Hauppauge HD-PVR & Colossus Support (4 Viewers)

[nzdreamer55]

Hello again
I wanted to follow up with those who helped me. I removed the colossus card, removed the drivers, ran glary utilities to clean my registry then installed the card into a different slot and installed drivers from the CD that came with the colossus card. I think it was trying to use 32 drivers on my x64 os.
Now it works great. I got irss working to blast my stb via usb-uirt. Thanks fore the help.
Steve[DOUBLEPOST=1347251948][/DOUBLEPOST]I've got another problem. Is there a way I can change the color? My TV shows have a lot of green and red in them. The videos that I play look fine so I think it is something to do with the colossus card.
Steve

Follow up: It was a poor connection of the components to the rear of the STB. The color is fixed

 

[chorin]

Hi, new user here.
Been reading for a while now.

cablebox connected to colossus by HDMI.
Can see Video but no sound at all.
Tried to configure it as SPDIF#1 (as the first page here suggests) - no use.

Also - do I really have to add each channel separately? (have over 500 channels)

How do I configure the IRblaster to change channels?

 

[nzdreamer55]

Hey there Chorin. Well I have to say that I have not tried to use the HDMI from the STB to the Colossus (just too many issues in the past).
I don't see any system specs so I don't know how you connect to your TV. Is media portal working otherwise? Can you watch video from another source besides the TV? Are you in the USA (north america) or another country? The schedule direct plug in for north america can be used to populate your channels. What is your set top box make and model? Have you confirmed that the STB will output audio over the HDMI cable to a TV set? Does your motherboard and STB have a Toslink/optical output?

-S

 

[chorin]

Windows 7 64 bit. I Don't live in USA.
the box make is Thomson.
Media portal works fine otherwise and plays Movies from my movies folder.

The HDMI works fine as in winTV7 (the one that comes with the colossus) I see and hear alright. Even the IR blaster works fine and switches channels.
Motherboard has optical out (that's how its connected to the receiver), and HDMI out (connected directly to the HD projector).

 

[nzdreamer55]

So your system works with a STB that connects from it to the colossus card via HDMI and you can see and hear video from the STB when you use winTV7. Is this true for all the channels (have you been using winTV7 for a while and just are switching to mediaportal)?

Also what version of mediaportal are you using? Do you have a single seat set up? Have you tried to use component connections from your STB including right and left audio?

I have to say that I am not the best person to trouble shoot this, but will try to help given that so many have helped me (anyone else want to jump in here go ahead).

So it sounds like you have been using mediaportal to watch stuff that you have on your hard drive or on the internet. The TV aspect is handled by the TV server and mediaportal uses a plug-in (called TV) to show the TV. So first you need to ensure that the codec for the TV section within Mediaportal are correct and you need to make sure that the Audio Render for the TV is set to the correct thing you want it to output to. I would specifically choose the digital output Toslink/digital output at two places, one with in windows (right click on the speaker at the right corner of the screen and adjust the audio proprieties and set the default for windows here). Now make sure that you still have audio-play a youtube video. Then open up the media portal configuration and under codec area select TV and set the audio render to the same thing. I would also change it on something that you know works and test it here. If it works then it should work under the TV setting as well.

Have you populated your channels within mediaportal (I think you have but just checking)?
Each channel can be set to a specific input. So I would check by right clicking on a channel within the TV server set up under the TV Channel tree arm and from there right click on a channel, edit it and verify that this setting is to the correct input (S/PIF#1 I think for HDMI). Maybe you populated your channels with this set to another input or automatic?

As for the population of channels how did you do this? Did you just one or a few to test it out? Because the card cannot scan for channels, you have to populate the TV server with channels (I don't know how they do it outside of the US, but there must be a way) and the settings for these channels, then once this is done, map the channel to the card.

It seems like you must of done this if you are getting video but no audio.

