New User with various questions

[dewchugr]

First, my set-up. Dell 400SC Server P4 2.4ghz, 512MB, 2 80gb hd array, HVR-1600, onboard sound and ati rage pro 128. I will be replacing the video, sound and adding a storage drive after I get some of this working better. I have an LCD TV and basic cable, no STB.

1. I can't seem to get any HD channels set up, either OTA or cable.

2. When I open PVRX2 all I get is the window border, I see nothing. In the window I just see the desktop through it. Is this because my video card sucks?

2. When I try to program a recording of a series with the program it works great. When I try to program it through the web, not so well. What I did was click on the show and when the window opens I click all episodes. It goes back to the main web window. I select any time slot and any day, click record and it goes right back to this window. No recording is set up. Am I doing something wrong here?

3. I have installed weather .98. I don't see it in the plugins in the config and I don't know how to activate it.

4. Can I prevent channel icons from showing up in the program guide?

5. I've done some searching around for information about video cards and have found lots of conflicting information. What would be a good AGP card. I'll be recording SD and hopefully OTA HD.

Are these tuners quite a bit weaker than what's in a TV? I get great pictures bur I'm not doiing well picking them up on the card. I'm using a small basic antenna right now.

6. Is there a basic template that is used for the web program guide? I'd like to mod it a bit?

Thanks for any and all help getting me up and running with this,

Steve

[Deusxmachina]

Limited answer due to limited time:

Yes, your video card sucks. It MAY be fine if you using pvr.exe instead of pvrx2.exe. In config, switch the video mode from VMR to Overlay. Overlay is easier on the card, but pvrx2 only runs in VMRcustom.

They just made a 3850 AGP card, but basically anything above a, what is it, FX5700 or 7300 or 9800pro or so should be fine. I have a 7600GT in mine right now, it's more than plenty, and with faster clock speeds it's actually better in some ways than a "better" one like a 7900GT. Basically, anything made in the last 3 or so years should work.

The 1600 is highly praised. Partly because there aren't too many other popular choices out there. If the tuners are weaker, I doubt it's by much, and if they are, there aren't many better cards made anyway.

[stefan]

Welcome to the forum

2. When I open PVRX2 all I get is the window border, I see nothing. In the window I just see the desktop through it. Is this because my video card sucks?

Like deus said, you need a card capable of vmr9 to use pvrx2. You can still use gbpvr.exe, but that is not developed any more and will soon not be distributed anymore.

2. When I try to program a recording of a series with the program it works great. When I try to program it through the web, not so well. What I did was click on the show and when the window opens I click all episodes. It goes back to the main web window. I select any time slot and any day, click record and it goes right back to this window. No recording is set up. Am I doing something wrong here?

The web admin (EWA) has its own forum. Try asking there and see if they can help you. http://forums.gbpvr.com/forumdisplay.php?f=17

4. Can I prevent channel icons from showing up in the program guide?

Yes, I think so, if I understand this thread correctly:http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=29228

[dewchugr]

Thanks for the quick replys guys.

Deusxmachina, I have read a lot of people with so many different cards having problems playing back HD. Do you not have problems with your card? It looks like a pretty good deal.

stefan, Does this forum handle all programming features? The reason I ask is that I'm using the guide that came with gb-pvr, not the enhanced plug-in.

I thought the pvrx2 problem might have been caused by the lack of a real video card, I'll wait til I get a better one and try it again.

Thanks again,
Steve

[McBainUK]

The reason I ask is that I'm using the guide that came with gb-pvr, not the enhanced plug-in.

It's the same thing. EWA is distributed with GB-PVR.

[dewchugr]

It's the same thing. EWA is distributed with GB-PVR.

Thanks, I'm on my way over there now.

[Deusxmachina]

Deusxmachina, I have read a lot of people with so many different cards having problems playing back HD. Do you not have problems with your card? It looks like a pretty good deal.

With a Core2Duo CPU, what video card is used doesn't matter a whole lot other than that it can do VMR for GBPVR's menu screens. Even at the stock 1.6ghz it was enough, but at 2.8ghz it does 1080i/p with on-the-fly filters, and due to using the filters there is no hardware acceleration help from the card. Hardware acceleration would help bring down the CPU usage, but hardware acceleration doesn't always work no matter what you do. And I'll gladly take the filters over getting some hardware acceleration.

I had a 2400pro in there before this. It almost worked well, but the card's GPU would max out when deinterlacing 1080i, but only with GBPVR. Which it shouldn't have, but it did, even when I purposely tried turning off all hardware acceleration. The drivers were crappy from day one in numerous ways. I heard AMD fired all the old ATI guys when they bought them out, so maybe that's why the drivers were the sucketh on the entire 2400/2600/2900 line. The 2900 drivers got better right before they stopped selling them, so maybe the 2400 drivers from the past month are, too, but I stopped caring.

2400xt should be fine, but there can be some hoop-jumping to do with the 2400pro when deinterlacing 1080i. It CAN work, but I can't say it's worth the bother to find out. Should be plenty for 720p, but 1080i is iffy. It's more taxing to play 1080i correctly than it is 1080p.

The 7600GT is in there since it was replaced in my other computer by a 2900pro and had to go somewhere. The 7600GT has far more brute strength than the 2400pro but perhaps lacks the finesse (such as audio via HDMI if anyone cares about such things). IMO, the UVD chip on the newer cards is a bit of a gimmick since there's a number of "gotchas" for using it to accelerate HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, and it just plain doesn't work on a lot of other files, including mpeg2 1080i in the U.S.. And if you have a newer CPU, it's not a big concern anyway.

The 7600GT is basically an 8600GT minus DX10 support, similar to the ATI 3870 being a more efficient but not more powerful version of the 2900xt/pro. This last round of video cards really wasn't anything groundbreaking other than for the 8800GT. The new HTPC cards are out now. I haven't looked into them too much, but it looks like another repackaging for the most part. Hmm, now I'm curious and will have to go look.

We know your 2.4 P4 is enough to play back 1080i, at least with hardware acceleration help and/or maybe not much CPU left over. Probably will want more ram in there, but 512 might work. And as was said, with your current card, gbpvr.exe (the old interface) should work in overlay mode, so you can play around with GBPVR while you decide on a video card.

[Deusxmachina]

Not sure why you aren't getting any HD channels. First guess is to ask if you are getting digital channels AT ALL since the 1600 can do both digital and analog.

[dewchugr]

Not sure why you aren't getting any HD channels. First guess is to ask if you are getting digital channels AT ALL since the 1600 can do both digital and analog.

Thanks for taking the time to post all that info about the video cards. My TV is 720 so I'm not so worried any more about that.

On my TV I get about 8-10 OTA channels, some sd, some digital and some HD. Probably 5 are HD. On my cable I get 5 or 6 local HD channels. The OTA come in very well, the cable a little less so. I'll have to look at the config program again, maybe I'm doing something wrong in my set-up.

Steve

[sub]

Do you find the OTA channels when you use the Hauppauge WinTV software?