Use of Halli Media Splitter while playing TS Streams/Files from within MediaPortal

[lkuech]

MediaPortal Version: always the current one with the current tv engine 0.3
MediaPortal Skin: Blue Two Wide
Windows Version: Windows Vista (Ultimate 32Bit) and Windows XP Pro:
CPU Type: Pentium 4 3,6GHz
HDD: Samsung HD160jj (SATA)
Memory: 1GB
Motherboard: Gigabayte GA-8I945P-G
Motherboard Chipset: Intel 945
Motherboard Bios: Award
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 6800GT 256MB
Video Card Driver: 100.65 (Vista) 9x.xx under XP
Sound Card: Creative Audigy2 CS
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: TechnoTrend S2-3200
1. TV Card Type: DVB-S2
1. TV Card Driver: 4.4.10.18

Hello All.

I have spend the last hours to give MediaPortal the ability to handle the TS streams from the TV Engine 0.3 no matter if they containing MPEG2 or MPEG4 H.264 (European HDTV).

I use the Nvidia PureVideo Codec to playback MPEG2 und CoreAVC to playback MPEG4 H.264. Together with the brilliant Haali Media Splitter and a little bit of merit changing (with DFSMgr) it run now perfectly with Players like the Windows Media Player or Media Player Classic. I have tested this by using the manual control from the TV engine and try to play the .TS files from the timeshift folder. No matter what kind of stream I've received (mpeg2 or H.264) the WMP handles both with the help of the Haali Media Splitter (which is visible in the systray, when active).
Unfortunately, from within MediaPortal the behaviour changed because as soon as MP is directed to a TS file (TV section and Video section as well) it seem to use the "mpeg-2 demultiplexer". This splitter was able to playback the MPEG2 steams using the PureVideo Codec, but does not care about my CoreAVC codec. Because of this, I am unable to playback H.264 content from a transport stream.

The part of the log file always looks the same:

 [Info.][MPMain]: TSStreamBufferPlayer9:add tsfilesource to graph
2007-03-03 14:44:06.375000 [Info.][MPMain]: TSStreamBufferPlayer9:add mpeg-2 demultiplexer to graph

For the Video section there is a easy workaround by changing the extension of the TS file to a different container format (i.e. AVI or MPG) but of course I have no change of renaming the streams coming from the TV server while watching television

Is there a chance to teach MediaPortal to use the Haali Media Splitter instead?
If not... why not? Maybe this is a feature request that makes some things easier for many of us.
Is there someone with a comparable setup who as worked around this behaviour?

Thanks for your response
Lars

[trevor]

Glad to know I am not alone, really is a tad anoying...can watch HD channels, record them but can't watch the recordings! Have to do the rename exercise...

Done a couple of post on this but no respose as of yet so dropped back to SVN version 13019 and will bide my time as sure it will get sorted at some point.

[lkuech]

Hi trevor.

Did I understand you right that you are able to watch HDTV with MP and the tve 0.3?
Which codecs and splitters do you use? I was not able to manage this because of the preference of the "mpeg-2 demultiplexer"


Lars

[trevor]

I have the CoreAVC codec but have not had much luck with that and MP, what does work for me is the Cyberlink H.264/AVC codec that came with PowerDVD 7 suppied with my S2-3200 card.

I spent a 'happy' hour mesing with codecs and their prioritys to try and get everything to work, live and playback of recordings and as of yet have not managed to get both to function at the same time!

Attached is the XML output from Graphedit for live BBC HD played from TV3/MP, might help.

Codecs installed over the std that come with MP - Purevideo, CoreAVC, AC3, ffdshow and what comes with Nero 7.

Trevor

[lkuech]

I will dig into it tomorrow.
I really think the Devs should think about this topic. Either make to use of different Splitters, or give us a additional option to choose the H.264 codec directly. I guess I have to play around with it a little bit more...

CU
Lars