Via EPIA SP with Nova-T XP2 in the UK

[geoffneck]

I'm writing this as I am struggling to find much info relating to using Mini ITX boards from Via working well with GB-PVR...

I have been waiting for almost a year for the EPIA SP board to come out as it looked to be a bit more suited to HTPC... I was going to try MEEDIO but came across GB-PVR and liked what I saw...

I now have GB-PVR running on my EPIA SP board using most of the default settings... I had an aerial installed on top of the house (I get a 100% signal now) and am pleased with the results... this is my first attempt at a PC for the living room.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the setup, although, I will look to upgrade the motherboard when its next versions come out as the Via C7 Chipset has full support for DX9... This is the main problem with the boards from Via... I have to use overlay for the video which works, but occationally jitters... However the recorded playback works fine...

I will probably end up watching Digi TV using a dedicated freeview receiver (because the channel changing takes about 5 secs to work on the PC), then flip to GB-PVR to record programs...

Is the slow channel changing a problem with all Digi TV cards??? are there ways to speed this up...

1.3MHz VIA EPIA SP, 512MB, 80G HD, NOVA-T Pci, XP2, GB-PVR, PowerDVD v5

[herbs]

To change quickly click on the green button on your hauppauge remote then use the ^ and v button to navigate to the channel you wish then press the enter button on the remote. This way you do not have to flick through the channels which as you say takes a few seconds each channel on the dvb cards.

[sub]

Is the slow channel changing a problem with all Digi TV cards??? are there ways to speed this up...

I'm not sure where exactly your bottle neck is, but my DVB-S takes about 1.5 seconds to change channels in live tv, and about 4 - 5 seconds if I'm in timeshift mode.

It may just be difference with DVB-S vs DVB-T, or possibly a Nova-T specific thing.

[bgowland]

I'm not sure where exactly your bottle neck is, but my DVB-S takes about 1.5 seconds to change channels in live tv, and about 4 - 5 seconds if I'm in timeshift mode.

It may just be difference with DVB-S vs DVB-T, or possibly a Nova-T specific thing.

Could be a driver issue and time for tuning requests to complete??? I can confirm that channel change on the Nova-t takes 3-5 seconds in live preview mode - not much difference in timeshift mode (5-6 seconds maybe). Channel change for analogue on my PVR500 is 'split-second'.

[sub]

Can some one post a gbpvr.exe-native.log so I can see where the time is taken?

[bgowland]

Can some one post a gbpvr.exe-native.log so I can see where the time is taken?

OK. I selected a dig. channel from TV Guide and hit 'Watch' at 01:52:10. I then used the up/down arrows on my keyboard to change channel every 20 seconds after that up until 01:53:50.

Log included.

[sub]

Your channel changes all seem to take a little over three seconds, but there will be some additional overheads making it slightly longer. I can only assume its something slow in the current implementation of the Nova-T device drivers - possibly to cope with slow tuner hardware.

01:53:30.560 INFO SetTuningRequest(T:C28,529834,0,0,8~P:16832~V:201~A:401~N:>BBC FOUR)
01:53:30.607 INFO SetTuningRequest@T1
01:53:30.607 VERBOSE Submitting new Tuning Request
01:53:30.607 INFO SetTuningRequest@T2
01:53:30.607 INFO SetTuningRequest@T3
01:53:30.607 INFO SetTuningRequest@T4
01:53:31.060 INFO SetTuningRequest@T5
01:53:31.060 VERBOSE Mapping Video PID 201
01:53:31.060 VERBOSE getSetting(PreferredAudioDecoder)
01:53:31.060 VERBOSE Mapping Audio PID 401
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE getSetting(ListGraphFilters)
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE Graph contains the following filters:
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - Default DirectSound Device
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - NVIDIA Audio Decoder
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - NVIDIA Video Decoder
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - Video Renderer
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - BDA MPEG2 Transport Information Filter
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - MPEG Audio Decoder
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - Hauppauge WinTV 88x TS Capture
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - Hauppauge WinTV 88x DVB-T Tuner/Demod
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE - Microsoft DVBT Network Provider
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE getSetting(SaveGraphFiles)
01:53:32.889 VERBOSE locked=1 present=1 strength=1000 quality=100
01:53:33.795 INFO SetTuningRequest() finished

Below is my TwinHan DVB-S log following for the same function. The time for switching channels here is less than a second. I tried it about a quite a few times, and this is a fairly standard duration.

13:29:37.125 INFO SetTuningRequest(T:12456,V,22500,56~P:1035~V:512~A:650~PMT:257~TXT:578~N:>TV One)
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE Tuning Request is for the current transponder
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE Mapping Video PID 512
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE getSetting(PreferredAudioDecoder)
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE Mapping Audio PID 650
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE getSetting(EnableTeleText)
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE getSetting(ListGraphFilters)
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE Graph contains the following filters:
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - Default DirectSound Device
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - Video Renderer
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - BDA MPEG2 Transport Information Filter
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - THPsiParser
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - MPEG Audio Decoder
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - Mpeg2Dec Filter
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - TwinHan DVBS BDA Capture Filter
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - TwinHan DVBS BDA Tuner Filter
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE - Microsoft DVBS Network Provider
13:29:37.140 VERBOSE getSetting(SaveGraphFiles)
13:29:37.375 VERBOSE locked=1 present=1 strength=33 quality=35
13:29:38.031 INFO SetTuningRequest() finished

[bgowland]

I agree - a driver issue perhaps. I don't remember it always taking as long but I don't use Live TV often. I have a newer version of the drivers which I haven't installed yet - it'll be interesting to see if there's a difference.

The two points which seem to add the most time on their own (from my log) are...

01:53:31.060 VERBOSE Mapping Audio PID 401
01:53:31.795 VERBOSE getSetting(ListGraphFilters)

...and...

01:53:31.795 VERBOSE getSetting(SaveGraphFiles)
01:53:32.889 VERBOSE locked=1 present=1 strength=1000 quality=100

...about 1.8 seconds in total - twice your change time altogether. I'll put the new drivers in tomorrow if I have time.

[sub]

The last of these two is starting the graph.

The first of these is re-rendering in the audio stream of the graph. Its possible this time is related to the combinations of directshow audio components on your machine.