Finally - found an MPEG-2 decoder that works really well with NPVR!

[siliconaudio]

I'm in rural New Zealand. The only Freeview option for me is DVB via satellite. All the Freeview streams are MPEG-2. Since rebuilding my PVR with Windows 10, I have had some real performance problems which I have been trying to nail down. Issues such as the picture freezing or going black for up to 30 seconds on a channel change, or corruption during ff/rw of recorded TV. I was wondering if I had bad tuners or some other problem. Some codecs didn't work at all, or just resulted in a black screen. Also, I often had issues getting the EPG to show up on top of live TV.

I always have some trepidation about praising a paid product, because I recognise that it looks like I have some commercial interest in the product (which I don't) or am just trolling to trick someone into buying something they don't need. But, when I come across something that solves a problem so well, I feel compelled to share it.

Today, I downloaded an evaluation copy of the "Elecard MPEG-2 decoder for Windows Media Player". After installing it and configuring NPVR to use it, I was amazed at how I could now change channels quickly, get my EPG to display every time on live TV, basically all my issues were solved. If you have issues like me, it's certainly worth downloading the trial. If it's doesn't fix your issues, uninstall it and don't pay for it. The cost is not bad at around 15 euros if you do find it works for you.

Anyway, just wanted to share, as I've been trying to sort these issues for months now. NPVR is now working as smooth as a baby's bum.

[Reddwarf]

Did you try the Cyberlink PDVD13 decoder?

[johnsonx42]

$15 isn't bad if it solves a problem. It does seem a lot of people have trouble finding a good MPEG-2 decoder once they move past Windows 7, which is partly why my htpc remains on Windows 7. I run Windows 10 on my main desktop which I use as a NextPVR client only for testing purposes, and so far I haven't found any decoder that works really well with live tv, channel changes, skipping, etc.

[siliconaudio]

Did you try the Cyberlink PDVD13 decoder?

I haven't had any luck with the newer versions of PDVD, even if I manually register the filters with regsvr32. Is there some trick to making it work? Also, PDVD is quite expensive and my pirating days are long gone At the price, I think the Elecard option is very reasonable.

[imilne]

I'd be interested to know what sub uses on windows 10, as I'm definitely not finding things as smooth there as they were on windows 7. Funny thing is, with MS dropping support for MCE I doubt they've done much if anything with the MS decoder, but enough has obviously changed to make it less NPVR compatible/stable than it was before.

Iain

[Graham]

I'd be interested to know what sub uses on windows 10,

I seem to remember that Sub has talked of using Mainconcept (as included in WinTV, perhaps) ... I used the C/link decoder that is installed by SAF (PDVD13) for Win 7 and now for Win 10 and it worked fine in both versions of Windows.

[ran]

I've got Cyberlink PowerDirector 11, but NextPVR doesn't see those decoders and I can't seem to "browse" for an mpeg2 decoder. How did you get NextPVR to recognize your installed decoder? Was it automatic, or did you do something to point NextPVR in the right direction?

[sub]

Yep, I'm just using the MainConcept MPEG2 decoder that came with WinTV. We've only got standard def when it comes to MPEG2 broadcasts (via satellite). Our DVB-T system (via antenna), is a mixture of high def and standard def, and uses H.264.