Ongoing Building an HTPC (1 Viewer)

[deamon_knight]

So, I'm currently running a Windows XP MediaCenter, and I've been wanting to build an upgraded system that supported HD broadcasts for some time. I've been stuck on a number of technical problems and couldn't make a lot of progress. I've been collecting parts for some time and finally decided to commit some time to figuring this out. Made a lot of progress and settled on MediaPortal, which I've been running on a test system for about a month.

So now I'm ready to put a system together to replace my old Media Center System.

Here is my Hardware:
Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3LR Motherboard
Intel Pentium D 930 3.0 GHz
8GB RAM
Nvidia Geforce 210
100GB OCZ SSD
120GB Fujitsu HDD
2TB Western Digital HDD

Tuners
Hauppauge
HVR-1600 (Early model, ATSC Only)
HVR-1600
HVR-1800
HVR-2250

I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium x64 and Media Portal 1.10.0

I'm in Columbus, Ohio and I have Time Warner cable service, and a Winegard FL5500A FlatWave Antenna, and I'm using Schedules Direct to pull my program listings

My goals for this project are to watch and Record Broadcast HDTV, TimeWarners Digital unencrypted cable HDTV, and Analog Cable TV and Radio. Also, I want to access Video on Demand services Like Netflix and Hulu, and Youtube. I would also like to get some basic video games running on this system, but that isn't a priority.

If my OTA Broadcast TV works well, and Video service work well, I may drop my cable service entirely too.

Ideally I want to run everything with a single Windows MCE, but I have a BlueTooth keyboard and mouse connected to this system for controlling applications if needed.

Right now I have the ATSC HVBR-1600 connected and I'm testing Broadcast TV. I'm also testing the HVR-2250 with TWC Cable service, I've had some crashes (Bluescreen of Death) when stress testing this card, I'm looking into different driver versions to solve that problem.

One question would be, where can I get EPG info for radio. MediaPortal seems to support it, but I don't know how to get it and Schedules Direct doesn't seem to supply it.

I'm using the video setup guide in this thread to setup video performance.

Any thoughts on this setup?

Thanks

 

[deamon_knight]

Well, I have my hardware assembled. Right now I have the Winegard antenna attached to all Digital inputs on my system, I wanted to test out Multiplexing and see how viable dropping cable service entirely might be. It Works, 5 Channels recording at the same time and It can still surf through those channels and sub-channels, pretty cool.

I am having a problem with the Fast Forward function. With FF 4x or less I get the normal behavior, accelerated playback with some artifacting. When I set FF to 8x or more, the display does not update and occasionally Mediaportal Locks up, and I have to Alt+Tab and kill it from task manager. I didn't encounter this on the test configuration, and I don't think I had this problem before I added all 5 tuners and played around with channel mappings.

Any ideas how to fix this?

Attaching Logs

 

[deamon_knight]

Not much activity in this forum...

Anyhow I've got the system up and running, the fast forward problem looks to be a limitation of the way MediaPortal renders FF, in other forums I've been told just not to use FF more than 2x. I've switched to using Kodi as the front-end on my system and MediaPortal as a back-end for the TV service. This is working well. Does anyone know how to get Radio EPG data for Central Ohio? Right now I'm using Schedules Direct and it works well for the TV Guide data, but I don't have any EPG data for FM radio.

 

[Edalex]

I could just call US guys @Lyfesaver74 and @RoChess who could be familiar with your problem.

 

[mm1352000]

Not much activity in this forum...

Yeah, this is a "creative/loose/unstructured/experimental" section of the forum. As such, you're very unlikely to get answers to questions like the FF question here. If you're still looking for answers on that subject then please start a thread in a support section:
https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/forums/general-support.51/

...including system specs, logs etc.

The radio EPG question really requires somebody with local knowledge to tell you if/where you can get EPG data. For whatever reason people from your part of the world don't seem to gravitate towards MP as much as Europeans. You might have better luck asking on a more local forum.

 

[RoChess]

FF issues are down to codec/splitter, and LAV is terrible on it. You'll have better luck with MPC-BE stand-alone filters, as MPC-HC also went with LAV. It also helps to have a recent Intel CPU with hardware HVEC/H.265 decode support (requires new Intel driver).

As for Radio EPG, I am in Ohio myself as well, but rely on mvCentral for music so can't help you there. Quick Google scan tells me that even Kodi has issues with Radio EPG, and only supports it when playing a stream.

Some suggestions available here: https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/threads/radio-epg.126216/

 

[deamon_knight]

WOW, its been a couple years since i stated this thread. I think a Windows 10 update started causing problems. I've reinstalled Windows, updated all drivers and firmware, pulled out the HVR-1800 to test with Linux, and bought an WimTV HD Quad, and switch to all OTA. I'm trying to look at other optimizations and options before I get all my recordings scheduled and don't want to make any more changes. Anyone know of any HD Radio compatible hardware for PC in the US? I can't find anything at all.