HDMI Grabbers (2024)

[mvallevand]

One of my old HDMI grabbers device got crushed so I bought a new one from Amazon for $32 CDN and I find it works very well with NextPVR.  This shows a 1080p at 60fps capture and this was the highest CPU and GPU usage I found on my i5 Gen7 Coffee Lake CPU.  The second ffmpeg process is streaming to the NextPVR web player since it is h264/aac already it doesn't have to do much either.

It seems every bit as good as an HDVPR or HDMI streamer so far.

Martin

[Len_Lekx]

What's the device? (It might help me deal with my own HDMI woes... )

[mvallevand]

The best device value I found so far this year I showed as the second link here https://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.ph...#pid590864. It even does 2160p @ 18fps. Some newer devices do 2160p at 30 but I haven't tested those yet. It worked as both be a capture device and a splitter and performed better than the reviews.

The tests in the above where on this less device https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0C1ZNQTTN but I did find it could do 4K as suggested on Amazon. but it was reasonable for 1080p @ 60 from Rogers.

Again I don't want to endorse any product, you can see the reviews are all over the map I just was pointing out that for those the tried UVC devices before there have been improvements.

As for your HDMI capture requirements, I believe something else is going wrong since I don't have problems on any of the many devices I have with the HDVPR2. My Colossus from ebay has cleared customs so I might get it soon to see if it works differently the the HDPVR2 with the Rogers/Comcast box.

Martin

[Len_Lekx]

Well - I'm still trying. I have a few more tests that I've thought of... but I'm starting to think it's the card itself that's causing the issues. Either it works differently from an HDPVR2, or it's sustained damage over the years I've been using it with the component inputs.

I'll know soon enough...

[Jean0987654321]

I got a LinkPi. It's way better than dealing with these USB Grabbers and ffmpeg
https://www.ebay.com/itm/315279165665?mk...media=COPY

[mvallevand]

Thanks I will give one a try, they are pretty cheap on AliExpress so I figured they wouldn't work but for their 11:11 it is like $90 US so worth a try. I already have a 1080 HDMI streamer which is very reliable, and an HDPVR giving me AC-3 which is still preferred device, on Linux it is much more stable than Windows.

Martin

[mvallevand]

OK I got my device and I haven't used it much to see how stable it is and so far it is the best grabber that I have used. The web UI is professional and while the box didn't include any documentation the information on the Internet is better than most that come with devices anyway plus there are some good technical information here https://github.com/matiaspl/LinkPi-ENCx

In my particular use case I use the streamer between my STB and TV and use the HDMI out to feed my main TV. Because I only watch this directly a few hours a day when I use the cable remote instead of NextPVR. I basically get a second recording device for the $90 I have another STB that feeds an HDPVR for recordings, this device is my Live TV box.

I also configure two capture streams, one 4K 30 capture for the few 4K channels and one 1080 capture for the HD.

The only issue I am having is I find the HEVC decoder is a little slow to lock. This video shows the issue when I tune to channel 507 the first time. https://streamable.com/68wiqw I go back to channel 9 and you can see it is quite fast and then after configuring the 4K stream for H264 you can see it is fast. I can add a 2 second delay to workaround the issue but I kind of like the fast speed. Compared to 5 seconds on the HDPVR this is a dream. Either way from the OSD property you can see that it is capturing in 4K.

One nice feature is I can plug a USB video grabber into it and get a second input saving the need to use ffmpeg transcoding. I see this for future use with an Android tuner

Thanks for making the post.

Martin

[Jean0987654321]

Yeah...I've been using that for another DVR software and it runs pretty smoothly for me. I have Sling and I just control everything using adb and it's been able to do the job...

[Prsa01]

Warning! noob questions - would appreciate info or link(s)

Since something like this may become necessary as atsc 3.0/drm rolls out can someone please describe how recordings can/could be automated with this? Would it be possible to setup the recording as usual (using guide/tuner/ip stream) "device", but then telling nextpvr to take the grabber output stream instead?

What advantages/disadvantages could this have in comparison to a screen grabber?

Or, am I completely missing the point and the idea is to use these differently.

Thanks much in advance!

[mvallevand]

I don't know what you mean by screen grabber. If you mean the devices that basically capture a browser window these HDMI grabbers devices are head over heels superior for PVR.

If you mean the cheap HDMI USB capture devices that people use with OBS studio the main difference is these capture directly to H264 video and AAC audio so they are effectively OTA. Their video can even be played in the NextPVR browser without any transcoding.

My current cable and Internet package gives me 1.5 GB Internet and 150 channels and 2 STB devices for around $70 US plus tax. My main reason for using NextPVR is the support comskip and NextEnd but the unlimited storage is nice. Some of the new cloud PVR's limit how long you can store recordings and you can't easily shop around for a new provider after a contract expiry because your recordings vanish.

I have used an HDMI device (HDPVR) connected to a cable STB for years. Prior to v5 I used the direct Windows support for the HDPVR and after that I used an Extra device in Linux. The biggest change came earlier this year because I was relying on the fact that there was no DRM on component video so I had to move to an HDPVR 2 (for AC3 audio) but I used one of these http streamers for general use.

The challenge of these devices it how to tune the STB. That is done with a a blaster program and NextPVR send the channel number but the user is responsible for converting that to IR for tuning. For that research LIRC. Some STB's do have http controlled tuning but that will vary.

There is a new breed of tuner that works by using an Android device instead of an STB and the tuning is done with ADB, the Android debug program. I have actually controlled the Silicondust App with ADB and feed that into NextPVR via a grabber.

Martin