initial support for Hauppuage HD-PVR (1 Viewer)

[ixian]

When you say "Garry's 1.0 build" do you just mean the latest SVN in the OP?

I'm giving this yet another try - I put a new hard drive in and completely rebuilt my TV Server PC from scratch. Fresh install of Vista x32, SP1, patched, latest drivers for devices, no codecs, etc installed, no nothing except the HD-PVR software and the updates to it and the HD-PVR driver.

So now I have my base - I'm imaging it right now so I have a backup of the thing in a clean state. I figured I'd next try the OP SVN's since those are the ones most people here seemed to have gotten to work, more or less. I still need to install "regular" MP 1.0 first, correct?

 

[WileECoyote]

When you say "Garry's 1.0 build" do you just mean the latest SVN in the OP?

Hey Ixian,
I am referring to Garry's build in the first post of this thread.

Wile E.

 

[WileECoyote]

MisterD,
I installed the latest SVN last night, and it worked almost perfect.

- I clean installed Garry's version of MP 1.0
- I applied the SVN from 3/7/2009
- Configured the TV Server, Blaster & Schedules direct (to get my channels)
- Timeshifting and recording worked fine in the TV Server (except for a 10 second delay for the PMT)
- Configured the MP client
- Opened the MP client and started timeshifting and it worked great.
- Tried to change the channel, after 10 seconds it would just seem 'paused' on the previous channel. So on a whim I hit the pause button, then play and it started playing back fine.
- Tried timeshifting on the 3 clients (which still have Garry's MP 1.0 build) and they start and change channels fine. the pause issue is no where to be found

So it appears that maybe the channel changing is a client issue? I will post my logs later on when I get home...

again for all who have worked to make the HD-PVR work with MP!

Here are the logs for the problem....

Wile E.

Edit: This chap is having the same issues -> https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...vision-21864-rar-56026/index6.html#post388710

 

[ixian]

So far my reinstallation project has been a success. Using the 12-28 svn I get video/audio in singleseat and even (gasp) with my remote client.

The picture looks very good but I still get "hiccups" and other slight pauses - I'm going to work on tweaking that some more. I'm seriously starting to wonder if it isn't my hard drive - I moved the stream/record folders to a separate drive and now it works better, but still not perfect, especially if I am recording - then the picture really starts to stutter. They are both fairly new Seagate SATA 640gb drives but I haven't formatted the one with 64bit clusters which some people recommend...wonder if that is the issue?

Unbelievable the amount of fiddling I had to do but hey, it works, I'm almost afraid to mess with it right now

 

[misterd]

MisterD,
I installed the latest SVN last night, and it worked almost perfect.

- I clean installed Garry's version of MP 1.0
- I applied the SVN from 3/7/2009
- Configured the TV Server, Blaster & Schedules direct (to get my channels)
- Timeshifting and recording worked fine in the TV Server (except for a 10 second delay for the PMT)
- Configured the MP client
- Opened the MP client and started timeshifting and it worked great.
- Tried to change the channel, after 10 seconds it would just seem 'paused' on the previous channel. So on a whim I hit the pause button, then play and it started playing back fine.
- Tried timeshifting on the 3 clients (which still have Garry's MP 1.0 build) and they start and change channels fine. the pause issue is no where to be found

So it appears that maybe the channel changing is a client issue? I will post my logs later on when I get home...

again for all who have worked to make the HD-PVR work with MP!

Here are the logs for the problem....

Wile E.

Edit: This chap is having the same issues -> https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...vision-21864-rar-56026/index6.html#post388710

As I already mentioned it is a problem of the HD-PVR and analog cards. It has something to do with the transport stream that is generated for those cards. We know that the problem is on client side, but we have to wait for Ambass who has done the last changes there. Currently I have no idea how we can fix this.

But thanks for the logs. Perhaps we can find the problem easier from the HD-PVR side.

MisterD

 

[ixian]

I discovered that 1080i is a problem on my PC's apparently - it shouldn't be, they are powerful enough, but it is. Maybe it's a Dishnetwork thing. Anyway I set my dish receiver to output 720p and now I get a picture that is virtually identical to the one from my set top box. Thank you, God.

