Hauppauge HD-PVR & Colossus Support (4 Viewers)

[sjeffrey]

NO audio drift for me with FFDshow, 3 flat line, 1 framedrop every 10 000 frame. I installed new drivers, configure Showbiz to 12 mbps and optical. In channel configuration, Audio is set to auto. And now MP has DD sound from my receiver. My wife and I are sooooo pleased with the colossus. I really appreciate your work guys... WileE, mm and others from this thread. I'll do my best to help this thread moving forward.

That's awesome news! Can't wait to try this myself.
This might mean that you'll be to blame for me getting a new motherboard and a 2nd Colossus to replace my HD-PVR

 

[elconejito]

I'll be ordering a second colossus to pair with this one I've so happy with it.

Cool... I'm running two Colossus (or is it Colossi?) tuners and two HVR-1600 QAM tuners so you shouldn't have any issues. My biggest issue now is recording space. Now that we have 4 tuners everyone thinks they can record everything under the sun I'm waiting for a great deal on a 2TB WD black drive...

I'm keeping an eye out for HDD deals as well. For what it's worth, I've been running some WD Green drives as the recording drives for probably about a year now. a 500GB EACS, then a 1TB EADS, currently back on the 500GB when the 1TB died (mental note: I need to RMA it). Before getting the Colossus I was running 2 Avermedia Combo PCI-e cards which each have an ATSC and NTSC tuner. So I was recording up to 4 channels (2 HD & 2 SD) at once. The only time I had any HDD issues was when MP would auto-create a thumbnail by scanning the multi-GB file (glad I finally found the checkbox to turn *that* off).

So I'm wondering if the green drive can keep up with 4 HD streams, up from 2HD+2SD. If so, you can save a few bucks on a normal/green/eco samsung/hitachi because the WD Black 2TB drives are really pricey (IMO). If it can't keep up, I'm going to end up buying a new 2TB samsung/hitachi to put in my desktop and take the 1TB WD Black I have in there and migrate it to my MPPC. I'm pretty quick to compress recordings I plan on keeping so I don't use up that much space on the drives. Only enough to cover a few days at most.

 

[mm1352000]

elconejito: People's mileage with the green drives seems to vary quite a bit. Miroslav's improvements in TsReader and TsWriter which will have reduced HDD performance requirements have been included in 1.2.0b. If you keep the drive clean and defragged *and you format it correctly in the first place* (I'd recommend you verify that with performance tests) you should be okay. If worst comes to worst, buy a dedicated recording/timeshifting drive and move files over to larger, cheaper "green" drives as/when required. Not exactly convenient, but probably a much cheaper option...

 

[sjeffrey]

So I'm wondering if the green drive can keep up with 4 HD streams, up from 2HD+2SD. If so, you can save a few bucks on a normal/green/eco samsung/hitachi because the WD Black 2TB drives are really pricey (IMO). If it can't keep up, I'm going to end up buying a new 2TB samsung/hitachi to put in my desktop and take the 1TB WD Black I have in there and migrate it to my MPPC. I'm pretty quick to compress recordings I plan on keeping so I don't use up that much space on the drives. Only enough to cover a few days at most.

@elconejito
Do you edit your recordings before compressing (ie remove commercials)?
Do you mind sharing the process you follow to compress and how the experience is (time it takes, final size, etc.)

@elconejito: People's mileage with the green drives seems to vary quite a bit. Miroslav's improvements in TsReader and TsWriter which will have reduced HDD performance requirements have been included in 1.2.0b. If you keep the drive clean and defragged *and you format it correctly in the first place* (I'd recommend you verify that with performance tests) you should be okay. If worst comes to worst, buy a dedicated recording/timeshifting drive and move files over to larger, cheaper "green" drives as/when required. Not exactly convenient, but probably a much cheaper option...

@mm
What would *correctly format the drive*... be exactly?

 

[mm1352000]

@mm
What would *correctly format the drive*... be exactly?

