Just a couple of observations on older machines...

[bwsaloum]

After recently struggling with a number of less than successful upgrade attempts from GBPVR to NPVR, I'd like to pass along a few observations for those other folks who are doing this stuff on a budget like me AND making a dedicated system that's attached directly to the TV and used for nothing else.

Before I go into details, I want to preface this with a bit of a warning; if you decide to go this route, you are essentially abandoning every reasonable network/workstation security principle there is.

System Config:

Dell Precision Workstation 670, Hyperthreading Xeon CPU, 3 GB Ram, 300 GB “C” drive and 500 GB “D” Drive. Two tuner cards with one connected to the IR blaster and Nvidia Graphcis card. Windows XP SP2. No firewall & automatic updates turned off.

Attempt 1 – Removed GBPVR cleaned up file system did default install of both nPVR software and video directories on the same physical drive (drive D).

End Result: Live TV skipped and occasionally would get a fault error and a number of dirty looks from the wife.

Read through the forums, moved the video directories to the C drive. Quality of live video improved slightly, but had problems with pending recordings reappearing after being deleted repeatedly.

Attempt 2 – Reformatted both C and D partitions, allowed Windows to upgrade everything (except browser) to the latest version. Service Pack 3, and roughly 200 some odd hot fixes, patches and other garbage. Did clean install of WinTV7 and latest Hauppauge drivers (on CD), followed by clean install of nPVR on C drive and Video library & Live TV Buffer on D drive

End Result: Much worse overall performance than Attempt 1. Constant errors, Comskip didn't work half the time, reoccurring recordings would sometimes duplicate and when deleting the duplicates, they'd reappear after the system was restarted or the nPVR software was stopped and restarted. Wife now openly heckling.

Final attempt – Reformatted boot & D partitions with XP SP2. Performed zero updates, other than WPA2 patch, and those required to get nPVR installed. Installed drivers and WinTV7 software (all default). PVR software installed on C drive, video and live tv buffer on D drive. Recording using one tuner and watching live TV simultaneously works perfectly. Haven't had any problems with the scheduling of repeat programs. Wife hasn't opened mouth yet.

Hypothesis: Something in the several hundred updates, hotfixes and the transition from SP2 to SP3 appears to have a bit of a negative impact on basic nPVR operation.

No Firewalls are running, auto updates are turned off and so far, after repeated reboots, during programming selected by “quick record” or scheduled recording, all work beautifully, after the system comes back online. Zero problems with choppy audio and after reviewing the various log files, everything appears to be firing off when it's supposed to. Comskip obviously needs a bit of tuning, but it still works fairly well about 98% of the time.

As a network security engineer, I do NOT recommend using a configuration like this if you're going to use the pc for surfing the net or doing other things. Since the only thing the system communicates with is Schedules Plus, I'm willing to risk it. But this particular configuration seems to work best for me, given the antiquated hardware I'm working with. Remote Control response is superb and I've yet to run into a situation where anything really strange happens, when either invoking live TV after the the system reboots.

About the only advice I can recommend, based on my experiences, is install only what you absolutely need, disable or uninstall anything you don't need. Also, take a look at a good defrag utility that has the ability to run automatically. Finally, separating the data directories from the drive that contains the page file and nPVR. Yes, a bit more expensive for tightwads like me, but it works very well.

Hope someone is able to gain a little benefit from this.

Good luck,

BWS

[NumberFive]

I can wholeheartedly recommend running Windows 7. Installing NPVR on it was a breeze.

Only configuration of the firewall I had to do was to allow incoming connections to the Enhanced Web Admin, but if you don't use that you'll never need to mess with the firewall.

[bwsaloum]

That will probably be my next effort when I have a few extra bucks burning a hole in my pocket. Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you whole heartedly, but I'm trying to do this on an extreme budget, just to screw my cable provider.

[lost@c]

It's good advice for anyone who can't yet do the Win7 upgrade. My HTPC ran for about 2 years on XP SP2 with no issues. It was used only for this and was only connected to my home network and not the internet. My 2005 XP (SP2) CD was used to build this PC and it never had a single update applied to it that was not specifically needed for GBPVR. Windows updates stayed off, no virus software and no windows "features". It ran pretty well.

My move to NVPVR prompted an upgrade to Win 7 but it too has updates all disabled as I see no need to update something that is working fine. My work PC does updates every week and it annoys me how it applies patches / hotfixes to programmes I never actually use for work like outlook express and IE. I can't control this as is part of the security policy and it's not my computer anyway, but at home, I have found updates (to XP) to make the system slower and ultimately turns an older PC into a toaster.

My 2 cents