GBPVR support for Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1900 or Hauppauge HD-PVR (PAL)

[lchiu7]

I really should upgrade to NPVR (and I have for a DVB-T card) but for my analogue cable I still use GBPVR. This is because I have yet to find a satisfactory channel changing solution in NPVR that can use my USB-UIRT to blast channel changes to my cable box.

Up till now I have been using a Hauppauge PVR250 card which works well. But I have upgraded to a Brix compact PC that only has USB so I need to find a USB hardware assisted capture solution. The two options that seem viable are the Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1900 or the Hauppauge HD PVR.

Documentation suggests the HVR-1950 (NTSC) version is supported but nothing for the HVR-1900 and I can't find anything for the HD PVR which is PAL/NTSC.

Can somebody help?

I tried looking in the bda.ini posting but while it mentions the bda.ini is posted, it's not and the links just loop back to each other!

Thanks

[sub]

To be honest, I cant remember. GBPVR is a very very long time ago.

I don't think it supported the HDPVR though?

[lchiu7]

To be honest, I cant remember. GBPVR is a very very long time ago.

I don't think it supported the HDPVR though?

OK thanks. I guess I am going to have to move to NPVR also for analogue capture and try to work out how to do channel changing on the cable box via my USB-UIRT.

[johnsonx42]

another benefit to upgrading is that NextPVR has solid support for software encoding for analog capture devices, so you'd have a much wider field of available devices. GB-PVR had limited support for software encoding at the very end, I'm not sure it how well it worked as I had no analog channels back then.

[lchiu7]

another benefit to upgrading is that NextPVR has solid support for software encoding for analog capture devices, so you'd have a much wider field of available devices. GB-PVR had limited support for software encoding at the very end, I'm not sure it how well it worked as I had no analog channels back then.

Well I have been running GBPVR from almost since it first came out with regular updates. I got to a point where I really didn't need to do any more updates since my requirements were modest viz. just record TV shows using a hardware based MPEG2 card (Hauppauge PVR250). I moved away from trying to use GBPVR to play content which appeared to cause the most issues and play all content using a Popcorn Hour running off shares on the PC.

Looking at NPVR (which I also have installed for my DVB-T card) it seems there is work to do to make it recognise any analogue capture cards. Certainly while my PVR2 USB2 device is recognised in Windows and by GBPVR, NPVR can't see it. Looks like I have to install some components of SoftPVR and some WinTV components. (Is that correct?). And I have to find another IR blaster solution.

(As an aside I never worked out why Sub chose to remove IR blaster solutions when he built NPVR. That made life much harder for many of us, accustomed to the great support in GBPVR).

[sub]

Looking at NPVR (which I also have installed for my DVB-T card) it seems there is work to do to make it recognise any analogue capture cards. Certainly while my PVR2 USB2 device is recognised in Windows and by GBPVR, NPVR can't see it. Looks like I have to install some components of SoftPVR and some WinTV components. (Is that correct?).

You just need to install the WinTV software that came with your device, then analog should work in NextPVR.

Steps for manually installing SoftPVR etc were just a work arounds that users of non Hauppauge cards have come up with to get analog support for their devices.

[sub]

(As an aside I never worked out why Sub chose to remove IR blaster solutions when he built NPVR. That made life much harder for many of us, accustomed to the great support in GBPVR).

Even back in the day, GBPVR wasn't very good at supporting IR Blasters, and the bulk of people using the most common blasters (like MCE blasters), had to rely on external blaster software like HIP, IRSS, EventGhost etc. In NextPVR I decided to no even bother with it (particularly given most users had moved over to digital tuners), and instead let people use these other external utilities that were a lot better at it, since these projects have a lot more time they can focus on this stuff.

[lchiu7]

Even back in the day, GBPVR wasn't very good at supporting IR Blasters, and the bulk of people using the most common blasters (like MCE blasters), had to rely on external blaster software like HIP, IRSS, EventGhost etc. In NextPVR I decided to no even bother with it (particularly given most users had moved over to digital tuners), and instead let people use these other external utilities that were a lot better at it, since these projects have a lot more time they can focus on this stuff.

1. I think I can install WinTV. I found the disc even though for all the Hauppauge devices I have bought I have never used their software. Of course now I have to locate a USB CDROM drive :-(

2. I guess was lucky with my USB-UIRT. Worked like a treat out of the box. And I liked the fact that GBPVR could learn the IR codes for my cable box. I hear what you are saying about the move to digital tuners. I have one also and of course no channel changing required. But I still have analogue cable and I'm being forced to upgrade to a DVR but I don't want to use the inbuilt recorder in it since the content is closed down unable to be accessed elsewhere (T-Box). I want my recorded analogue content to be available throughout the network. I guess I will have to see if I can make the other solutions (USBUIRTSEND) work for me.

[sub]

The only extra thing I should mention, is there is a quirk with the old Hauppauge PVR250/350 drivers that requires you to disable the HauppaugeTVServer service after installing WinTV. You don't need to worry about this with later Hauppauge devices, and it can coexist with NextPVR.

This is because the Hauppauge TV Server would grab the PVR250/PVR350, and not allow other apps to use it.

[lchiu7]

The only extra thing I should mention, is there is a quirk with the old Hauppauge PVR250/350 drivers that requires you to disable the HauppaugeTVServer service after installing WinTV. You don't need to worry about this with later Hauppauge devices, and it can coexist with NextPVR.

This is because the Hauppauge TV Server would grab the PVR250/PVR350, and not allow other apps to use it.

Thanks. I suspect I will be using a Hauppauge HD PVR (if my Ebay auction is successful :-) ). I do have a Hauppauge PVR2 USB2 which I had hoped to use but I bought the NTSC version by mistake (obvious now since I got it from Ebay US) and while it is found by GBPVR and captures content via S-Video, the video is truncated top and bottom and the audio is garbled. And I don't know if it's possible to use a registry hack to make it PAL instead.