MVP Howto, capabilities

[psycik]

Hi

Has anyone put together a sticky, on what GBPVR is cabable of with an MVP, some of the issues, (DVD playback etc) with one, what they do well, what they don't do well??

I'm thinking about getting one to access recorded content and maybe live tv from another room.

Just interested to know what sort of limitations there are, what effects it will have on my main GBPVR box (memory, cpu), what plugins work well, don't work etc.

[psycik]

I have nothing. I was just looking at what's involved. I'll look at a hauupauge MVP.

My current system is an athlon 1800+ with 512 mb (dual channel) ram. 250 gb harddrive for recordings and cache. One PVR-150 tuner and cabled 100 mb LAN running on a dedicated xp sp2 machine with a usb uirt for changing my cable box.

i suppose the main plugins I'll be using are either sub's recording module (or the one i've written that's not yet released) and tv guide, and live tv.

So hopefully just a real basic system.

[sub]

Has anyone put together a sticky, on what GBPVR is cabable of with an MVP, some of the issues, (DVD playback etc) with one, what they do well, what they don't do well??

Pretty much everything works with the MVP, with a few exceptions. DVD playback doesnt work...not entirely true, there is a plugin which lets you play the movie (behind the scenes transcoding main movie to MPEG2). No visualisation with audio.

The MVP menus can be a little sluggish since every keystroke goes across the network, a screen is generated, converted to the correct YUV colourspace, compressed, then sent back across the network. It not too bad, but not as fast as directly on the PC. The faster your PC is at generating the screen, converting the colourspace and compressing the better the performance (fast CPU == good).

The MVP natively plays MPEG1, MPEG2 and MP3 files. These days you can play AVI files etc, but it is done using server side transcoding which requires a more CPU. Better to stick with MPEG1/2 file formats if you can though.

The majority of the plugins work fine.

I think the MVPs are great. Perfect for extra clients around the house.

[psycik]

know anywhere around here (NZ) where you can get one for a good price??

[sub]

No I dont. Mine are from the states.

[psycik]

You buy them over there, or were you able to get someone to send one over? I found most of the places, Frys, circuit city etc, wont send to Nz.

[sub]

The first one I bought was from http://www.outpost.com, but I dont think they stock them anymore. They have pretty decent USPS shipping rates to NZ.

The next one was kindly donated and mailed over.

I've also bought things from http://www.provantage.com/ before. Shipping was a bit more expensive, but still cheaper than having bought many items here.

The MVP power adapter is 110-240v, so you only need an $8 travel adapter adapter.

[psycik]

oh, outpost is frys. i didn't think they would send over here.

[sub]

Some things they wont export, but most of the stuff I've wanted they'll ship.

[psycik]

Ok, cool. i've seen them over here for $250. From Palmy Vegas is the cheapest......although Ascent.co.nz are advertisting them, out of stock, but for $185