Composite Input setup (1 Viewer)

gcarter

Portal Member
May 15, 2006
25
0
Im in a similar situation here, and have a hauppauge here. Although im a begginer and am confused by some of the steps listed above. I have my telewest box plugged into the composite socket of my card, and attempted to add a cvbs channel, but media portal just spits up an error when navigating to my tv, stating that no tuning info can be found.

What do I need to input into the other tabs in order for mp to recognise a compiste input - windows media centres autoscan recognises it straight away!
 

waveslam

Portal Member
August 1, 2006
26
0
Christchurch, New Zealand
Hey,
Re your remote being slow. I have found that having Timeshifting turned on introduces about a 2-3 second delay between you changing channel on the STB and seeing it on the screen ie. is takes 2-3 seconds for the video to enter the Timeshifting buffer in MP and then come back out of the buffer and show on the screen. You can demonstrate this by turnng the STB off while you are watching it through MP: you still see the video playing for about 2-3 seconds.
To make the remote more responsive, turn off timeshifting by default and only turn it on when you need it (from memory there is a setting to have MP automatically enable it when you press record).
You will still see a delay from when you press a button on the STB remote and something happening, but it will now only be a fraction of a second.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Brett
 

waveslam

Portal Member
August 1, 2006
26
0
Christchurch, New Zealand
Re "I have my telewest box plugged into the composite socket of my card"
If your Telewest box is connected via a SCart plug on the back going to the composite input on the PC, you may have to change the settings IN THE TELEWEST BOX to tell it to output composite video over the Scart plug. I am not familiar with the Telewest box, but Scart ports can be used to output a range of formats eg. SVideo, Composite etc. If your Telewest box is sending any format other than composite, it wont be recognised as composite when it gets to the PC.
Cheers
Brett
 

gcarter

Portal Member
May 15, 2006
25
0
Thats not the case with the telewest box! I have an almost identical setup - ie scart socket to composite socket on my tv card - and windows media centre (MCE) recognises it as a composite connection!

What I / we need, is for someone to describe...step by step... how tosetup media portal to work with a composite signal... ive tried to setup a cvbs channel and messed around with the different input options (channel / external tab) but no joy.... :(.... there are zillions of settings in the other tabs which I dont have a clue as to how to configure... media portal always looks for 'tuning info' when all I want to do is to point it towards a direct composite signal
 

Pom

Portal Pro
August 10, 2006
171
0
47
Gloucester
Home Country
United Kingdom United Kingdom
I have a Telewest stb going in my PVR150 via composite. Can't give you accurate instructions as i'm away from my HTPC, but hopefully this helps (if not will give you better instructions later).

With Mediaportal not running go into Mediaportal Setup (i.e. double-click the setup icon on your desktop). All the settings you need to adjust are under Television -> TV Capture Card and TV Channels.

- Delete and re-add the TV capture card to start afresh. Check the settings but the default ones should be ok.
- Forget about the Autotune function, it's not applicable when going in via composite
- You need to set the TV card input to CVBS#1
- Delete any TV channels you might have in the channel list
- Add a new TV channel, set it to 'Received by set-top box' and name it "Telewest STB" or something (under the 'External tab' i believe). Your new channel should now appear in the channel list when you go back to it.

This should be about as much as you need to do!

Now close Setup and start Mediportal. Go into MyTV. If you get the 'No tuning info available' message just dismiss it as it just means it has no EPG data. You should now have picture and sound. If not then turn off Timeshifting, if this now gives you picture and sound then you need to search the forum for reasons why your Timeshifting doesn't working (hint: if you're running ZoneAlarm firewall then UNINSTALL it completely as it screws up Timeshifting).
If you get no TV with or without Timeshifting available then you have another problem that you need to resolve.

Note that until you set up a blaster to control your stb (which can bring even greater problems - i'm still working on this and if you have one of the Pace stb's that use IrDA infra-red protocol then it's even more difficult. Check my other thread on this if have!) you will have to do all your channel changing via the stb remote like you would normally.

If your TV now works but you get video/audio sync problems then you need to find the optimum video and audio codecs for your set-up. Also the Audio Renderer setting (only available in the TV settings from inside Mediaportal itself) needs to be set to 'Default Direct Sound'.
 

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