From those, it does look pretty basic. What are your options under the HDMI Comp Resolution and Aspect Ratio menus? If there is an option for "Normal" or "Automatic" use that one. If not, you might just be stuck with one resolution, which as Sasha mentioned is pretty unusual. You could ask your satellite provider for a better/more up to date box.
Hauppauge HD-PVR & Colossus Support (16 Viewers)
- Thread starter WileECoyote
- Start date
From those, it does look pretty basic. What are your options under the HDMI Comp Resolution and Aspect Ratio menus? If there is an option for "Normal" or "Automatic" use that one. If not, you might just be stuck with one resolution, which as Sasha mentioned is pretty unusual. You could ask your satellite provider for a better/more up to date box.
Thanks PABeaver! Actually I just got this set top box from the cable provider, thus, it should be their latest model available to them. I went their site (AT&T UVerse) and they only have an additional unit (more advanced) which is basically wireless, other than that, all the same.
My options under the menu for aspect ratio and high definition are: (1) 4:3 standard definition, (2) Widescreen standard definition, (3) 720p on high-definition screens, and, (4) 1080i on high-definition screens. Does not give you the opportunity to choose more than one of these. I will call my provider to see if there is something else that can be done.
Again, thanks to Sasha and you for the inputs.
My options under the menu for aspect ratio and high definition are: (1) 4:3 standard definition, (2) Widescreen standard definition, (3) 720p on high-definition screens, and, (4) 1080i on high-definition screens. Does not give you the opportunity to choose more than one of these. I will call my provider to see if there is something else that can be done.
Again, thanks to Sasha and you for the inputs.
Luis,
Sorry for the delay in responding, but after reviewing the documentation you provided, I agree with PABeaver's assessment here: based on the manual, it looks like you have no ability to choose video output in the native resolution of the content being received. It is both a surprise and a disappointment.
Just out of curiousity, who is Quadro (the company hosting the PDF of the user guide you posted), and what is their relationship to AT&T's U-Verse service? The reason I ask is that Motorola seems to be marketing the VIP1200 as a platform rather than a ready-made solution in a box, leaving much of the firmware, and thus feature set, up to the cable provider to implement. So, if Quadro isn't actually your provider, but rather just a random site where you found a VIP1200 manual, you might want to see if you can find a VIP1200 manual from your provider instead--it might have different menu options. I suspect it's a bit of a long shot though based on what you've described from the menu.
It's definitely worth a call to your provider to discuss this. Their tech support might be able to tell you about hidden menus you don't know about, or they might even have other receivers available that aren't documented on their web site. Remember, you don't need a DVR receiver for use with MediaPortal. In fact, you'd probably rather not have one, since the added complexity just provides more opportunities for failure.
Have you had any luck with capturing over component?
Sasha
I called the cable provider and they were of no help whatsoever. Yet, I plan to still check around if I can really talk with one of their ind-depth technical resources sine my understanding is that they control the GUI (and not Motorola) as you point out below. {I wonder if that is why they are somewhat secretive about it. They will not even provide a manual when I asked. They just have a hep area answering specific questions.} Someone should know! I'll keep researching and trying to connect someone knowledgeable.
Quadro is a completely separate company, yet, just happens to also use the Motorola VIP1200 and their GUI and menu structure are very similar to that of my cable provider. When I searched online for the Motorola VIP1200 they cam up so I proceeded to heck the, put just in case they had a solution that could help me determine if I could apply some sort of fix to the STB.
As I mentioned above no manual from AT&T (only a hardware setup manual).
I did so, yet, with no luck. They sent me a bunch of links with self help which none cover what I need. Disappointing actually! They do have a DVR, which I know I don't need.....so, I was thinking that I can find someone that has one to see if the menu is different since they would record both SD & HD and hopefully AT&T is recording appropriately at each definition. The unit is the same from a hw perspective, it's just the internal added hard drive and a different GUI/Menu structure.
Yes, works well with the component output. Will do a little bit more of testing and report back.
Regards,
Luis
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First off I wanna thank the devs for their effort on this project. Had tried MP years ago but settled on 7MC when I got my HDPVR for the last couple of years using DVBLink which has really worked out well in the WAF department. But I'm growing tired of 7MC's lack of customization and wanted to try something else. Trying XBMC Eden PVR Front End (dev build) + MP TVServer 1.2.3 and have most of the kinks ironed out. Single seat works good and remote clients (Windows7/x64 and Linux) almost as well, (still a WIP).
