gbpvr with Sat TV

[rds_correia]

Hi there,
First post after a couple of days lurking the forum.
Unfortunately I didn't find an answer to my questions, so here goes nothing.
I'd like to make an HTPC to put in the living room that would do all-in-one, that is, Sat TV receiver with maybe an Hauppauge Nova-S pci, DVD player, VCR, etc.
For that I thought about buying me a mini Epia mobo, with 512MB RAM, 120GB HDD and the afore mentioned Nova-S.
But I've been giving it some more thought about it and I don't know if a 1Ghz Epia has the necessary muscle to play live TV while recording in high quality.
Some friends told me that I would need to buy a Hauppauge PVR-250 with a hardware MPEG2 encoder/decoder.
But doesn't the Nova-S come with a hardware MPEG2 encoder/decoder, too.
Or in case of the Nova-S it's just a decoder and the Epia CPU does all the remaining tasks?
If my last assumption is correct, then I would need to go for a real PC with more than one PCI slot to accomodate the PVR-250 and the Nova-S, right?
One last question: has anyone ever tried to boot XP+gbpvr from a CF card?
TIA
Cheers

[sub]

For that I thought about buying me a mini Epia mobo, with 512MB RAM, 120GB HDD and the afore mentioned Nova-S.
But I've been giving it some more thought about it and I don't know if a 1Ghz Epia has the necessary muscle to play live TV while recording in high quality.

Unfortunately these 1Ghz EPIAs are too slow. A few people limp by with them, but the dont cope.

Some friends told me that I would need to buy a Hauppauge PVR-250 with a hardware MPEG2 encoder/decoder.

The PVR250 has a hardware encoder, but no decoder. The only model that has a decoder is the PVR350, but that is hardware wired to its specialist tv out, and has some serious problems for most EPIA owners

But doesn't the Nova-S come with a hardware MPEG2 encoder/decoder, too.

There is no encoder or decoder on the Nova-S. The digital transmission comes pre-encoded by the broadcaster though, so its already in MPEG2 format.

Honestly, I'd try to find a faster machine. There is some quiet small form factor motherboards using faster chips like the Pentium M or CoreDuo processors. See places like http://www.epiacenter.com/ or http://www.mini-itx.com

[rds_correia]

Hi Sub, I see you are the Admin.
Thanks for the fast answers.
Unfortunately I don't have much money to spare here...
Then let's suppose that I borrow a Sat receiver from a friend that has a spare one.
Then I can see live TV from the receiver.
This way can I use a not so powerfull PC just to play DVDs and to record some shows on HDD?
If so, what kind of connectors would I need to have on the digital Sat receiver and what hardware would need to be running on the HTPC?
TIA
Cheers

[sub]

I've owned, and ended up selling, two of these EPIAs boards in the past (ME6000 and M10000). I personally think they're too slow for comfortably watching DVDs or playing back recordings. As soon as you try to overlay OSD graphics on the video, they stutter madly since the CPU cant keep up. They've also got a crappy tv out on them.

...but as I said, some people are managing to get by with them, so if you have low expectations about how the system will perform, you might be ok. Use the forum search feature to search for 'EPIA' and I'm sure you'll find much past discussion on these boards.

[rds_correia]

Thanks sub .
I think I have fully understood the problem .
Cheers

[frazer]

I'm one of those trying to limp along with an EPIA system! I think you'll probably want to look at getting a hardware MPEG card, and thus a case with two PCI slots for use with a riser card (there are a few around).

Sigma make the best known probably; the Hollywood Plus is cheap and usually plentiful on eBay, but it won't display the OSD of GBPVR, so you'd have to connect the TV to the s-video out on the motherboard as well, and switch channels between the OSD and the TV picture, which is very good quality though.

The Sigma XCard (a little less easy to get hold of, and more expensive) is supported by GBPVR for OSD display, though I believe sub is not developing the software with it in mind any more, so there are some issues. For one, I have found that my BDA driver DVB cards won't scan for channels when the XCard drivers are installed; if I try to scan using my Nova-T, the computer shuts down, so I have to uninstall the XCard before scanning then reinstall after. Also, you'll have to change the OSD skin a little, as the XCard can't handle the number of colours used in the default one (or any of the alternatives I've tried). This is very easy though- it's basically just a matter of changing one Jpeg file.

