how do you use your MVP?

fluffykeith · 2008-11-10, 10:40 PM

I ask this because whenever I turn mine on it takes forever to load by which time I have got fed up of waiting.

Do you leave it on ? How do you stop members of the family hitting the power button on the remote!!

cheers

Keith

ACTCMS · 2008-11-10, 10:51 PM

fluffykeith Wrote:I ask this because whenever I turn mine on it takes forever to load by which time I have got fed up of waiting.

Do you leave it on ? How do you stop members of the family hitting the power button on the remote!!

cheers

Keith

I use mvpmc. Start up time from Green button power on to TV Guide is 10-15 seconds.

steeb · (This post was last modified: 2008-11-10, 10:58 PM by steeb.)

I leave both of mine on permanently.

Have instructed my beautiful wife not to hit the power button Big Grin

I know this may not be totally energy friendly but considering that my GBPVR Server runs 24/7 what harm are two MVP's doing?

Steeb

rscheller · 2008-11-10, 11:13 PM

I use a Harmony remote and it's not even programmed to be able to turn off the MVP. Just overall simplifies the whole process.

Note, if I have an issue with the MVP, which doesn't happen too often, I just pull and insert the MVP power plug to reset the MVP.

Jaggy · 2008-11-10, 11:29 PM

I have also moved to mvpmc dongle since sub introduced the full integration with gb & not having to setup a share etc. & my startup time with the green button is also under 15 seconds..... I also seem to remember that slow startup (as opposed to reboot) times are nearly always network problems. Even with the Hauppauge dongle I seem to remember it only took about or under 30 seconds to start up & I just used to hit the green button for the MVP before I hit the power button for the TV & by the time the TV kicked into life the MVP was ready to go.

HarryH3 · 2008-11-11, 01:14 AM

We leave both of our MVP's on most of the time. I figure that the wall pack power supply probably doesn't use much less power even when the MVP is "off". Been using the mvpmc dongle for a long time and it boots VERY quickly. Smile

steeb · (This post was last modified: 2008-11-11, 01:31 AM by steeb.)

fluffykeith,

something was bugging me about your original post, it was this:

Quote:I ask this because whenever I turn mine on it takes forever to load by which time I have got fed up of waiting.

What is forever to load? I run one MVP with default GBPVR dongle and one with MVPMC, I think they are fairly similar in boot up times with MVPMC always coming first . BUT for me it is only a total wait time of 20 seconds, is this forever?

Cheers

Steeb

mvallevand · 2008-11-11, 02:55 AM

I thought I'd give some details on mvpmc because it actually takes longer to load then the Hauppauge dongle after a full power off because it is about 1MB larger. However once it is loaded it can often run until the next time the MVP loses power. mvpmc users can confirm this via telnet by typing uptime. I have seen 65 days before.

Another difference between mvpmc and the Hauppauge dongle is if the Hauppauge dongle loses contact with the GB-PVR server (ie due to the server being powered off) it continually searches for the server and loops until it finds it or it is powered off Sometimes it seems like this goes on forever. Depending where you are in the loop and timeout cycle this can take a bit of time. Most people here just see the reconnect which is why you see 10-15 seconds, I see closer to 10.

The Hauppauge dongle will sometimes crash and reload the dongle which can take a bit of time. This is very rare on mvpmc, if it crashes it almost always recovers.

Martin

fluffykeith · 2008-11-11, 06:14 PM

Hi

Thanks for the replies. Definition of forever in this context is more than a couple of minutes. I'm not sure what is going on during this time (apart from the nagging from A N Other).

It seems like it is downloading every time I start it by pressing the green button. I guess if the power has gone off or the server reboots then this will cause this to happen. But it does seem to reload every time when I press the green button - is this normal as well?

I often get the searching for servers box, the list of possible severs and the dotted bar as it loads. I want to avoid the "waiting for the dotted progress bar" bit if possible.

Is the mvpmc dongle you refer to is the alternative one pointed to sourceforge from the wiki? Which do I need PPC version or generic?
What extra's does that give - or is it just more stable.

Cheers

Keith

stu8080 · 2008-11-11, 07:42 PM

have you disabled the haupaugge MVP servers (run 'services.msc' i think in XP?). Im pretty sure with mvpmc i dont get anything about searching servers even after a hard boot?