My issue is that whenever I try to set the HDPVR bitrate in the encoder properties dialog regardless if I access it through GraphStudio or TME or whatever tool, when XBMC connects to TVServer locally or remotely, the settings for the HDPVR revert to the defaults. This is with the latest drivers from the Hauppauge site (1.7.1.30059). *I have not installed the Media Center add-on.* I'm not at home right now, but I plan to roll back the drivers to an earlier version to see if it still happens. Just wondering if anyone has the same issues or if anyone has a solution.
By the way, I just got a Colossus still in the box waiting to be installed but since the HDPVR is connected to my production system, when I'm not home the wife and kid gotta watch TV, so it'll have to wait a few days when I'm on my days off.
My issue is that whenever I try to set the HDPVR bitrate in the encoder properties dialog regardless if I access it through GraphStudio or TME or whatever tool, when XBMC connects to TVServer locally or remotely, the settings for the HDPVR revert to the defaults. This is with the latest drivers from the Hauppauge site (1.7.1.30059). *I have not installed the Media Center add-on.* I'm not at home right now, but I plan to roll back the drivers to an earlier version to see if it still happens. Just wondering if anyone has the same issues or if anyone has a solution.
By the way, I just got a Colossus still in the box waiting to be installed but since the HDPVR is connected to my production system, when I'm not home the wife and kid gotta watch TV, so it'll have to wait a few days when I'm on my days off.
New Attempt to set up Colossus card...
Hello everyone. So I have a Colossus card that I purchased about 3 months ago and put it into my computer that is running media portal and that is as far as I have gotten. Life has gotten in the way and I have not been able to start this yet. After seeing that this thread has 80 pages, I really need to know what is current info and what is historic so I don't try to do something that has been worked around or changed. I have seen the first page of this list and note that there are some very helpful things to get this up an running. Is this still current (20120501)? I also noticed this
Known Issues:
I am in the USA, should I get a Schedules Direct account before I try this or should I try to set it up and get it working then pay for the subscription in case I run into trouble setting it up?
Finally, is anyone using For The Record with the Colossus (FTR, 4TR) to schedule recordings or is this kind of independent of what card is capturing?
Ok now finally, This is a future proof question. Currently my media portal computer acts like a media server for the rest of my computer and stores files that are being uploaded (torrents-the uploading and downloading is being done by another computer, not the one running mediaportal and the media portal is just the landing computer for these files-hence it is acting like a server). I would like to either build another computer to handle this or get a NAS box like configuration. Currently I have 4x2T drives (green/slow/ variable speed media drives not fast) and 1 fast drive (landing drive for torrent files). My Gigibit wired home network is fine and I have not run into any problems but wondered if I can make the landing drive the target for Media-portal's recording and time shift files. Right we do NO TV Recording or time shifting with media portal.
So if you can recommend a NAS box for say 5-6 drives that works well with media portal (read windows network, not apple, or Unix), let me know what you like.
Thanks in advance
-Steve
Hello everyone. So I have a Colossus card that I purchased about 3 months ago and put it into my computer that is running media portal and that is as far as I have gotten. Life has gotten in the way and I have not been able to start this yet. After seeing that this thread has 80 pages, I really need to know what is current info and what is historic so I don't try to do something that has been worked around or changed. I have seen the first page of this list and note that there are some very helpful things to get this up an running. Is this still current (20120501)? I also noticed this
Known Issues:
- Fixed - Dolby Digital - MediaPoral will not switch correctly between 5.1 and 2.0 sources.
- Fixed - inputs - MediaPoral will not switch correctly between different inputs.
- Fixed - HDMI - The HDMI input on the Colossus is not supported. A patch has been submitted by Klairic to enable the HDMI input. Thanks Klairic!
- Fixed (MP 1.2.1) - WMC plugin - The Hauppauge Colossus and HD-PVR Windows Media Center plugins cause compatibility problems for TV Server. The patch and instructions for MP 1.2.0 are below.
I am in the USA, should I get a Schedules Direct account before I try this or should I try to set it up and get it working then pay for the subscription in case I run into trouble setting it up?
Finally, is anyone using For The Record with the Colossus (FTR, 4TR) to schedule recordings or is this kind of independent of what card is capturing?
Ok now finally, This is a future proof question. Currently my media portal computer acts like a media server for the rest of my computer and stores files that are being uploaded (torrents-the uploading and downloading is being done by another computer, not the one running mediaportal and the media portal is just the landing computer for these files-hence it is acting like a server). I would like to either build another computer to handle this or get a NAS box like configuration. Currently I have 4x2T drives (green/slow/ variable speed media drives not fast) and 1 fast drive (landing drive for torrent files). My Gigibit wired home network is fine and I have not run into any problems but wondered if I can make the landing drive the target for Media-portal's recording and time shift files. Right we do NO TV Recording or time shifting with media portal.
