Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!) (4 Viewers)

[TommySharp]

Never mind that Tommy, what about the Beer & BBQ at your place????

Ha Dave! Just rebuilt my whole setup this weekend ready for the meetup so now we just need to pick a date. Will keep you posted and will also discuss with the guys on the "MP Fans in NZ" facebook group and see if we can come up with a suitable time. But between your voice controlled setup and John's "Hoyts" size screen my setup is pretty average.... But the meat and beer should compensate

 

[kiwijunglist]

Happy Monday all! I was just reading through the NZ Wiki and wondered if it would be useful to document the recommended codecs etc to use for DVB-T freeview TV? I'm rebuilding my HTPC soon and would be good to know what we "should" be using......

probably just lav everthing should be fine. i used to use MS one for h264, but i've recently gone back to using lav.

 

[rlevis]

I disappointed 1.5.0 didn't resolve the issue with Choice TV and Prime video hanging most of the time after seeking. What could this be? I'm using all LAV filters but tried others and nothing helps.

 

[mm1352000]

I disappointed 1.5.0 didn't resolve the issue with Choice TV and Prime video hanging most of the time after seeking. What could this be? I'm using all LAV filters but tried others and nothing helps.

Software or hardware decoding?

 

[rlevis]

Hardware video acceleration. It's an integrated ATI Radeon 4250. It has been working fine for a few years up to and including MP 1.2.3, and this issue started when 1.4.0 was installed. I skipped 1.3.

HD channels are fine and most SD channels except these 2.

 

[mm1352000]

Just so we're on the same page, I don't think there is a bug - I think you're seeing the effect of encoding parameters tuned for minimal bitrate and the response of different of codecs and/or decoding methods to those parameters. Maybe I need to install 1.2.3 for comparison.

 

[mm1352000]

I disappointed 1.5.0 didn't resolve the issue with Choice TV and Prime video hanging most of the time after seeking. What could this be? I'm using all LAV filters but tried others and nothing helps.

Happened to be doing some testing this evening with DVBViewer. I experience exactly the same symptoms with DVBViewer - another reason why I don't think this is an MP bug.

 

[blair_haynes]

I disappointed 1.5.0 didn't resolve the issue with Choice TV and Prime video hanging most of the time after seeking. What could this be? I'm using all LAV filters but tried others and nothing helps.

Happened to be doing some testing this evening with DVBViewer. I experience exactly the same symptoms with DVBViewer - another reason why I don't think this is an MP bug.

Hmmm... this is indeed a weird issue that I'd love to get to the bottom of. I accept that it isn't a MediaPortal problem, but would like to understand more about how and why this problem occurs. I'm not sure why I think this, but did I read somewhere that it was a timing issue between the picture and audio?

My family watches quite a bit of ChoiceTV so for us this is a live issue.

 

[AtTimesPerplexed]

I disappointed 1.5.0 didn't resolve the issue with Choice TV and Prime video hanging most of the time after seeking. What could this be? I'm using all LAV filters but tried others and nothing helps.

I've mentioned it before, there is a 2 or more second delay in audio for prime and choicetv compared to 500ms or less delay for tvnz tv3 etc, this causes a problem for MP (blank or frozen frames).

In MP1.5 all that is needed is to change the TSreader buffer in the registry, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Team MediaPortal\TsReader\BufferingDelayInMilliSeconds=300. 300ms works best for me but you can experiment with longer or shorter delays and find what is best for you as it could cause delays in channel changing etc.
Restarting MP is required after changing these settings.

 

[mm1352000]

I've mentioned it before, there is a 2 or more second delay in audio for prime and choicetv compared to 500ms or less delay for tvnz tv3 etc, this causes a problem for MP (blank or frozen frames).

To add to this...
All the channels on the Kordia mux suffer from this problem to a greater or lesser extent. Because Kordia and/or Freeview are trying to stuff so many channels onto that mux, they're forced to use encoding parameters that minimise the required bandwidth for each channel. The application of such parameters usually reduces the rate of so-called "safe entry points" - the points in the stream at which a decoder can jump in and start decoding - and increases the amount of buffering required to successfully decode the stream. Less safe entry points + larger buffers => slower zapping and poorer seeking performance. The other point to make is that some decoders seem to have better handling for streams that are encoded in this way. I could be imagining it, but my experience is that software decoding has less of a problem than hardware-assisted decoding.