Calling all MP New Zealanders (Both of you!!) (26 Viewers)

[payload]

Thanks for the feedback.

payload, my first question would be - is Freeview HD (Terrestrial) right for you?

You could easily go for the Freeview Satellite route which would tick all the boxes for Picture Quality, Wide Screen and Digital Sound. It's also in only MPEG2 - which your hardware would be able to handle as you stated.
Since Terrestrial is transmitted in MPEG4 which is HD - the receiving hardware must downscale this for SD.
This still requires a LOT of system processing and work.
Even playing HD back in it's original format takes a lot of processing work.

I had to upgrade my AMD XP2000+ to the system detailed under My System to the left because it couldn't handle HD.

We currently have a new UHF aerial and no Sky dish, so Satellite would require some outlay that may be better spent on a MP system upgrade. I ultimately want to go HD, but I suspect it will have to wait for the moment. I took a look at your specs. How well does it handle HD? I notice that you have a Blu-ray drive. I'm quite keen to head that route too. How well does Blu-ray playback work?

Hey payload, the card won't do any encoding or decoding. The MPEG4 decoding needs to be done either with CPU in software (not ideal) or with a graphics card which supports MPEG4 h.264 hardware decoding. But to be honest you're really going to be looking at a complete architecture update. i.e. PCIe in which case I would recommend a Hauppauge WINTV PVR-2200 dual tuner.

I had a feeling that this was the case, I appreciate the clarification. Might have to start planning a major upgrade. I'm assuming that recording isn't so intensive, it's the playback?

 

[mcraenz]

I'm assuming that recording isn't so intensive, it's the playback?

Correct recording is nothing more than saving a data stream to disk. If you're looking at a new system then I'd recommend NVIDIA 8500 and up, many users have reported problems with decoding interlaced HD channels (e.g. TV3) with ATI cards.

 

[Bleazle]

Spoke too soon have just "recorded" an hour of black screen and silence again Any ideas anyone?

Have you checked the logs to see if theres any pointers as to whats causing this?
It seems as if the cards being told to record the feed - but it's failing but not producing an obvious error.

I'm off overseas for a month this afternoon so I've run out of time to get this sorted this side of the trip Will be back on it (and this thread!) when I get back! Will post logs then...

 

[RedeviL]

We currently have a new UHF aerial and no Sky dish, so Satellite would require some outlay that may be better spent on a MP system upgrade. I ultimately want to go HD, but I suspect it will have to wait for the moment. I took a look at your specs. How well does it handle HD? I notice that you have a Blu-ray drive. I'm quite keen to head that route too. How well does Blu-ray playback work?

Ahh, that does put a damper on things!

Yeah, it seems the best option would be wait for a big upgrade.
As mcraenz said, recording is nothing - it's the playing of that data which thrashes the processing power of the machine.

The CPU I have handles 720p MKV's reasonably happily - is smooth with no apparent frame drops.
But I ultimately don't want it playing on the CPU - I purchased the 8500GT which has native hardware H.264 decoding. But media with H.264 video still doesn't play via the Video card properly yet.

My machine is only a week old, so I'm still tweaking and perfecting.

As for Blu-ray playback, I am yet to hire/buy any discs to try it.
But it should decode the video on the video card without issue.
I'm still waiting on my S/PDIF adapter for my Shuttle case to arrive before I go down that route though.

 

[amphibem]

Hey all!

Found my way here thanks to mcraenz; got some issues to solve, also want to let you know what I have working.
Heres a quick summary of what I have:

Main hardware:
3800 A64 (2.4GHZ) - 1GB RAM - ASUS 6100 based motherboard - Nova T 500 - PVR150

Software status:

WinXP SP3 - Installed MP 1.0.0.0 RC w/ latest SVN on 25/5
Using Cyberlink H.264 codec, latest Monogram AAC decoder


As far as MediaPortal goes, what I am trying to fix is a worrying problem of recordings not being completly recorded. They always show up in Recorded Shows, but some don't play at all (and have no .TS file) and some only play for the first 10-20 mins. Often there are multiple listings, some of which don't work and others being part of the show. This seems to happen for all channels (mostly TV3 so far as thats mostly what I record, but Cold Case last night has come up with multiple listings in Recorded Shows). Definitely not all the time, I have managed to record at least half a dozen shows perfectly including CSI in HD.

For those interested in hardware requirements, it appears despite my issues that I can record multiple shows with my hardware. Not certain on TV3 (ie HD) playback yet, although I can playback smoothly the audio is about 2 secs behind. However it is fine on my Vista machine, so it is recorded properly. I am going to see if upgrading the media center to Vista (and EVR) fixes this.

As a final note, I have random rebooting problem I am also trying to solve. My hardware seems to be fine, this system ran mythbuntu for months without this problem, and has passed an overnight memtest. I will try some more stress testing and get back.

 

[Datagrafx]

Anyone using the EPG from Freeview NZ EPG downloader
The instructions for MediaPortal at the bottom.

I am finding it is working better than Revens and I liked his v3.

 

[shacknasty]

freeviewhd tv3 now has the option to use ac3 audio rather than aac!

 

[NewUser]

What sites/settings do you guys use for the weather?

 

[kuku]

What sites/settings do you guys use for the weather?

Hi New User. I am attaching the weather fix by geichel. You need to unzip it into your Mediaportal\Plugins\Windows folder. It is working just fine for me in Wellington.

Let me ask again about the subtitles. There is definitely something weird going on:

1. The TV6 teletext subtitles are displaying on all TVNZ channels. This is not normal, right?
2. The DVB subtitles are present in recorded TV (I can show them with VLC), but I cannot get them rendered in Mediaportal.

 

[johnw230873]

Hi guys, has anyone been able to record from their Nova T 500 to mpg as I want to use Comskip but found out it doesn't work on H264 which is what our DVBT is. I still use comskip on prime as that is being recorded from a PVR 500.