So if you can recommend a NAS box for say 5-6 drives that works well with media portal (read windows network, not apple, or Unix), let me know what you like.
Thanks in advance
-Steve
Steve,
Yes, it's a bit overwhelming, and the broad scope of the thread--anything even tangentially related to a Colossus/HD-PVR is fair game--sure isn't helping matters. The Colossus (and HD-PVR) for that matter aren't really tuner devices, so they break the TV-Server paradigm a little bit (e.g., you can't scan for channels), but as you've alluded to, there are convenient ways to deal with this, such as by using the Schedules Direct plugin.
Most of what I have found here is still pretty accurate. Colossus support isn't new at this point and has been built into MediaPortal for a while now; I started at 1.2.2 and it already worked nicely there. Make sure you grab the latest drivers from the Hauppauge web site though, as the previous version had some issues.
What HDMI passthrough? There's no such thing on the Colossus, and I'm not sure what the point would be when using such a device with MediaPortal anyway. MP supports capture using the HDMI input on the Colossus, subject to some caveats. First, it won't decrypt HDCP. So, if you want to be able to watch HDCP-protected content (which your STB probably provides, at least for some channels at this point), you'll need a HDCP stripper. Second, at least in my experience, the combination of the HDMI on the Colossus and MP don't seem to be very good at working with resolution changes, which are common when tuning your STB from a SD channel to an HD one and vice versa. A lot of STBs give you the option of maintaining the same output resolution regardless of the selected content's resolution, but that isn't really desirable, as it is wasteful to record SD content scaled up to 1920 x 1080, for example. Also, I found that my STB's HDMI output went out to lunch from time to time and requiring me to power cycle the box.
In short, I haven't found HDMI capture to be worthwhile. I get very good quality with component video and TOSlink audio, the resolution switching works great, and the quirks are minimal. See the last few pages in this thread for details about my experiences with the Colossus, including how to quickly change the video and audio sources associated with channels TV-Server.
Installing the Schedules Direct plugin is easy. Getting it to work is usually pretty straightforward, too. That said, you can't do anything useful with it until you have an account, so you'll need to sign up to get started. As I recall, there is a free trial period though, and even if that isn't enough for your testing, you can get something like 3 months for $6, so it's not exactly a huge expense/risk.
I'll admit to being interested in 4TR, but I haven't bitten the bullet and tried it yet. The biggest deterrent has been lack of support for MPExtended, which is important to me. Also, I don't think that Argus supports the Colossus. That wouldn't necessarily stop you from using the 4TR scheduler though, as it can use MP's TV-Server as a back end to do the tuning and recording, leaving Argus out of the picture.
I'm not clear as to what you are asking here, but I will mention a couple of things that are probably relevant:
- TV-Server generally requires decent performance for its timeshifting and recording volumes. That said, the Colossus streams are fully compressed coming off the card, so the throughput requirements per stream aren't unreasonable. I can have my 3 Colossus cards recording or timeshifting simultaneously to a run of the mill 7200 RPM 3 TB SATA-3 HDD without any issues.
- When you have multiple streams running simultaneously or a fragmented volume, the access pattern will be less sequential, making it harder for the disk to keep up. Using a disk that is largely empty for recording/timeshifting will make life simpler, as fuller filesystems present more of a challenge to defragment. I move my recordings to a different volume for long term storage, thus leaving the drive mostly empty. Since there isn't anything interesting on the drive, this also has the nice side effect of preventing read requests at inopportune moments. A quality, situationally appropriate RAID implementation increases tolerance of load and fragmentation by increasing raw performance and introducing clever caching schemes, but shouldn't be necessary unless you're up to something really over the top.
- Plan on using a local volume for timeshifting/recording. I tried using network volumes for a bit, and while it more or less worked, the results weren't quite as good; I ran into skipped frames and such.
Also, when using Windows network shares, make sure authentication between all involved involved components "just works", either as a consequence of synchronized usernames/passwords, or better yet, by using a single domain user account. This also means that services (TV-Server, MPExtended, etc.) shouldn't be running under the system account. All of this considered, I think a NAS running Windows Storage Server would probably provide the nicest/most convenient experience, especially if you have a Windows domain, which it would obviously be able to join.
Sasha
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I am hoping someone can give me some advice and point me in the right direction. After searching and trying different things, all ending in failure, I have to finally post a question.
I have a windows 7 system setup as a headless TVserver to other Win7 systems around my house running XBMC. I have three colossus cards and I have managed to get all three blasting channels properly. I’m using the internal blaster on the first card and a MCEusb blaster for the other two. I have them setup through IRSS. No issues there.
