Looking to buy PCH

cidc · 2008-12-28, 05:05 PM

Hi all,

I've been a avid user of gbpvr/mvp for about 4.5 years now. Have never looked back.

Now i've bought a nice HD tv and are looking to play some HD content.

As you all know no can do with the mvp.

So now looking at PCH, abit pricey but want to know more.

Had a read around forum but my questions are a little more basic.

My questions are when powering up my mvp it goes straight into GBPVR.

1) How does PCH do it, what are the differences?

I'm looking for the exactly same interface i have with the mvp on pch but in 1080p via the hdmi cable. Bright sharp pictures Smile

1920x1080

2) Is the interface more stable/quicker. Does it crash much.

3) Do i need a HardDrive to make GBPVR work.

If that all sounds good I will purchase one tonight.

Please anyone with any experince would be helpfull.

Don't want to buy one if the only improvement is HD playback.

Sheik Yerbouti · 2008-12-28, 06:28 PM

cidc Wrote:Hi all,
1) How does PCH do it, what are the differences?
2) Is the interface more stable/quicker. Does it crash much.
3) Do i need a HardDrive to make GBPVR work.

Hello cidc,

1) Don't know much about that. At this moment there's no GBPVR interface while playing a file, but that's being worked on I believe.
2) The interface is much quicker and it's stable too. You should take a look at some of the videos Martin has on youtube, search for gbpvr and popcorn hour. Also picture quality is much higher. And you'll get DVD playback.
3) No

Hope this helps,
Chris

martint123 · 2008-12-28, 06:46 PM

The experts will be along shortly, but for me as a mere thickie user.....

The MVP was a dumb box and always loaded "dongle.bin" over the network. There was the Hauppauge dongle or t'other Martins dongle that communicated with gbpvr. It had a hardware MPG decoder chip for efficiency.

The PCH is a standalone box that works on it's own as a PCH. It uses a much clever Sigma chip to do all the comms and decoding . To talk to GBPVR it needs some extra software loading and again, this is t'other Martins magic potion. This can be loaded from a share on the server, an drive in the PCH or a USB stick. The former is the most common. I'm not up to date on the current best way of implementing this, as I have left my setup much the way it was when I first got my PCH as I wanted it to be able to connect to multiple test servers.

I have found the PCH interface to be very stable, but there again, I can't say I had any bad experiences with the MVP that you seem to imply.

You do not need a hard drive to use it with gbpvr and I guess that most don't.

With my big LCD, I wouldn't go back to an MVP now on it, even though there are some niggles with the PCH and gbpvr - No resume was the biggest missing option, but I'm getting used to just making a pencil note of the current time-in and using that. Skipping forwards in a currently recording show is a bit of a pain at times - but now I can't even remember if that worked on the MVP!.

Have a look at http://forums.gbpvr.com/showpost.php?p=3...stcount=15 to see both what is in the pipeline and/or currently available.

pcostanza · 2008-12-28, 08:14 PM

My feelings are pretty much the same as Martin's above. I'm a very newb user reading their forum and still learning. It's been very stable for me so far and I'm just waiting for a great price on a hard drive to add to it. I have a 1TB but it seemed a bit hot so I took it out but as far as playing from the network or USB, it's been great.

peanut · 2008-12-30, 07:28 AM

Hi I'm new to site have been using gbpvr with MVP for about a year with a lot of help from a local user and thinking about getting pch to. two questions

1 are you better to get A100 or A110 as i have a ac3 amp for good sound

2 If there are some people that are interested in getting pch are we better to buy a bulk lot to get them cheaper

mvallevand · 2008-12-30, 05:13 PM

1. I have both an A100 and A110 and their performance with GBPVR are the same, but I have to say I use the A100 a lot more because I can run the beta software (with resume!) and it has component digital audio, my optical digital audio connectors are taken.

There is no difference with AC3 (Dolby) audio, but the A110 will convert DTS to 2 channel if you don't have the support in your amp. AFAIK, there are no video broadcasts with DTS video so this would only be useful in downloads and in some DVDs. The rear USB port would be useful if you wanted to "hide" the wireless connector, but because wireless and HD video are not a good match I can't recommend this anyway. If you plan on putting in a hard drive with the A110 you can use larger, and often quieter SATA drives which are usually cheaper too, and the USB slave port makes loading them faster. I prefer running with no drive, (totally quiet and cooler).

Finally there is a power off switch that will let you reset the box (but not the ac adapter) without unplugging it when you need a reset, and you will have to reset from time to time.

2. I know the right people at Syabas for a group buy, but because of their just-in-time inventory model, I doubt you would see much savings, and I also doubt there would be the number of GBPVR users that would make it worth the effort.

Martin

cidc · 2008-12-30, 10:46 PM

thanks everyone for your replys.

Sorry martin, I did'nt mean my mvp is unstable, what i meant to say is i don't want to go through the pain again of making my system unstable, because i've been using the mvp for such i long time i've seen the ups and downs. I have to say is pretty rock solid now Smile

I've now ordered a pch hope to see in the new year.

I've looked at the u-tube stuff, it looks great.

Am i right in saying when powering up pch, it enters the main pch screen and from there i can startup gbpvr.

Any other hints and tips would be great.

Thanks again everyone, and have a happy new year!!!!