Hauppauge HD-PVR & Colossus Support (5 Viewers)

[mitchellmedia]

Thanks for your understanding - I really do appreciate it.

You've been very willing to engage and set out your way of assessing the problem - happy that I could follow your lead.

For example, some channels in the UK change audio stream channel count during the advertisements, or randomly change between progressive and interlaced video stream encoding. Anyhow, I'd appreciate it if you could report your situation and results to the KODI team [if you haven't done it already] so they can decide whether they consider the behaviour to be an issue worth fixing.

That's a fascinating point. I'm not sure whether any of our DVB channels change like that - but you'd think if they did you get the same response from Kodi. But you're right, an advert in the middle of a AC3/DD movie you'd expect to upset it. Unless it stays in AC3 and just dials back from 5.1 to 2.0. But I will share a sample video with Team Kodi to highlight the issue of what happens when AAC becomes AC3.

C# is quite different to Basic...

Very disappointing to hear that my only computing skill is now obsolete.

... so please let me know if the attached patch works.

I would love to have been able to test this and reply with a massive thank you! - but sadly I'm at work at the moment. But excited to get home tonight and try it out. It is greatly appreciated. Will report back in a few hours.

 

[mitchellmedia]

Hello again
I'm afraid that didn't have the desired impact. The attached logs show me blasting channel 601 - which is encoded in AAC. I then stop that channel and blast channel 401 - which is DD/AC3. I've attached the logs in the hope that you can have a quick look and see if your patch is behaving as you would expect. From the two lines I've extracted below it seems the AAC stream was still detected initially, before the change to AC3 just under 4 seconds later (if I'm reading the time stamp correctly).

[2015-10-21 21:26:18,655] [Log ] [28 ] [INFO ] - subch:0 map pid:1100 audio lang: type:AAC
[2015-10-21 21:26:22,445] [Log ] [24 ] [INFO ] - subch:0 map pid:1100 audio lang: type:AC3

Just making sure I did the right thing with the patch - I stopped the service, renamed the existing TVlibrary.dll to TVlib.old and copied in the new file. Restarted.

Did I miss anything? In any event, it looks like we are probably looking at a 4.5 second delay to eliminate that first AAC detection. It seems that the cable box is slower at moving from AAC to AC3 than vice versa.

Again, really appreciate the time you've taken on this!

 

[mm1352000]

Hello

I'm about to go to bed as it is after midnight here in New Zealand. However...

I've attached the logs in the hope that you can have a quick look and see if your patch is behaving as you would expect.

Yes, the log files confirm you've installed the patch correctly and it's behaving as expected.
The delay I inserted is between these 2 lines:
[2015-10-21 21:26:15,472] [Log ] [28 ] [INFO ] - subch:0 OnGraphStarted
...
[2015-10-21 21:26:18,482] [Log ] [28 ] [INFO ] - subch:0 SetupPmtGrabberid 100 sid:1

The AC3/DD audio notification comes here:
[2015-10-21 21:26:22,384] [Log ] [24 ] [INFO ] - HDPVR: OnPMTReceived() subch:0 pid 0x100

My maths suggests the delay would need to be approximately 7 seconds instead of 3 in order to be effective. I've attached new patches with 7.5 and 10 second delays to be on the safe side. These versions also have log entries to make it clear that the delay is being respected.

 

[mitchellmedia]

Given that this is something you didn't really want to do, a simple thank you at this point seems underwhelming!

The 7.5 delay version has nailed it. Absolutely brilliant.

Will have to think of a way to give back. Donation is most obvious and will do. But I'm thinking about writing a laymans guide or similar for the colossus/mp pay tv. Thoughts?

I need to seek permission to share the mceir blaster program I use too. It's a beauty.

 

[schwarzrz]

But I'm thinking about writing a laymans guide or similar for the colossus/mp pay tv. Thoughts?

I would appriciate the guide. Had to check first what a laymans guide is.

I need to seek permission to share the mceir blaster program I use too. It's a beauty.

Would be great and makes everthing easier.

 

[optimalt]

There is a topic and a bug ticket for this in the Kodi forum: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=226819

 

[mm1352000]

There is a topic and a bug ticket for this in the Kodi forum: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=226819

Thanks for the info. It's interesting to see KODI has the same problem when NPVR is the backend, and neither NPVR or MediaPortal [front-ends] have a problem with it.

 

[mitchellmedia]

Sorry, for some reason didn't get a notification of these new posts here. I've added to the Kodi thread and replicated the issue in another debug log for them.

Let's see what comes of it.

(Edit: a fix has been submitted - see other thread for details).

 

[mitchellmedia]

Back to the point of this thread - my apologies for the detour. There's been a lot of talk about the time taken to add all the channels. The easiest way I found to do this was to add one channel and then use the export function to create a template XML file. I then setup an excel file with columns for each of the tuning ID, channel number, tuning number, channel name etc. Then setup a mail merge in word using the text from the XML template and replacing the channel name/number etc with the fields from the excel table. Completed the merge and then copied the text from that back into the XML and then imported it into Mediaportal. Takes about 20 mins to add 80 odd channels (well any number of channels). I've attached the resulting XML file for reference in case any future users want to give this setup a bash. And I would really recommend it. This XML sets up the video coming into the colossus off the HDMI and the sound off the optical. But you could change that easily enough with a find/replace in a text editor.

I mentioned above that I use a really good IR blasting app. Anyone who used to use the 1geek1tool DVBlink for Colossus add-on will also have a copy of this app. I'm not sure about the licensing arrangements for this - so I'm not prepared yet to just share it. Will need to check that out. But for those that have a copy you can open the MCEIR.exe file and learn the codes for your STB. In the IRSS plugin STB setup tab, for each of the digits you can call a program - set it to MCEIR.exe with %1 as the parameter. Rock solid channel changing. But I'm also going to see if I can get the hauppauge method working reliably as that's going to be more universal as it comes with the colossus.

I'm still keen on putting all this into a user friendly guide - as I'd love to see more people giving this a go. Has anyone got a working hauppauge IR blaster setup that you could give me a quick rundown on? A year ago or so I got it working but it wasn't as reliable as I would prefer and I never tried to get it to change channels in MP.

 

[mm1352000]

I haven't got a Hauppauge blaster, but I have some idea of what is required to get it working. The process goes something like this:

1. Install Hauppauge's IR blaster driver (IRBlast). This should be supplied with the product install CD or downloadable from the product page within the support section of Hauppauge's website (eg. for Colossus, -->here<--, IR Blaster tab).
2. Configure the blaster with "Blaster Configuration" (BlastCfg.exe). BlastCfg.exe is installed when you install IRBlast (ie. step 1). Hauppauge supply a manual describing how to use/configure BlastCfg.exe. Again, that should be on the product install CD or downloadable from the product page within the support section of Hauppauge's website.

The above steps are completely independent of TV Server, and are probably required if you were wanting to use the Hauppauge blaster with any Hauppauge or 3rd party software. If the blaster doesn't work with BlastCfg.exe, it will never work with MediaPortal or MediaPortal's TV Server.

To get the blaster working with MediaPortal and TV Server:

1. Open TV Server Configuration.
2. Navigate into the "plugins" section.
3. Tick the "ServerBlaster" plugin to enable it.
4. Navigate into the "manual control" section.
5. Click "stop service"... then "start service".
   
6. Expand the "plugins" section in the left pane (click on the +).
7. Navigate into the "ServerBlaster" plugin configuration section.
8. Select blaster type "Hauppauge".

...and that's it.
Assuming that all your channels have been configured with correct channel numbers (analog tuning detail -> "channel number" field, as shown -->here<--), it should just work.