/numbers than your tuner card found. The instructions for doing this are at http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...TVEPG#toc2.

9. You can now enjoy using nPVR. You can watch live TV by opening the TV listings and hitting enter when highlighting a show in the current time slot you want to watch. You can set the device to record a show that is either currently showing or will be showing at some point in the future the same way. Recorded shows will be listed under "recordings" in the main nPVR menu, you can go there to watch them when you want.

10. To connect your computer to your TV, you will need to read your computer's manual. Each computer has slightly different ways of doing this, but there is usually a key combination you press to enable the video output (most can do laptop screen only, external video output only, or a combination of those two..choose whichever you want).

I echo johnsonx42's comment that a laptop may not be the best device to use with nPVR. It works perfectly well, but to record, the computer needs to be connected to your antenna or cable feed...so you really need to leave it plugged in all the time and that sort of defeats the point of having a laptop (i.e., it is not very portable if you have a cable connected to the wall all the time). It is ok if you disconnect it at times, but if the time rolls around to record a show you want to record and the antenna/cable cord is not connected, you will make a recording with nothing but static. I do install nPVR on my laptop, but I only use it to play videos I copy to the laptop when I go on vacation.

I hope all this helps. The process can be a little overwhelming if you are not tech savvy, but it really is not hard if you just take it one step at a time and research that one step if you have confusion. See if you can follow these 10 steps and post specific questions if you get stuck. The user community here is great and very helpful. Good luck!