Further, you can only watch in timeshift mode, which creates a delay when changing channels. I don't know if the slowness of the EPIA board (I have an MII12000) plays a part here as well, but for me it can take 10 seconds or more to get a steady picture running after a channel change. the picture can also stutter just a little when first displaying the OSD, but that probably is due to the slow CPU, and is not much of a problem anyway.

Having said all that, the XCard does give an excellent quality TV picture with almost no load on the CPU, and, apart form being excellent software in its own right, GBPVR is the only DVB software that really supports it, hence why I continue to limp along trying to get it to work as well as possible.

By the way, if you are using a flat panel rather than a normal CRT TV, so didn't need to use the less than brilliant TV out on the EPIA baord, you might find you can get away without the MPEG decoder card anyway, if you can get the onboard hardware mpeg2 acceleration running that is. When it does work, using the Cyberlink codec from PowerDVD5, I can watch TV within GBPVR using between 30 and 40% CPU load only, which is very acceptable I reckon. The only problem I've had, and I've yet to find a solution on the VIA support boards, is that the acceleration sometimes doesn't kick in, or suddenly stops working, and then the CPU load goes up to 70 or 80%, which is a little higher than I'm comfortable with for extended periods in my fanless case. Also I suspect displaying the OSD might start to make the picture break up as well at those levels.

Hope this helps,

Frazer

[rds_correia]

Hi Frazer,
Thanks for your input .
Let's see if you can help me further here.
If you were to buy a new HTPC for using with GB-PVR, and you would want it to record a show while you were watching another, what hardware would you buy?
Let's say that:
- you had a limited budget
- but that you would want it to look as a nice Hi-Fi component in your living room
- with or without frontpanel LCD, doesn't matter much
- obviously you wouldn't want to see any sttutering efects
- a good sound and video outputs would be *a must*

BTW, there's something that I still haven't fully understood.
How exactly does the image and the sound go into the TV?
Does the image output through the VGA TV-Out?
And the sound comes out from the sound-card?
If so, can both image and sound cords go inside a SCART so that I can connect them to my TV set?
In such sense would you be so kind to point me out not only a good Motherboard+CPU, but also a good VGA adapter and a good sound-card .
Some internet links would come handy so that I don't screw up and buy a completely different thing than what you're advising.
Thanks in advance for being so patient with me .
Cheers

[stefan]

You will need to get a graphics card (or motherboard) with a good tv-out (usually s-video). There are scart cables which have scart in one end, and a splitted cable in the other end, of which you put one part in the s-video of your graphics card, and one end in the audio card. There are vga->scart connectors, but I'm not sure whether anyone on here uses them. I have asked in the past but got not too many answers. None that use one. Some that have seen one, but were not impressed by its quality...

[rds_correia]

Hey Stefan,
So this means that a VGA TV-Out is the only way to go, right?
And it should mean that a soundcard line-out is the only way to go, too.
Having said that, I believe that I've seen cables that have SCART on one end and that have a RCA [left/right] for soundcard, and S-Video (like PS/2) connector that goes in the VGA on the other end.
That's what I need to buy, right?
What about the VGA adapter and the soundcard?
Which ones should I buy?
I guess it all boils down to eight of the HTPC case that I should buy, right?
I'd like it to be a low profile case.
Not too low but not too high either because the TV stand doesn't have too much space inside of it.
And I already have a Yamaha digital amp and a DVD standalone player inside of it.
Not much room left.
Any ideas of all these parts that I should buy?
Thanks in advance .
Cheers

[stefan]

Hey Stefan,
So this means that a VGA TV-Out is the only way to go, right?

No, s-video tv-out is the way to go. Maybe that's what you mean?

And it should mean that a soundcard line-out is the only way to go, too.

Yes, soundcard line-out is what you should use.

Having said that, I believe that I've seen cables that have SCART on one end and that have a RCA [left/right] for soundcard, and S-Video (like PS/2) connector that goes in the VGA on the other end.
That's what I need to buy, right?

Yes, but not out from the VGA on the graphics card. Out from the s-video on the graphics card.