pcHDTV 5500 & MP Help (1 Viewer)

[Paul S]

You definitely need to unload HDTV video processing to the video card. I am using an ATI card and selecting ATI/Cyberlink in the main app does it for me.

Settings->MyTV->Video Codec

Channel changing for ATSC has always been problematic. I have gotten into the habit of turning the tuner off/on when changing channels. I select the new channel through the EPG.

 

[briaric]

I can say that I have not played with Media Portal much. It was nice to see something come up. I am working on the Linux side since I am more comfortable over there. I have not tried MythTV just basic xine/mplayer stuff. My problems is that I need to get the right antenna. I have a VHF antenna in the attic and it is actually pulling in the UHF signals to some degree. My purpose for buying the card is to start work on the antenna's/splitter/amplifiers (if needed). Then I can start buying the HDTV equipment in the rest of the house. I do need a method to record so this is another area I am looking. Not sure when I will get back to MediaPortal.

Thanks,

Brian

 

[jarrednichol]

The config that Paul presented is the actual config that I came up with when following the Media Portal "Add New Card" instructions. I'm a programmer and I've programmed DirectShow many times, so I actually understand what the hell is going on But uhh, GraphEdit gave me pin 3 to MPV (Video), pin 4 to MPA (Audio) and pin 2 to the Mpg2 sections and tables, which is identical to the config Phil S presented, but not the same as Tim Z presented. I wonder why that is, and I wonder how Tim's config is working

Anyways, I can't get this card to work myself...I haven't installed EPG/XMLTV for my area though and tried the main channels...I just know that scanning for channels in the config program doens't work very well, and MP and MP config crashes all the damn time. I'm a .NET developer so I should probably fix MP's sloppy code ;-)

 

[Paul S]

jarrednichol -> If you are scanning for channels in the Setup Wizard, it won't work very well. It is best to go into the MP setup program and do that. If you live in the USA, use zap2it for EPG data.

TimZ -> If HDTV is not displaying in the correct aspect ratio, it usually is the fault of the video codec that you have selected. I just reconfigured my PC, it is now using an old Air2PC HDTV card. When I first tried to watch TV with it, all of the aspect ratios were wrong. I have the nVidia Pure Video codec installed, and when I selected this all problems were corrected. This codec costs $$$, so you may not want to use it, but you can try it for free.

 

[jarrednichol]

Hey Paul, thanks for the reply. After posting yesterday, I actually did get all my listings from Zap2it (already had the account made from when I tried MythTV). I can't get signals still on any station...my first attempt, it was opening the channels and saying "No signal detected", and then after I closed out MP and restarted it, now when I try to view any channel, it says something to the affect of "Unable to tune to channel, no tuning information" or something like that, and can't "turn the TV on". I didn't get much time to play w/ it. I'm starting to wonder if my antenna is good enough to get signals on this tuner card...I've ordered an Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 900 USB stick and am going to try that next. My antenna gets, quite literally, all of the stations in my area w/o a hitch when it's going straight to my TV's onboard tuner. I wonder if the pcHDTV's tuner is a much weaker tuner or something...I couldn't get signals w/ it in Linux either, and I thought it was just the card and/or the v4l-dvb drivers.

 

[Paul S]

When you run the MediaPortal Setup program (not the setup wizard), does the pcHDTV card show up in the section Television -->Capture Cards? You have to click the "Add" button to see new card choices.

If you get a "No Capture Card Found" error, the config file has the wrong device ID. If you get "Unable To Make Graph" error, the pin assignments are wrong or the wrong filters are chosen.

 

[TimZ]

jarrednichol -> If you are scanning for channels in the Setup Wizard, it won't work very well. It is best to go into the MP setup program and do that. If you live in the USA, use zap2it for EPG data.

