Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!)

[Brocklander]

Originally Posted by luckydip

also i have heard that sky is going HD at the end of this year. Anyone else heard this story??

The latest Tone (or was it FFWD?) magazine says that Sky is not interested in going to HD, as 4 standard resolution channels use the same amount of bandwidth as one in HD. TVNZ is quite far along the HD route, but won't comit to anything until after the elections, if they get a go ahead. TV3 and Prime are dragging their feet though.

[TVKiwi]

Luckdip

Sorry I have no experience with the Winfast PVR2000 but from what I have read the Hauppage is slightly better.

I would be inclined to get a PAL one if I were you - best to stick to the native format for NZ, any you never know when sky might be down due to the dreaded 'rain fade' screen.

[KidKiwi]

Hi All,

Just had to dial in on this thread - especally as it's NZ biased.

I recently had a major discussion via email with SkyTV concerning their latest developments.

According to Sky, their new decoder is in the works, but is undergoing extensive testing (they don't want any bugs they said) It is unlikely to be available until Xmas 2005, or even later I was told. It will be able to record two channels simultaneously on to a HD - although it will be encrypted MPEG on the HD (damn!) The USB connection shown in the Tone article will not be included (I asked as I thought it might be used for additional storage) They are creating a new UI for the new decoder (thank you!)

Currently they are focusing on converting their pay-per-view channels to WS.

HD - (It was Tone mag that discussed the HD versus 4xSD) and Sky didn't mention anything about HD. Personally, I would rather have 5.1 sound broadcast than HD

[csy]

Hi I'm another Kiwi (Christchurch) using MP with TUL Theater 550 card on a basic HTPC with 1.3GHz AMD CPU.

The xmlTVNZ epg works great (I'm keen to have the Christchurch regional channel "CTV" added, which I'll contact them about)

MP however doesn't work well with the Theater 550 card on 2 points:
1. The capture process is very CPU intensive compared to other PVR's (GB-PVR) (MP=50% CPU, GBPVR=10% CPU), and the picture is a bit fuzzy. I suspect this is related to the "YUY2" color space capture setting on the 550 setup, noting that MPEG-2 and DirectX use NV12 therefore real-time transcoding is required.
2. The quality setting doesn't work on the Theater 550, and instead it is fixed at 5Mb/s. This results in bluring with picture movement due to the cap on MPEG bandwidth.

I have temporiarly started using GB-PVR in the interium til the next MP version is released which is suppoed to be true MPEG-2 recording (and hopefully make the quality setting work too).

[everett]

Hi fellow Kiwi's - just checking in as another MP user from Auckland, New Zealand. Recently got my HTPC up and running on MP.

Last night added XMLTVNZ for my UHF/VHF channels. Works a treat and reasonably quickly for TV1, 2, 3, C4, Triangle, Maori, Trackside, Juice, Prime when I finally found the best TV Guide sources. Also automatically populates the correct TV Logos. I've copied my batch file here for anyone that can make use of it:
(xmltvnz.exe tvguide.xml tv1 tv2 tv3 c4 sat_juice tri prime sat_trackside maori)

All my kit was purchased from the guys at Playtech on the North Shore (playtech.co.nz) who've been excellent so I'm going to give them a plug here. They carry a wide range of HTPC cases (Shuttle, Silverstone, etc), Tuner/Video cards and are developing a growing niche market in HTPC.

This might be helpful too:
Auckland TV Channels f(MHz) band system
TV1 2 55.25 VHF 1 PAL B
TV2 4 175.25 VHF 3 PAL B
TV3 7 196.25 VHF 3 PAL B
C4 9 210.25 VHF 3 PAL B
Triangle 41 631.25 UHF 4 PAL G
Maori 43 647.25 UHF 4 PAL G
Trackside 55 743.25 UHF 5 PAL G
Juice TV 57 759.25 UHF 5 PAL G
Prime 59 775.25 UHF 5 PAL G

Auckland FM Radio Channels
f(MHz) genre
Mai FM 88.6 Rock
NewsTalk ZB 89.4 Talkback
The Rock 90.2 Rock
91 ZM 91.0 Rock
More FM 91.8 Rock
Concert FM 92.6 Classical
Solid Gold 93.4 Rock 60’s & 70’s
Kiwi FM 93.8 Rock Kiwi
The Edge 94.2 Rock
95bFM 95.0 Alternative
Flava 96.1 Hip Hop
Classic Hits 97.4 Rock
Viva 98.2 Easy Listening
Radio Hauraki 99.0 Rock Classic
Radio Live 100.6 Talkback
National Radio 101.4 Current Affairs
NIU FM 103.8 Pacific Ethnic
Coast Radio 105.4 Easy Listening

Best Regards (apologies for the formatting!)
Barry

(Silverstone case, i-MON remote & VFD, TheatrePro 550 TV Tuner)

Originally Posted by TVKiwi

I would be interested to know who from the land of the long white cloud is using MP with a view to sharing resources and info for local setups.

Hi there. I decided to have a crack at building a media PC about Christmas time and I've just about finnished it. The last part, a TV card went in last week. ( A Winfast PVR2000, I'm already thinking a Haupage card might have been a better buy as the seem to be the default choice for most MPC software).

Don't know if this thread is still active but I'd be keen to exchange tips and advice on getting things set up correctly. I'd be especially keen to find out how to get NZ programming guide information into Media Portal, preferably without having to learn C++ !!!

Based in Devonport, Auckland BTW.

Cheers

Linds Redding

[TVKiwi]

Hi Linds

getting epg in NZ is a bit of a trial. Heres a link to the program I use.

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~john.a/csharp/xmltvnz.html

Download it and paste it into the XMLTV folder within the mediportal folder.

From there is really depends on whether you wish to schedule the program to run automatically or run it yourself manually. Its pretty easy to use - the documentation that comes with it is easy to follow and you dont need to learn C#

I suggest you schedule it to run twice a day as it can sometimes crash especially when trying to get sky listings.

If you have problems let me know.

[dman_lfc]

Kia-Ora,

There are more of us than you think :wink:

everett, (et al)

Why not export your details as per the instruction here...

http://nolanparty.com/mediaportal.so...pic.php?t=6962

zxcvbnm,

I have added the three Optus tpl's to CVS ready for the next release.

James,

Why not write a quick NZ xmltv guide in the tips & tricks forum...

Cheers

DMAN

Hello fellow Kiwis!
Just thought I'd say hi.
I'm just setting up a Epia Sp-13000 with winXP and Media Portal. First time I've seen this program, and it seems pretty sweet.

I gave up on my old plan of doing another Gentoo + MythTV box, after the horrors of getting accelerated Xorg et al using the via drivers. Not to mention mythtv segfaulting during compile.

[reven]

just to let you guys know ive been workign on xmltvnz 2.0, i rewrote sky so its way more reliable (a little slower thou, which is a bugger, but way more reliable, im getting 100% success rates). im just waiting on a few things over at gbpvr to see if a plugin can take advantage of genre tagging and a few other things in xmltv, and if it can ill add it to xmltv 2.0 before i release it.

but so far its way better, if it crashes now it continues and redoes the day, and well its just a hell of a lot better. prime has been fixed up a bit to.

it should be out before the end of the month (depending how long things at gbpvr take).

like my subtle plugs for gbpvr