My issues… The TWC cable boxes have the ability to do pay per view and select from multiple movies from one channel. How can I get IRSS to blast the navigation and color buttons (Yellow, Red, Blue and select) to the boxes? I have learned the commands but in the “external channel changing” section of TV server, there is no place for me to input those to send to the box. I do understand that there is no way to send those commands through the internal blaster. I will remove those channels from that cards lineup.
Second, all the boxes keep falling asleep and there is no setting to turn that off. Is there a way to send a select or enter to them? I can make a scheduled task to run every few hours but I cannot find the code for Haupblast.exe to send the select key and am not sure how to send it to IRSS either.
I feel like I am missing something…
Thank you for any assistance you can provide.
I have a windows 7 system setup as a headless TVserver to other Win7 systems around my house running XBMC. I have three colossus cards and I have managed to get all three blasting channels properly. I’m using the internal blaster on the first card and a MCEusb blaster for the other two. I have them setup through IRSS. No issues there.
My issues… The TWC cable boxes have the ability to do pay per view and select from multiple movies from one channel. How can I get IRSS to blast the navigation and color buttons (Yellow, Red, Blue and select) to the boxes? I have learned the commands but in the “external channel changing” section of TV server, there is no place for me to input those to send to the box. I do understand that there is no way to send those commands through the internal blaster. I will remove those channels from that cards lineup.
Second, all the boxes keep falling asleep and there is no setting to turn that off. Is there a way to send a select or enter to them? I can make a scheduled task to run every few hours but I cannot find the code for Haupblast.exe to send the select key and am not sure how to send it to IRSS either.
I feel like I am missing something…
Thank you for any assistance you can provide.
- September 1, 2008
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New Zealand
Hi everyone
I've been away from this thread for a few months but from the last 10 pages or so it seems like everything is still ticking along okay. Big thanks to you Sasha for your excellent advice!
I saw a few comments and questions here and there that I would like to address.
First, any "PMT" related errors are indicating that TV Server is not receiving a stream from the HD-PVR/Colossus, which in turn indicates that the inputs are not connected or that TV Server is looking for audio/video from the wrong inputs.
Regarding the pin configuration and related pin mapping: that information is actually obtained directly from the crossbar itself (in other words, from the driver). The idea to "hack" the configuration files is very clever - I like it a lot. Those configuration files get written when the device is first detected and used by TV Server. After that I think they're mostly treated as read-only by TV Server, which is why the hack should work.
Encoding quality is something that I was written into the code but I was never able to figure out whether it was actually effective. I'm curious to know: is everyone using Showbiz to set resolution and quality settings, and are are the settings in MP TV Server configuration also effective as they should be? Some logs would be useful as I don't have a Colossus or HD-PVR myself.
On the topic of video resolution changing on the fly: MP certainly detects certain changes such as audio format (AAC vs. DD/AC3) and will rebuild the client-side graph as required. I'm not sure whether video resolution is one of those triggers. It should be possible to work that out by checking the MediaPortal and TsReader logs. If MP is not doing it then it would be a game of chance finding a video codec that handles such changes automatically.
mm
I've been away from this thread for a few months but from the last 10 pages or so it seems like everything is still ticking along okay. Big thanks to you Sasha for your excellent advice!
I saw a few comments and questions here and there that I would like to address.
First, any "PMT" related errors are indicating that TV Server is not receiving a stream from the HD-PVR/Colossus, which in turn indicates that the inputs are not connected or that TV Server is looking for audio/video from the wrong inputs.
Regarding the pin configuration and related pin mapping: that information is actually obtained directly from the crossbar itself (in other words, from the driver). The idea to "hack" the configuration files is very clever - I like it a lot. Those configuration files get written when the device is first detected and used by TV Server. After that I think they're mostly treated as read-only by TV Server, which is why the hack should work.
Encoding quality is something that I was written into the code but I was never able to figure out whether it was actually effective. I'm curious to know: is everyone using Showbiz to set resolution and quality settings, and are are the settings in MP TV Server configuration also effective as they should be? Some logs would be useful as I don't have a Colossus or HD-PVR myself.
On the topic of video resolution changing on the fly: MP certainly detects certain changes such as audio format (AAC vs. DD/AC3) and will rebuild the client-side graph as required. I'm not sure whether video resolution is one of those triggers. It should be possible to work that out by checking the MediaPortal and TsReader logs. If MP is not doing it then it would be a game of chance finding a video codec that handles such changes automatically.
mm
Hi mm,
I do not use Showbiz (in fact I do not know what it is). I can do the tests and give you the logs. What exactly do you want me to test with regards to the encoder settings? I know for sure that the HD channel recordings take lesser space than SD channel recordings.