The technical explanation of something like this would be too long for me to write (you can read more at sites like Anandtech). The short answer is that manufacturers provide tools to do it, and some HDD formatting tools can now handle it. I've got a couple of 2TB Samsung F4s, and with them I found that some software that was said to be able to correctly format the drive couldn't do it (Windows 7 included!!! ). The other nasty surprise I got with them is that their spin up causes a *huge* break in all HDD access. That break wrecks recordings by starting corruption that can only be fixed by stopping and restarting the recording. I have to keep those drives spinning all the time.

 

[sjeffrey]

@mm
What would *correctly format the drive*... be exactly?

The technical explanation of something like this would be too long for me to write (you can read more at sites like Anandtech). The short answer is that manufacturers provide tools to do it, and some HDD formatting tools can now handle it. I've got a couple of 2TB Samsung F4s, and with them I found that some software that was said to be able to correctly format the drive couldn't do it (Windows 7 included!!! ). The other nasty surprise I got with them is that their spin up causes a *huge* break in all HDD access. That break wrecks recordings by starting corruption that can only be fixed by stopping and restarting the recording. I have to keep those drives spinning all the time.

I see, so you were talking specifically green drives. I for one wouldn't put timeshift or recordings on a green drive...
I thought you meant something like block size should be 16kb or something like that

 

[mm1352000]

I see, so you were talking specifically green drives. I for one wouldn't put timeshift or recordings on a green drive...
I thought you meant something like block size should be 16kb or something like that

I'm talking specifically HDDs with 4KB sectors (physically), as opposed to the vast majority of older drivers which have 512B sectors. Many *but not all* green drives have 4KB sectors. Manufacturers have various labels and notations for differentiating (eg. WD uses the term "advanced format")...

The block sizes that you mention are "virutal" sector sizes. In the past, they were multiples of the actual physical sector size -> natural alignment. Now with 4KB drives you have to make sure that you align the virtual sectors with the physical sectors or else you drop performance through the floor...

 

[elconejito]

So I'm wondering if the green drive can keep up with 4 HD streams, up from 2HD+2SD. If so, you can save a few bucks on a normal/green/eco samsung/hitachi because the WD Black 2TB drives are really pricey (IMO). If it can't keep up, I'm going to end up buying a new 2TB samsung/hitachi to put in my desktop and take the 1TB WD Black I have in there and migrate it to my MPPC. I'm pretty quick to compress recordings I plan on keeping so I don't use up that much space on the drives. Only enough to cover a few days at most.

@elconejito
Do you edit your recordings before compressing (ie remove commercials)?
Do you mind sharing the process you follow to compress and how the experience is (time it takes, final size, etc.)

I wouldn't say my process is the most efficient, but it works for me

I have my dedicated, always on media center/fileserver (specs in my sig) which records to a dedicated "recordings only" drive (the green drive mentioned above). Every couple of days I move the recordings I want to keep long-term over to one of the drives in my main desktop (overclocked Q9650 Core2Quad running at 4Ghz w/8GB RAM, a pair of RAID0 drives and another pair of WD Black 1TBs). I then use a program called VideoRedo (not free, I think 50 or 75 bucks - worth every penny) to scan for commercials, and then cut them out. It's frame accurate on MPG, and pretty gosh darn close on h264. I batch up all of the edited files to save to another drive (the copy is faster drive to drive rather than read/write from same drive). Then I resize/compress with handbrake (queue them up). Once they've been compressed I move them back on the media center/fileserver to a RAID5 drive there in an appropriate folder (TV, movie, music, etc).

Copying the files over gigabit takes only a few mins per show. The commercial scan with VideoRedo takes only a few mins on mpg files, but can take up to 10-20mins on x264. Saving the edited files takes only a few minutes total (between a pair of WD Blacks averages over 100mb/s). The time to compress the files varies depending on the source (SD is fastest, 720p is slower, 1080i is slowest) and how many passes, quality settings, etc. I can look up the settings I use on handbrake if you like, I don't recall them off the top of my head. Each file takes maybe 30-45mins to resize/compress down to about 250mb for an hour long show.

Note that VideoRedo can also compress to x264 (taking handbrake out of the equation) but I just feel more comfortable with Handbrake. Also note that I could do all of this on one machine (mediacenter), but it's easier for me working on my main desktop.

I hop that may help, let me know if you want any other info....