TimZ -> If HDTV is not displaying in the correct aspect ratio, it usually is the fault of the video codec that you have selected. I just reconfigured my PC, it is now using an old Air2PC HDTV card. When I first tried to watch TV with it, all of the aspect ratios were wrong. I have the nVidia Pure Video codec installed, and when I selected this all problems were corrected. This codec costs $$$, so you may not want to use it, but you can try it for free.

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been around in a while. I've been busy ...blah, blah, blah.

My 5500 seems to be working quite well with the configuration settings I came up with using GraphEdt. I got the aspect ratio thing worked out, when watching a channel I hit the Z (I think that's the key) key to change the AR and MP seems to remember it.

I'm surprised that even though I have the latest windows drivers for my nVidia card, it's not hacking the HDTV playback very well whereas, it played back rather nicely when using MythTV and the latest Linux drivers (same hardware). I did find that my motherboard was set to 2X AGP instead of 4X (the highest it can go) but, even after fixing that the playback "studders" every couple of seconds.

jarrednichol -> I'm not sure what to tell you, I'm no expert here. I can say that once I ran GraphEdt and got the info for the CaptureCardDefinitions file, the card worked! It also worked quite well when I was using MythTV using the v4l-dvb drivers. I did what Paul said to do using the MP setup (not the wizard) and added the capture card. I could easily scan for channels there (it takes a long time, maybe 5-8 secs per channel) but it worked!

I did upgrade the memory to 1GB from 512MB and I found a 2000+ XP processor but still not happy with the results. I think one of my mistakes is that I've been downloading the nightly SVNs before my system is working the way I want. I may just do a complete install of XP and MP. I may try the nVideo CODEC you mentioned to see if that works, other than that, I may just need more horsepower.

-tz

[EDIT]

I was just at the nVidia website checking on that CODEC and I decided to see if there was an updated driver. The driver I downloaded is the same one on the site and it is suposed to include:

[From http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71.html
Release Highlights:

WHQL Certified.
NVIDIA PureVideo™ HD driver with support for the following features:
Hardware acceleration of H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 HD movie formats.
Video post-processing image enhancements.
Built-in support for HDCP content protection protocol via DVI or HDMI connectors.
Please visit the NVIDIA PureVideo website for more information on building a PureVideo HD system.
Includes the new NVIDIA Control Panel. Please visit the NVIDIA Control Panel website for more information.
Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0c and OpenGL® 2.0 support
For a full list of fixes issues, please view the release notes.

So it looks like I should have the PureVideo driver.

[/EDIT]

 

[Paul S]

The Pure Video decoder that I was referring to came seperately. You can find it here:

nVidia Pure Video Decoder

It's possible that they are now giving away for free in their driver, but highly unlikely. If you look at the prices, I don't think they are willing to give it away.

 

[HTPCnut]

Works for me

Just thought I'd chime in and say that this card is working for me as well. I'm new to this HTPC stuff, but I just followed the suggestions at the beginning of this thread and used GraphEdit.

My GraphEdit revealed two entries for this card. They were almost identical. The only difference in the moniker (I think that's the term) was that one was dev_8801 and the other was dev_8802. Both seem to work just fine.

I have found that there is an audio/video sync issue when viewing analog channels with it. I haven't tried to fix it (wouldn't know where to start), but I don't care because that's what my other two analog cards are for.

Thanks to all for the guidance.

Bryan

 

[simspace]

What's happening with MP install? (green bar under screen)

MediaPortal Version: 0.2.2.0
Windows Version: Win XP Pro SP2
Memory: 1 GIG
TV Card: pcHDTV 5500

Hey, MP newbie here!

I installed MP along with my new pcHDTV 5500 card. I followed this post to to get the config right.

I also installed the zap2it plug in and config'd it. It found my lineup and my EPG is fully loaded.

My tuner scan seemed to work - found 99% of the channels with 100% signal strength.

However, when I start MP the green progress bar (beneath the screen) moves very slowly; fills up, clears and starts again.

It went through this cycle three times over 1 1/2 hours (see screen shot).

The progress bar tells me nothing other than it moves. What's MP doing?

Thanks!
Chris