No Clear QAM Tuner Found

[longjohn119]

Pinnacle 801e AKA PCTV HD Pro Stick

PCTV DiB BDA Digital Tuner (Dev1 Path1) which should be my ATSC QAM tuner is showing up instead as a DVB-C device

I have this tuner working in GBPVR but the streaming performance isn't very good. For instance I can stream a SDTV .ts file, a ripped DVD or a DivX file across the network using MPC and the performance is flawless but when I try to do the same through GBPVR the .ts and DVD files are glitchy/jittery and the DivX files are out of sync. I can't get TV to render at all even though I can see something is streaming across the network.

I was hoping NPVR would take care of some of these problems but it's a no go if I can't get the QAM tuner running. I can use Beyond TV if all I wanted was to stream analog cable but it doesn't support QAM for my tuner and there interests as a company are elsewhere so I doubt it ever will be supported. I have it working in Vista Media Center with the TV Pack 2008 but as everyone knows Microsoft purposely crippled streaming live TV for some dumb (readRM) reason. I also had this tuner working in Media Portal but it wants DX9 enabled GPU and the little ATI 7500 64Mb in my laptop client PC just couldn't handle the interface.

Al I want to do is record a few shows and stream clear QAM SDTV to my laptop so I can watch TV in my workshop or out in the garage like I used to do with Beyond TV and analog cable. I figured if Microsoft could get this tuner to work 2 years ago everyone else would be up to speed by now .....

[mikeh49]

Sub may have to add something to NPVR to recognize the QAM capability of this tuner. (He had to do this for the ATI Theater Pro 650.) I think NPVR finds the tuner and its capabilities by querying the driver. If the driver doesn't report all the capabilities, NPVR doesn't know them. GBPVR, on the other hand, had files (bda.ini, direct.ini) with a list of supported tuners and their capabilities and the required settings.

[sub]

Mikeh49 is correct. Some devices have drivers that dont explicitly state they can do QAM, so I need to add them to a hardcoded table of exception cases. If you can view the Devices screen, then post your npvr.log, I'll make a patch for you.

[longjohn119]

It's probably not worth either of our efforts, I can't get this to run on my Dell C640 laptop as a client. The tray app has about a two minute delay after clicking and when the Device Status window opens it crashes every time and has to be forced closed. It just doesn't seem to play well with XP at all

I've spent probably 100 hours or more trying all different kinds of PVR software and the only reliable one I've tried is Beyond TV and it doesn't do clear QAM because no one there wants to enable the 801e which is a shame because it's hands down the best PVR app on the market.

I guess I'm just stuck with streaming analog cable in Beyond TV or using Vista Media Center and forget about streaming live TV

[charlatan]

Longjohn may not find it worth the time, but I sure do. I also have the same tuner, and would love a fix!

[sub]

Longjohn may not find it worth the time, but I sure do. I also have the same tuner, and would love a fix!

You could see if this helps.

[longjohn119]

QAM scanned perfectly just as I figured it would once the device was 'white listed'. I've been trying to tell Snap Stream (Beyond TV) that for two years but since they already got my money they don't seem to care. About the only thing that could be improved that I can think of, and it's not a show stopper but just a little more polished look, would be to add leading zeros to the numbers in the section 'XMLTV Channels' so the list sorts correctly ... 001, 002, 003, ....011, 012, 013 etc instead of what I saw 1, 10, 101, 105, 108, 110, etc. If you noticed most TV's channels are listed that way. It's kind of annoying that 8 and 9 are way at the end of the list instead of at the beginning.

