Will GBPVR(nPVR) do what I am hoping for?

[elsmandino]

Hi there,

I am ultimately hoping to create the following:

A dedicated server that will host eight tuner cards - 1 TBS DVB-S2 Quad Tuner Card and 2 Blackgold BGT3620 cards (this will give 4 DVB-T2 signals and 4 DVB-S2 signals) and server will do all my recording and serving to three clients.

In terms of the clients, I shall have three acer revos aspires.

All computers, including the server will be running Windows 7.

There were a couple of things that I wanted to be able to do with the setup in particular.

Have a dedicated hard disk just for time shifting that all the clients could use for pausing live TV.

The ability to have a centralised EPG on the server itself rather than on each client (meaning that if I could set a recording from any client and this will show up on the EPG on any of the other clients).

Watch live TV on any of the clients

Ability to record more than one channel from a single tuner if it is on the same MUX.

At the moment, I have an HTPC in my living room that is acting as both a server and client and a single Revo in my bedroom that acts as a client. I have a hvr-2200 dual DVB-T and a Nova single DVB-S2 card in the HTPC.

I have been using Windows 7 for well over 18 months and it has been great but for the fact that there are lots of limitations that I am beginning to dislike, now I am thinking about piping live TV round the house (e.g. limits on numbers of tuners, not sharing EPGs etc).

I then gave Media Portal a go and it did exactly what I wanted to do except for it being unbelievably slow and crashed a couple of times.

Someone recommended that GBPVR would be a perfect solution for what I am trying to achieve, but I need to make sure before I start adding yet another PVR program.

Thanks very much.

A

[martint123]

Hi there,

Welcome.

I am ultimately hoping to create the following:

A dedicated server that will host eight tuner cards - 1 TBS DVB-S2 Quad Tuner Card and 2 Blackgold BGT3620 cards (this will give 4 DVB-T2 signals and 4 DVB-S2 signals) and server will do all my recording and serving to three clients.

8 tuners should go. I have a 7010x dualdvb-t/dual dvb-s, nova-t-500 dual dvb-t and a pvr150.
Someone more knowledgeable than I would have to comment on the S2 and T2 compatibilities of those tuners though. Hauppauge tuners are almost guaranteed to work, but S2/B2 have a "floating" spec.

In terms of the clients, I shall have three acer revos aspires.

I use a couple of normal PC's as clients but tried an Aspire 2610 and it worked ok, but it a bit with HD playback. I didn't spend any time trying to find better drivers though.

All computers, including the server will be running Windows 7.

Works well - better than XP.

There were a couple of things that I wanted to be able to do with the setup in particular.

Have a dedicated hard disk just for time shifting that all the clients could use for pausing live TV.

Yup - although, personally I haven't tried multiple PC's and pausing live.

The ability to have a centralised EPG on the server itself rather than on each client (meaning that if I could set a recording from any client and this will show up on the EPG on any of the other clients).

This is the only way it works.

Watch live TV on any of the clients

Yup

Ability to record more than one channel from a single tuner if it is on the same MUX.

Yup - works very well.

Plus all the other extras like run it over the internet with a web browser for viewing, scheduling and the like.

Martin

[elsmandino]

Thanks very much for that - looks like GBPVR is what I am looking for. I shall give it a whirl and come crying back to the forums no doubt for further advice.

While I am here, would it be ok if I asked a couple more questions?

1. Have you tried MCE and MediaPortal and why did you go with GBPVR in the end?
2. Have you had any trouble with your computer waking up to record and then powering down again? I am currently using S3 hybrid sleep - will this work with GBPVR?
3. What is the current advice in terms of GBPVR or nPVR for a complete newbie? Which one should I be installing?
4. Are there any good and detailed guides for setting up PVR for the absolute beginner? I thought I was pretty good with computers before I had a go at Mediaportal and it made me realise that PVR software is pretty complex to set up properly.

Thanks again.

[JP23]

Hi,

Sleep should work fine. The server waking up for recordings has never been a problem for me.

You should be installing NPVR as it's the newer version, GBPRV is no longer being developed.

The NPVR wiki should have enough information to get you through installation. There is also a very helpful 'getting started' thread in the NPVR support forum.

I'd be interested in knowing what your channel changing times were like with Mediaportal?

[McBainUK]

The NPVR wiki should have enough information to get you through installation.

http://www.nextpvr.com/nwiki/pmwiki.php?...QuickStart

[martint123]

Thanks very much for that - looks like GBPVR is what I am looking for. I shall give it a whirl and come crying back to the forums no doubt for further advice.