The technical explanation of something like this would be too long for me to write (you can read more at sites like Anandtech). The short answer is that manufacturers provide tools to do it, and some HDD formatting tools can now handle it. I've got a couple of 2TB Samsung F4s, and with them I found that some software that was said to be able to correctly format the drive couldn't do it (Windows 7 included!!! ). The other nasty surprise I got with them is that their spin up causes a *huge* break in all HDD access. That break wrecks recordings by starting corruption that can only be fixed by stopping and restarting the recording. I have to keep those drives spinning all the time.

I see, so you were talking specifically green drives. I for one wouldn't put timeshift or recordings on a green drive...
I thought you meant something like block size should be 16kb or something like that

I'm talking specifically HDDs with 4KB sectors (physically), as opposed to the vast majority of older drivers which have 512B sectors. Many *but not all* green drives have 4KB sectors. Manufacturers have various labels and notations for differentiating (eg. WD uses the term "advanced format")...

The block sizes that you mention are "virutal" sector sizes. In the past, they were multiples of the actual physical sector size -> natural alignment. Now with 4KB drives you have to make sure that you align the virtual sectors with the physical sectors or else you drop performance through the floor...

So far (knock on wood) I haven't had any troubles formatting with Windows 7. I think the 4KB issue was primarily with Windows XP (which a lot of people are still using) where you need to run the align tool. I don't think the HDD industry has done a good job of educating people on this subject as most people have never heard of it. I think most if not all newer drives, especially the larger drives, are using 4kb sectors now.

 

[sknight]

Hi all! I've been watching the progress of MediaPortal for a bit since I got a HD-PVR Colossus card a little while back, and finally a distro of 1.2 is out that I can easily install! (Didn't really want to install all my dev tools and build from the SVN).

Now I'm pretty new to MediaPortal, I wiped my system clean (Windows 7 Ultimate x64), installed the drivers for the card off the site and installed a fresh copy of MediaPortal (wanted to wipe just to be sure nothing messed w/ the beta).

Everything installed fine but I cant seem to get TV, now as I said I'm a n00b to MediaPortal so perhaps I'm doing something wrong but what I find suspicious reading over everyones threads is that my card lists under TV Servers as the following:

- My PC Name
- DVB-IP MediaPortal IPTV Source Filter
- Analog Hauppauge Colossus Crossbar 0
- Radio WebStream Card

Now is all that correct? and if so what am I missing? This is just the 1.2 BETA installable on the main page, fresh OS, WINTV works fine so the card is installed, no drivers missing, etc...

Thoughts? I'm guessing its something fairly obvious, I did not overwrite any files with the patches for the SVN build since I assume it comes with it now that its built.

Thanks everyone for the help!
SKnight


EDIT:

Okay figured out the problem the card was on the lower end of the priority... so next question the channels show as the inputs, how do you go about always forcing the correct input and then adding my channels though the IR Blaster? I'm going to keep fiddling (gotta love trial and error )

THX!

 

[mm1352000]

Hi SKnight

Welcome to the forum!
That list of tuners looks right to me. The DVB-IP tuner is a built in virtual tuner for people who get IP-TV services through their internet service providers. The radio web stream tuner is for listening to internet radio streams from websites like SHOUTcast (more info on the wiki --> here <--). The "Analog Hauppauge Colossus Crossbar 0" is your Colossus...

So, what you need to do to get the Colossus working is roughly:
1. Set up some channels. Create them, add them to one or more channel groups, and then map them to your Colossus.
2. Set up the blaster to make your set top box change channels when you change channels in MediaPortal.
3. Find a way of getting guide data for your channels.

I'm not particularly qualified to help you with any of those things except to say that you've come to the right place to get information.
For (1), there is some discussion about that on this page of the thread. Basically you either need to create channels manually (see here for a little information) or use SchedulesDirect (which many of the folks here use to get guide data) and ForTheRecord (an advanced plugin for scheduling recordings) to import them straight from your guide information.

I'm totally clueless about (2) and I've already mentioned SchedulesDirect which is what most people are using for (3).

Well, I hope that quick overview at least points you in the right direction. Other people here will be able to give more specific advice and answers.

Thanks for trying MediaPortal
mm