Channel Changing speeds (1 Viewer)

[htpcoz]

I just tried the SVN from Saturday, and that has improved things to some extent..

Channel changes are still slow, but a little bit faster now.

If changing between two AC3 or non AC3 stations (where the graph doesn't need to be rebuilt) the change time is around 7 seconds.

If changing from AC3 to non AC3 stations the time is around 12 seconds.

With this new version I don't see the repeated wait for tuner lock, but there are still some long delays in there between various steps.

 

[Nightmare77]

i would love if this can be sorted, i'm getting feed up with my dvico plus card, i hope fusion/dvico can sort it out cause its a real pain, i'm close to selling it and buying a different brand that doesn't have these slow changes.

 

[and-81]

I use two DVICO cards and I'm really hoping we can get this sorted too. They are just so damned slow to change channels it's driving me insane.

I do a bit of plugin development, so I know my way around MediaPortal pretty well these days. If there is anything I can do to help, be it testing or coding, then let me know.

Cheers,

 

[htpcoz]

Perhaps if each one of the people who are having issues post their mediaportal.log from startup, and include one channel change. That way we can verify if the delays are the same for all DVICO users. I know the older SVNs indicated multiple failed attempts to get tuner lock. More recent SVNs don't show that, but the delays are still long. Perhaps a few logs can indicate a pattern that doesn't exist for other cards.

I'm still waiting on a response from DVICO on the signal strength indicator. Although, I as I "hacked" the MP code to "correct" this issue, the delays still exist, so I think something else is wrong.

 

[htpcoz]

I just tried using Digital Watch which is another open source TV viewer developed by Nate.

http://nate.dynalias.net/DigitalWatch/DW2.html

This app uses the BDA interface and its channel change performance is exceptional. I get 2 seconds with TS turned off, and around 4 seconds with TS turned on. This is about the performance I get from DVICO's own app.

I'm still seeing channel change times of between 10 and 20 seconds (even with the TVCapture.dll patch) with MP.

So I don't think the issue is due to an inherent inability of the DVICO BDA drivers to provide fast channel change. There might however be a bug/incompatibility in the operation of the drivers that specifically causes MP to have issues, that other apps aren't so sensitive to.

It's open source so I'm trying to make my way through the code to see if can see the differences between the two apps. However the structure is very different to that of MP, and utilises its own Demuxer (which I guess could be part of the issue). I don't know long this will take. If one of the BDA gurus were available to look at it, it would probably be quicker, as I really don't know what I'm looking for.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Hi guy's

do not want to throw a spanner in the works with this channel change business,
my Dvico dual version 1 (part pci\usb) with latest svn from today, with the old .dll for TV (supplied by ronisle) non timeshifting 1-2 sec, timeshifting 3-4 sec, first result is being extreme as really do not notice, as as good as instantaneous.

This is using Driver version 3.41, this is also the first update from MP0.2.2.0 to svn (otherwise VIRGIN installation).

This is not on my pc, its my 15 year old daughters, so specs are AMD 2800+ Giga-byte 6600GT, 1gb ram, 160gb seagate HD, Asrock Motherboard. XP PRO SP2 + all updates till now.

Why for yourselves it has gone pear shaped i do not know, unless it is the newer drivers.

 

[htpcoz]

Unfortunately the older drivers do not support the Dual 4 card, so no way back there for us (already tried... seems the new VIA USB chipset is not compatible with the old drivers). Funnily I had the option to buy the older version card for $30 cheaper, but avoided due to reading about many problems with the older dual cards... DOH!

I notice on my system that building the graph takes 5 seconds, that is before the tuner is even touched! So in my case if the tuning took 0 seconds, I'd still be taking at least 5 seconds. I would have thought that time building the graph would be relatively independent of the card. That is on a Core2 6600, that spends most of its time under 10% CPU

Paranoid, if I could ask a favor, could you possibly post a mediaportal.log of a clean startup, go to live TV on a DVB channel, then change channel a couple of times to different stations, then exit, and note the delay in each case. Just so that I can compare where the differences are in our delays. If anyone has a dual 4 and doesn't have these issues similarly a log would be greatly appreciated. I have a feeling that it is something different in the driver for sure, but as at least one other BDA application can get fast changes reliably, then it must be something that can be resolved in MP.

If I could really stretch the friendship, if you could capture with graphedit the graphs for your MP that would also be greatly appreciated.

 

[Nightmare77]

hey htpcoz, have you tried the new beta drives on the fusion site, 3.6 beta 2, i'm downloading them now to test
The odd thing is that if you watch the server the channel changes look to be quite quick you change it on the client and the server reflects the change , its just taking time for the client to see th enew channel if it work so or freezes

 

[htpcoz]

Yeah, I've tried the 3.50.1 drivers that came with the card, the beta release after that (cannot remember the naming) and 3.6 Beta 2. In my case no difference between any of them.

I'm currently doing all my stuff with the old TV engine 2, I've found that the TV Server does provide some benefit, but channel changes are of the order of 8 seconds, which is still very long.

If there was some mechanism to trace all the BDA function calls (in a way similar to Unix 'truss') then it might be easier to compare the two apps back to back, to determine why one works so well and the other doesn't.

BTW I have an old Twinhan single tuner card that works fine, and has channel change around 3-4 seconds on the same machine, I'd just like to get the dual tuner working for recording and playback simultaneously..

 

[htpcoz]

This is also running on an MCE 2005 machine, and so for a test I thought I'd configure up MCE against the DVICO card (never bothered before as I've run MP from the beginning). MCE channel change is also around the 5 second mark... argh!!

At the end of the day the benefits of MP far outweigh the pain of the slow channel change, but when demoing to friends the net effect is less than impressive (especially with channel surfers).