Of course as usual solve one problem and two more pop up. I scheduled and made a recording and came across a couple of problems. First off I can't get it to play back in NPVR on the server or client machine but it plays fine in my other media players (MPC, Power DVD) directly or across the network. Also I have several client side problems. I got the client to play videos and ripped DVD's across the network fine, I got the EPG to load in the listings from the server but I still can't get live TV working and when I schedule a recording from the client it hangs on the client but shows up on the server as pending but it never starts recording. Also the tray app crashes and when it's not froze it's got a 15-30 second lag and a less than 50% chance that when the menu finally pops up that it will actually register a click on one of the commands. I believe these problems are related to/caused by a streaming/networking problem. The things that are a simple file sharing (Videos, DVD rips, music and the ?database? ) seem to be working OK, it's streaming and communicating with the tuners from a client that's hanging things up. Single seat (except for not playing back the recording) seems to work great, as did GBPVR, it's the networking/streaming that's needs some work still IMO.

I'll see if I can get some logs posted tomorrow, I've had enough for one day ....

Good job on the tuner setup part, it's as good as anything out there and better than most (And I think I've tried about all of them ....)

[sub]

Sorry, but that's pretty vague. You'd need to give descriptions focused on specific problem, and supply logs if you want any chance of getting problems fixed.

[ShiningDragon]

About the only thing that could be improved that I can think of, and it's not a show stopper but just a little more polished look, would be to add leading zeros to the numbers in the section 'XMLTV Channels' so the list sorts correctly ... 001, 002, 003, ....011, 012, 013 etc instead of what I saw 1, 10, 101, 105, 108, 110, etc. If you noticed most TV's channels are listed that way. It's kind of annoying that 8 and 9 are way at the end of the list instead of at the beginning.

Did you already found this option:

In this menu you can sort your channels just as you want. Agreed, it's not with leading zeros. But the sorting order is right! 1, 9, 19 etc.

First off I can't get it to play back in NPVR on the server or client machine

You have selected any type of decoder in the settingsmenu?

Also I have several client side problems. I got the client to play videos and ripped DVD's across the network fine, I got the EPG to load in the listings from the server but I still can't get live TV working and when I schedule a recording from the client it hangs on the client but shows up on the server as pending but it never starts recording.

This could be 2 things, 1st: firewall! Check that the NRecord.exe has an exception in both firewalls (server/client). 2nd: Security! Make sure that the client has FULL (not just reading. READ, CHANGE, WRITE) access to the %public%\NPVR folder on the serverside. What about the Temp drive? Where does the live buffer on the server is pointing to? Local path? UNC-Path? Sharing?

Also the tray app crashes and when it's not froze it's got a 15-30 second lag and a less than 50% chance that when the menu finally pops up that it will actually register a click on one of the commands.

As above. This is a sign for a bad serverconnection.

[longjohn119]

I've sorted out a couple of problems

The recording playback issue was due to originally scheduling it from the client and it didn't take so I had to update it from the server and some information must have gotten lost. The odd thing is a could right click from the main menu and choose 'open file' and it would playback fine. So I scheduled a recording from the server and it works fine

I'm using XP on the client and the sub is going to have to make some changes to where he puts the NPVR data folder. XP doesn't have a 'public folder' per say like Vista and above. the closest thing is in the Shared Documents folder in the All Users section. Sub put it in the All Users/Application Data folder **WHICH CAN NOT BE SHARED** at least with XP Home Edition without hacking the registry and possibly breaking Permissions and Security. He's going to have to have it install in the All Users/Shared Documents folder EXACTLY LIKE SNAPSTREAM DOES IT (I still have the folder there from installing Beyond TV last week and now I understand why Snapstream decided to use that particular folder)

Until he changes the default directory for install it's never going to network correctly and work as a client in XP Home and possible other XP versions. I have XP MCE 2005 on another computer, I'll try sharing the All Users/Application Data folder on that machine and see if it takes there.

Sub may also want to look into some error trapping in the tray applet so it doesn't get so flaky when you don't get a good network connection right off. It's using over 3 times more memory on my XP box than on my Vista server box and the recording service uses nearly twice as much memory. I''m sure a lot of that has to do with not finding the server and becoming generally dazed and confused ....