Strange and Annoying Problems w/GB-PVR

[cubdukat]

I have posted my latest round of problems in the Hardware forum, but I then realized that most of my problems are actually software-related, so I'm going to try posting in a more appropriate place.


Last week I picked up a VBox Cat's Eye USB tuner to use with GB-PVR, but to date it has not only refused to work reliably, but most of the time, it refuses to work altogether.

First of all, despite what program I select on whatever channel it appears on, it only records one channel. For instance, I set it to record on channel 2, it records 5. I set it to record 7, it records 5--you get the idea, right?

Second, I have tried small test recordings and when it actually does record something, it will give me a .ts file with the right file size but no PID's. I have the mux settings set to Transport Stream, but I have tried setting it to Cyberlink. One strange thing--when I run Mux Checker, it tells me I have no muxer at all, yet I have Power DVD 5 OEM installed, so it should pick both its muxer and the video/audio decoders up, but it doesn't.

Finally, and most vexing, I can't even record anything at all because it tells me that the recording would conflict with a pending recording--but there isn't a pending recording. It doesn't even allow me to cancel the pending recording that is allegedly causing the problem. I have tried uninstalling the program, deleting the directory it's installed to and removing all entries of it from the registry with RegClean, but upon reinstallation, I have the same problem all over again.

I won't even get into the problem of not being to watch live TV with it, because right now that's the least of my problems.

Enclosed are all of the logs I have. I really need any help I can get with this. I don't want to send $70 for BeyondTV, but right now I'm not left with very many options.

P. S. : Scratch the problem about not having a muxer installed. I just installed the demo version of Intervideo's WinDVR, and the Mux Checker picked it right up.

[sub]

PowerDVD doesnt include the Cyberlink mux, which is why its not showing up. It comes with PowerVCR. Alot of people also download it from some DVB card software installs (Twinhan etc), or get it from AutoDVRMSConvert.

The Intervideo mux is the worst, infact total crap, so I wouldnt bother wasting your time with that one.

Dont use the 'Transport Stream' option, its only intended for my testing and debugging, and only works with correctly when you have some specific debug registry settings present. Using this option will probably result in behaviour like you've described, where the recording will occur from the last channel it was tuned to.

You need to either use the DVR-MS mux option, or install the Cyberlink or ATI mux and give them a shot. All of these work pretty well with DVB, but ATSC works best with the DVR-MS option.

[Braklet]

You need to either use the DVR-MS mux option, or install the Cyberlink or ATI mux and give them a shot. All of these work pretty well with DVB, but ATSC works best with the DVR-MS option.

I've tried all 3 with my AVerTVHD A180 card, and the Microsoft DVR-MS option works the best. MPEG2 is easily extracted from the (thus far non-DRM-enabled) DVR-MS wrapper with VideoReDo Plus. That's how I archive video to DVD now.

Cyberlink and ATI muxes resulted in way too many oddball sync and file storage issues.

[cubdukat]

Thanks for the advice.

I wasn't aware that Intervideo had problems as well as Cyberlink.

Do you have to have MCE installed in order to use the DVR-MS muxer? I am just running regular XP Home. If you do, where can I pick it up?

Also, I did a complete reinstall and registry purge, and it seemed to work fine, until I went to the "Channels" section and started rearranging the numbers to fit the TV stations (e. g. If channel 5 had three sub-channels, I would give them all the same physical channel), and shortly after that the "program conflict" problem came up. I think I will reinstall it again and do absolutely nothing with it after getting it set up.

[sub]

Do you have to have MCE installed in order to use the DVR-MS muxer? I am just running regular XP Home. If you do, where can I pick it up?

No, you dont need MCE. Its available in XP SP1 and above (I assume this applies to XP Home aswell as Pro).

[sub]

Also, I did a complete reinstall and registry purge, and it seemed to work fine, until I went to the "Channels" section and started rearranging the numbers to fit the TV stations (e. g. If channel 5 had three sub-channels, I would give them all the same physical channel), and shortly after that the "program conflict" problem came up. I think I will reinstall it again and do absolutely nothing with it after getting it set up.

I dont know about the cause of your conflict, but I'm happy to look at the logs if you post them.

The whole major/minor think you guys have in the US is a bit bizzare, and doesnt really map that well to channel numbers as used by analog (and digital in the rest of the world), but I'm guess you'd have to give each channel a unique number. It wont matter what number you give it, but it will be the number you have to type while watch tv to switch to that channel. For example, you might give channel 5.1 a number like 51 or 501 or something similar.

[cubdukat]

I dont know about the cause of your conflict, but I'm happy to look at the logs if you post them.

The whole major/minor think you guys have in the US is a bit bizzare, and doesnt really map that well to channel numbers as used by analog (and digital in the rest of the world), but I'm guess you'd have to give each channel a unique number. It wont matter what number you give it, but it will be the number you have to type while watch tv to switch to that channel. For example, you might give channel 5.1 a number like 51 or 501 or something similar.

The logs are attached to the first post.

Yeah, a lot of things about the ATSC spec make no sense. I think what happened was that they tried to satisfy everybody instead of doing what made sense. Sadly, we're stuck with it for a while yet.

I just finished another uninstall-and-purge operation and I just finished reinstalling it. Here goes nothing...

[sub]

What time did the conflict occur so I know where I'm looking?

[cubdukat]

not sure of the exact timestamp, but every single time I tried to record something there was an error.

I tried choosing DVR-MS, but all it gave me was an empty folder with the program name.

[sub]

Reproduce the error again, note the time, the zip and attach the logs again. Give a brief description of what you did and what happened.

Also include the GBPVRRecordingService.exe-native.log files, since these are the ones like to show any recording errors. These were missing from you logs above.