Well, I will start with a little bit of history. I began using the Media Portal about 2 years ago, mainly for DVDs, pictures and music. I constantly came to read the forums and was anxious to see the TV3 engine at work.
Recently, I decided to give it a try but unfortunately my experience was not a positive one. In the past few years I –successfully- used an XP Media Center 2005 computer (I built), with two tuners (Hauppauge 150 and ATI HDTV Wonder). I am able to record, play, view, etc.. everything…. with the streaming limitation though, unless I add an expensive extender or Xbox360.
The main reason I wanted to try the TV3 engine was the Live TV streaming to multiple clients. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make the HD work. I do not want to get into the technical details here but the main problem is the HD. On a new computer, fresh build with WinXP, no matter how hard I tried I was not able to get the ATI HDTV Wonder to properly work (latest drivers, 1Gb mem, P4 3Gb, 256Mb Radeon 9550, etc..). The engine correctly found the card(s), tuned the channels and here is where the problem started. If I used the Preview channel or Media Portal I would get sound or image but never both. Stuttering was present when I had image (no sound) and after previewing several channels or changing them in Media Portal the application would crash. Viewing channels on Hauppauge worked fine (from my satellite provider set top box).
I suspected the decoders are the culprit and took action. I installed several audio/video decoders to no avail.
Well, I said, I must have done something wrong. Since everything works fine in Windows XP Media Center, I rebuilt the desktop (from XP to XP Media Center) and configured Media Center to work with Hauppauge and ATI HDTV Wonder - thinking that the video optimizations Microsoft made in Media Center may help. After everything worked fine in Media Center, I stopped all services rebooted the computer and restarted the Media Portal (TV3 engine, SQL, etc…) installation – following the video provided. To my surprise, the result was the same. I could not get the video from ATI HD to play (black image). If recorded, the image and sound were present but the image stutters badly (different decoders tested).
Since I wanted to make sure I am not doing anything wrong – although I still may – last night I installed gotallmedia. I wanted to see if Media Center is the only one where ATI HD Wonder works and to my surprise gotallmedia tuned, played the video and the sound of all HD channels (HD and SD channels) broadcasted in DVB in US in my area.
I am not sure what the problem is at this point but I will keep looking for changes in the engine that may make HD in US useable in Media Portal.
Thanks for this great piece of software, looking forward to see improvements that will make it 100% reliable and useable.
IIS |