I am suspecious of the audio render setting and the individual channel input setting. Again I am not the best here, but let me know if any of this helps

-S

P.S. It would be good if you populate your system stats for others to help you. There are also ways to post logs, but I always have a hard time figuring this out too.

 

[ehfortin]

Hi,

I have a few questions and one trick to share this morning.

First, for those of you that need to change the video or audio input on your colossus for large set of channels, if you are using the Schedule Direct plugin, there is a trick to change everything at once. You have to delete all your channels then go into the SD plugin, set the video/audio input to what you need and then do a full import of the channels from SD. They will be all configured the same way with the proper input. At least, it worked for me this weekend.

I hope this can be useful to some.

Now, for the questions:

1) Is there a way to configure the recorder in Mediaportal to start "xx" seconds after the channel change? The reason I ask this is because right now, MediaPortal is starting the recording probably at the same time it send the channel change. This would not be a problem if we were only using HD or SD channels. However, as we have both at my place, when we record a channel in SD and then another one in HD (or the other way around), the .TS file that is made is often problematic because of the resolution switch. So, if it would be possible to delay the recording let say 3-5 seconds after the channel change, this would never happen as the STB would already be at the final resolution for the duraction of the recording.

2) I've read that we can change the bitrate with Arcsoft Showbiz by select AVCHD and then, playing with the bitrate in the video encoder tab. I was looking at the H264 encoder tab and there is numerous settings there. Are they effective for recordings made with MP? If so, what would be the best settings to have a good ratio quality/file size? I'm not looking for the maximum setting of the colossus. I'm basically looking for DVD alike quality. On SageTV, that ratio was about two notch below the maximum bitrate but... those were identified by label so I have no clue what was the bitrate associated with it and the H264 settings involved. Any recommandations?

Thank you.

ehfortin

 

[kilik360]

Hi ehfortin for DVD quality you should downscale to 720 x 480 in showbiz and put the bitrate at 5 mbps.

 

[ehfortin]

Hi,

Oups. Well, I would like to keep the 720p resolution while having the image quality of a DVD. Is 5 Mbps still good for this even if I don't change the resolution?

Thank you.

ehfortin

 

[HazelrahFiver]

Hello! New member here.
I was hoping to ask briefly for a little help. Mainly I just want to know if my computer will be able to operate the Hauppauge HD-PVR. My graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS, so I should be good there, but my processor is Intel Core 2 CPU 6320 @ 1.86GHz. Now, obviously according to Hauppauge's details the minimum requirement is Dual core CPU 2.0GHz.
The reason I am still asking then, is because I've read in multiple places that if you are able to view videos created with the Hauppauge HD-PVR, then you shouldn't have a problem using the device yourself. I can view HD video just fine (and specifically vids that I know were created with the Hauppauge), no problems at all. Is there any truth to this, or do I need to seek out a non-HD alternative?

Thank you very much for any replies!

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome HazelrahFiver

My graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce 8600 GTS, so I should be good there...

Yep, I think so.

...but my processor is Intel Core 2 CPU 6320 @ 1.86GHz. Now, obviously according to Hauppauge's details the minimum requirement is Dual core CPU 2.0GHz.

I'm not sure what the reasoning is behind that requirement. Personally I think your CPU should be fine.

The reason I am still asking then, is because I've read in multiple places that if you are able to view videos created with the Hauppauge HD-PVR, then you shouldn't have a problem using the device yourself. I can view HD video just fine (and specifically vids that I know were created with the Hauppauge), no problems at all. Is there any truth to this, or do I need to seek out a non-HD alternative?

Yeah, I think you should be fine.
The key requirement is that either (1) the GPU supports h.264/AVC video decoding acceleration, or (2) the CPU is powerful enough to do h.264/AVC decoding without help from a GPU.
Your CPU would be borderline powerful enough for HD h.264 video decoding, but that can be ignored since the 8600 GTS supports h.264 decoding acceleration.

Make sense?