I've now moved to the 3.7.2009 SVN and will post my logs, seeing the same issue WileE and others are. Has anyone tried the latest Disaster custom SVN build? It's based off the latest SVN as well but has a different AMBass patch included. I'm going to give it a try.

 

[chesh]

Ok, here's a new weird one that has been happening for a little while now, but it has now moved to the latest problem to fix on my plate. With the HD-PVR, when I'm switching channels that are only mapped to the HD-PVR, I'm getting huge lag after switching channels. Doesn't seem to matter if the channel is HD or SD. I pull up the onscreen framerate watcher and I see that my framerate is around 14-20 frames/sec and will eventually reach 30 frames/sec if I wait long enough (about 3-5 mins). It also has a jitter level of 40-45 right after the channel change and doesn't seem to change all that much. In order for it not to happen I can change the channel to a channel that another card tunes into and then change to a channel that only the HD-PVR has, and I don't have the issue. So, as long as I change to a channel that exists on another card, no problem. Any ideas of what might be causing the problem? I'm still on the 12/22/08 version from the first post. This might have been an issue all along, but I've only recently been extensively testing all the LiveTV stuff. All the codecs listed in "My System" should be correct. Thanks guys for any suggestions.

P.S. My issues with playback on the HVR-1600 seems to have corrected itself. After reinstalling Total Media and playing with the codec settings, I no longer have the issues with MPEG-2 I was having. Also, all channels look fine, except when this issue starts happening.

 

[ixian]

I'm just writing a little update after my frustrated post of a couple days ago.

I've rolled my TV Server PC and both my clients back to the 12-22svn posted here, the only one that has ever worked well for me with the HD-PVR. I kept the latest SVN and related installs on a separate hard drive in my TV server for testing purposes. For whatever reason, I had to reinstall my TV Server OS from scratch (probably codec related) to get it to work. Both my clients I was able to get working by simply doing clean uninstalls of MP, then reinstalling.

Second biggest issue for me was setting my STB's output (a Dish ViP 622) to 720p instead of 1080i. This completely eliminated any stuttering or pausing for me. Since the bandwidth used is the same between the two I can only assume this must have something to do with refresh rates, as 720p is 60htz and 1080i 30. I will try tweaking this more later as all my TV's are 1080p which handle 1080i sources better.

Channel changing (I am using the blaster built in the HDPVR) is about 4-5 seconds now - slower than my STB, but livable for now. Hopefully this is something that improves in future builds.

Anyway after lots of effort and help from this thread I have a more or less stable, working solution - time to start thinking about adding a second HD-PVR in to the mix . I also have a test drive, so as new SVN's come out I'll at least be able to play around and post logs.

 

[ixian]

Since by definition everyone here using this is using an external set-top box, I thought I'd ask this here:

How are you all "waking" your STB's if they are in sleep mode? For example Dish receivers (and DirectTV too I believe) go in to a sleep mode if left idle too long, to save power. In Dish's case, you get a screen that says "Press Select to continue"; you then press select (on the Dish remote) and after a few seconds it comes back up with the channel it was last tuned to.

Naturally this is a bit of a problem with TVServer; I usually run in to it every morning when I get up and turn on the TV. I need to figure out a couple things: One, how to have my remote map the "select" key so that it blasts that key to the STB using (in my case) the Hauppage blaster, and two, if there is a plugin or something that can do so automatically.

Surely I'm not the only STB user running in to this - how do the rest of you handle it?

 

[sjeffrey]

I'm facing the same issue as you are with my Bell receiver.
I know there's an option on mine to never turn receiver off after idle, but I don't think it works after a certain amount of hours.
One quick hack you could do is program a 1 minute recording everyday or something just to make sure your STB doesn't go to sleep.
I just haven't really had to do anything yet because I'm still trying to get a stable workable setup.
A more permanent fix could be like you said, to blast the 'select' button before every channel change just to make sure the STB is on.