Timeshifting in Media Portal and MCE2005 (1 Viewer)

[bmorgan98]

i own a powercolor theater 550pro card and no matter which application i use media portal or mce i am always experiencing a 2 seconds delay between what is going into the card and what is appearing on the screen,

For example i live in the uk and i pay for sky. when sky is directly hooked up to TV pressing TV guide on sky remote brings up Tv guide immediately, however when the picture is put through onto my hardware capture card through composite from the moment i press TV guide it takes approximately 2 seconds for the TV guide to popup on the screen.


I then recently submitted a ticket to ati and they replied: this is normal operating for MCE2005. I am wondering is this the same for all hardware based mpeg2 cards or just a theater 550pro issue? it really bugs me, other theater 550 owners dont seem to have this trouble.


I also was told by ati that this 2 second delay is the cause of buffering the video to hard disk and provides much smoother playback. Is this called timeshifting? is there a way to disable this in media portal?

 

[TVKiwi]

bmorgan98

As far as I am aware this issue applies to all hardware cards (at least all the ones I have used). It is a combination of the encoding and buffering process causing the delay and no this is not timeshifting.

Am not aware of anything you can do to reduce the delay.

 

[spockware]

If MP displays from the videocard, it seems to me like MP could cache the TV guide and display it immediately before it sends commands to the TV tunercard to do buffering changes. Is this possible?

 

[bmorgan98]

darn it, this is not good if only there was a way to disable the buffering.

thanks guys for your replies.

 

[Khris]

This is how most, if not all TV cards work.

Why is it a problem?

 

[bmorgan98]

well khris the system was meant for my mum and dad to work with recording tv programs, they actually liked the old AIW 9000 S/W card better,they just dont like the delay on the video.

 

[alcalde]

It's physically possible, I just don't know if MediaPortal can do it. Many hardware tuners have a "live preview mode" that passes the data through without encoding first.

I have a card with the same chip as yours and also was upgrading from an AIW 9000. The problem was with connecting a VCR or DVR into the s-video and then experiencing a delay while trying to program it. I finally discovered ChrisTV, which has the option to use the live preview (video AND audio). It was a bit tricky to set up with my card, but I finally got it working a few minutes ago, so I know now that it is possible to get lag-free viewing with the Theater 550 chip. Now I just wish other programs would incorporate the feature. If I figure out a way to do it with Media Portal I'll let you know.