Black Screen on Live TV UNLESS I USE LAV

[Ookie]

First of all, thanks for this product and forum. I've been able to solve a lot of my problems by reading the threads already.

Executive summary: Fully up and running. Forced to use LAV instead of the more highly regarded FFA and/or Cyberlink decoders, leading to slowdowns and reduced performance. Trying to get one of the latter two decoders up and running.

I have NextPVR 3.1.1 up and running well on my HTPC (more than enough machine to run it).

Like many people, I had the black screen issue with live TV early on. I was able to fix it by moving to the LAV video decoder. From there I was able to get up and running in XBMC as well. My only problems are extremely slow channel changes and buffering issues in XBMC.

One of the main suggestions that seems to be a theme both here and elsewhere is to get rid of LAV for a better performing decoder.

First I tried FFA--that gives me a black screen. I also used some detailed instructions to install and get access to the Cyberlink PowerDVD decoder. Regrettably, that also produced a black screen in the Next PVR App.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

PC: Intel i5 w/ 6GB RAM
OS: Win 8 64
Source: HD Homerun ATSC w/ OTA antenna (set up to output ATSC instead of HDHR in the HDHR settings)

[craigrs84]

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize Lav decoder was slower than the others.

I am running Windows 8 and initially installed Lav filters to fix black screen issue. However I changed my settings today to use Cyberlink Video Decoder (PDVD10) and everything is working.

I can't comment on why yours isn't working. I didn't have to do anything special to get access to the Cyberlink PowerDVD decoder. The Cyberlink software came installed with my Dell PC and was always a selectable option in NextPVR.

EDIT: On the other hand I can't get the Cyberlink Audio decoder to work so I guess I'm stuck using Lav audio.

Are you talking about setting the decoder in NextPVR? or are you talking about setting the decoder in XBMC (I haven't found an option to do this yet but I'm a newb). As an experiment I tried disabling the decoder in NextPVR and it had no affect on the XBMC PVR client (the video continued to play)

[Zeb]

XBMC has its own decoders; so if you plan to do virtually all viewing on XBMC, it doesn't really matter if NextPVR has the best possible MPEG2 decoder. It was possible to use Microsoft's decoder with Win7, but unfortunately not Win8. The usual advice is to install SAF6 and PM hoborg to request the "unlocked" version: http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?50227. LAV's audio decoder is reportedly quite good for AC3; however I'm using AC3Filter, which is also free.

[whurlston]

Black screens with the Cyberlink decoders usually means they are not installed properly (missing files, etc). You will need to either install a full Cyberlink WinDVD (decoders will work in NPVR after trial expires) or chock out Hoborg's SAF6

[Lao Pan]

Black screens with the Cyberlink decoders usually means they are not installed properly (missing files, etc). You will need to either install a full Cyberlink WinDVD (decoders will work in NPVR after trial expires) or chock out Hoborg's SAF6

A month ago I did some testing with the latest PDVD13 Codec (taken from the trial) on windows 8.1 and found that mpeg2 no longer works - H264 is excellent though. Hoborg confirmed in his thread.

So what I would recommend is using SAF Unlocked for MPEG 2 and H264 (if you need it) and LAV for any Audio you need for Live or Recorded TV in NPVR.

In addition I would download the MPC-HC Nightly x86 7zip (always the very latest LAV compile) and copy/replace all the LAV files into the SAF/LAVF folder. You can copy the rest into SAF/MPC-HC if you installed it.

For an AMD HD7000 GPU or better Catalyst 14.1 beta (Uninstall old first) is working very well.

[Ookie]

Thanks a ton for all of the replies.

I already reached out about the SAF unlock password.

Worked fine in NextPVR during the game. As soon as it was over, I started watching in XBMC. Video froze after about 15 minutes with audio still working.

I'll try the above and then report back.

[stustunz]

Changing decoders in nextpvr isn't going to fix the play back in xbmc