Will this hardware do Live TV okay?

[o2slim]

Hi all! I'm new around these parts and installing and configuring GB-PVR tonight when I get home. I've been working wiht MythTV but hate it and linux Too much of a pain. And then last night I found this awesome piece of software. My question is will the following hardware be okay to watch Live TV and will GB-PVR take advantage of dual-processor on a Win2k machine?

-Dual PIII 1ghz
-512 Ram
-WinTV PVR-150
-nVidia FX 5200 S-Video OUT

Thanks!
I look forward to being part of the community!

[Darx-starz]

The card will be fine. Win2k will be OK. I doubt that gb-pvr has been written as multi thread but sub may be able to help here. However thinking about it with Multi proc you will end up with 1.5GHZ and that should be OK to. Go for it. Make sure you read the requirements on the main gbpvr page.

[o2slim]

THanks for the reply! I figured that it wouldn't be MThread but 2k will utilize dual as you said so hpefully the encoder on the 150 will handle enough to watch live tv without skips

One more question for anyone, how is the IR blaster that comes with the 150? ANy good to use with my Digital Cable box? This way I can still watch/record all my digital channels!

THanks again!

[sub]

The user interface for GB-PVR isnt multi-threaded, but there is many threads used so you should get some benefit from multiple processors. The Directshow technology I use for playing video, creates a thread for each component. Also the recording service uses a few threads for the tasks it preforms.

[o2slim]

Great news! THanks for that update!

[wtg]

My question is will the following hardware be okay to watch Live TV and will GB-PVR take advantage of dual-processor on a Win2k machine?

-Dual PIII 1ghz
-512 Ram
-WinTV PVR-150
-nVidia FX 5200 S-Video OUT

My wee 1.1 GHz Celeron works fine with Live TV and I can watch one show while recording another without trouble. Yours should be more than enough.

[o2slim]

Thanks for the replies, it's really nice to come to a community where people are helpful and can answer a question and I don't require a flame proof suit!

[Ant]

THanks for the reply! I figured that it wouldn't be MThread but 2k will utilize dual as you said so hpefully the encoder on the 150 will handle enough to watch live tv without skips

One more question for anyone, how is the IR blaster that comes with the 150? ANy good to use with my Digital Cable box? This way I can still watch/record all my digital channels!

THanks again!

Where are you based? I don't think the blaster works well (if at all) with cable boxes here in the UK. Make sure that you have the latest blaster software for the PVR150 from Hauppauge before you try that though, as they release updates from time to time with support for new boxes.

From what I've read, most people in the uk seem to have bought a separate blaster (e.g. redremote serial) which GBPVR then uses to change the channels on the cable box. Well worth setting up in my opinion!

[Zool]

As for dual support. I have an old dual PIII 650 I use for a Team Speak server running windows server 2003. I am not sure if regular windows 2K will do this and I am not sure if there is that much advantage to it, but you can open the task manager and right click on the gbpve exe in processes and there should be an option to load ballance. This will let windows try to use the two cpu's as best it can.

dave

[reboot]

I ran a PVR-250 on a P3 700 with no trouble. Just gotta have a fast, separate, recording drive.