While I am here, would it be ok if I asked a couple more questions?

1. Have you tried MCE and MediaPortal and why did you go with GBPVR in the end?
2. Have you had any trouble with your computer waking up to record and then powering down again? I am currently using S3 hybrid sleep - will this work with GBPVR?
3. What is the current advice in terms of GBPVR or nPVR for a complete newbie? Which one should I be installing?
4. Are there any good and detailed guides for setting up PVR for the absolute beginner? I thought I was pretty good with computers before I had a go at Mediaportal and it made me realise that PVR software is pretty complex to set up properly.

Thanks again.

(1) MCE was fairly crap when I first contemplated a PVR. It seems to have improved a lot with W7, but I'm happy where I am with npvr.
I started playing many years ago with an old TV tuner and after trying many of the linux offerings, gave up and found this. Never looked back since.
Here, you can ask questions and not be looked down on by the more experienced users for what, to them, may be elementary questions. sub, the author also takes his time to help out newcomers.

(2) I use hibernate for powersaving and have had no problems with sleeping or waking - OTHER than a roughly monthly failure of my nova-t-500 to wake up and deliver data. Driver or tuner, I'm not sure. I have my popcornhours and remote PC's sending WOLS to wake the server and that works fine as well. The only bit that fails is remote web access as WOL won't route over the internet.

(3) forget gbpvr - excellent in itself, but all development has moved to npvr.

(4) the wiki is fairly good and improving. A PVR problem is that quite a lot of stuff all has to work at once to see any results. So I'd only set up a single tuner to start with and get it running on the server, then either add clients to that or add the extra tuners first.
Once setup the clients don't need anything doing for more tuners, they pick everything from the server.

Setting up channels on tuners and matching EPG entries are tedious. Backing up the database is wise when adding lots of channels.
EPG source needs to be thought of as not always easy to change it later. In the UK, quite a few use Alan Birtles xmltvgui to grab from the Radio Times database and this gives 14 days of EPG. The EPG can be grabbed from the broadcasts, but this can take a long time to grab all channels.

have fun!

[Reddwarf]

1. Have you tried MCE and MediaPortal and why did you go with GBPVR in the end?
Thanks again.

I struggled for almost a year with that POS software until my patience was exhausted, it was, like you say, incredible slow, crashed often and the support was just about so and so. I found gbpvr and have been running it until npvr came. Like many others I tried various Linux based pvr's, but like most unix-based apps they are written by geeks FOR geeks .

[Lao Pan]

You may have problems with the S2 card I believe Sub has said you can only be sure it will work with a Haupage S2 card

[sub]

Yeah, you'd only be able to do DVB-S with these cards, not DVB-S2.

[elsmandino]

Thank you so much for the comprehensive responses - looks like nPVR is going to be the one for me.

JP23 - the channel change time with Media Portal was a bit slower than with MCE on my HTPC but it was about 5 seconds on my Revo acting as a client. Not to take too much away from MP - it has the potential to be pretty good, but its complexity, I feel, means that you need some pretty powerful equipment to deal with it all - I had read on this forum somewhere that nPVR has a considerably smaller footprint and can work on much less powerful spec equipment.

The only thing now that is a bit of a worry is in respect of the TV Tuners. I hadn't quite appreciated that I had to be little more choosy about choosing cards that work with nPVR - good thing I found this out at the outset!

Part of my problem is whether I really need DVB-S2 and DVB-T2 Tuners, being in the UK. As far as I know, all the HD channels that I can get on Freesat do not use DVB-S2 - is this to change in the near future? DVB-T2 tuners are starting to come out and I know that I can get Freeview HD in my area.

The other problem is whether to go PCI or PCI-e (I have heard that PCI is on its way out on motherboards, but this will probably be around for years, like PS/2 ports).

I reckon that I am going to need four freeview and four freesat cards (for maximums flexbility), which means that due to a limit on the number of PCI/PCI-e slots, I am going to have to get some dual/quad cards, but then these arppear to be paricularly rare with Freesat cards.

So would I be right in saying that all Hauppauge cards are supported by nPVR and this includes those with DVB-S2. However there aren't any dual DVB-S2 cards and no DVB-T2 cards.

Is it also the case that DVB-S2 and DVB-T2 cards from other brands will work, but they will only pick up DVB-S and DVB-T channels respectively? Is it likely that any such cards might get subsequent support?

Sorry for all the long questions - just want to avoid making an expensive mistake.

Thank you.