Austria
I’m kind of sad today because I just can’t get the DVB-C work right in MediaPortal.
I’ve invested a lot of spare time to get my HTPC project working and spent more money than I initially wanted. Started at the end of March this year because the local cable TV provider began shutting down some analogue channels and integrating more digital ones. Most of the “stand alone†versions for recording DVB convert digital to analogue and then analogue to digital that then is stored by a dvd burner. So I thought: this can’t be it – build yourself a HTPC. Until then I captured analogue cable TV with a Hollywood DV Bridge and with some advanced (time & processor) intensive filtering I got quite good results. Only some dot crawl I did not get rid of. I stored my processed / edited captures in xvid format.
No more processor intensive filtering I thought with my HTPC + DVB-C card.
I was searching for some software and found TVCentral and MediaPortal. Then I was searching for a DVB-C card and found the KNC-one that supports TVCentral and got some good critiques as well – then bought it.
I had an old AMD Athlon 1000 with a VIA KT 133 chipset and 768MByte Mem – I thought this must be sufficient for a HTPC.
Ordered some more parts: HTPC case, silent fans and coolers, then began building things together. Used a prof. audio card from RME for sound output from my main PC. With the Globe TV/TVcentral under w2k, TV worked more or less OK except some stuttering -> processor was a bit weak. I did not like the media part & look and feel of TVCentral so I switched to MP. It was quite an adventure to first even get the KNC card detected during setup – found out that had to use XP, that I do not like much. But I liked MP a lot so I started with XP. I used a lot of time to get XP like I wanted it. The dvb audio was stuttering with TV and Radio, so I got a faster CPU on ebay – the fastest that this mainboard supported was an Athlon XP 1800+. Faster CPU – problem stayed. Ordered a 320 GByte HD also for my HTPC. Found out that the RME Pro soundcard could be the cause – with onboard sound the problem was smaller. So ordered a new soundcard a M Audio Delta 196. Got the soundcard an ooh no freezing XP during boot – VIA KT 133 was the problem. So I bought an Asus nForce mainboard A7N8X-E Deluxe + 2x512 Corsair Mem. So finally the hardware seems to be all OK.
Downloaded a lot of covers for my MP3s even scanned some I did not find.
But it seems I do not get the DVB-C working OK – ooh no! Sometimes there is no TV sound, switch sound channel from unknown to AC3 and back sometimes solves the problem. Then after a channel switch there is “no input signalâ€, sometimes there a some stutterings, sometimes activating time shift does not work (no signal) and finally I discovered that the capture is stored in some proprietary ms format that needs to be converted also… tried a lot of stuff to get rid of the DVB problems (ms patches, latency changes … different svn) but it seems I just don’t get DVB work the way it can be used day to day in a HTPC. And in Music sometimes audio stays mute – a replay (back) of the mp3/track solves this. Today I did a w2k test install with the WDM drivers an TVCentral and DVB worked like a charm channels switch fast all very stable – like it should work in a HTPC – but the rest of TVCentral is kind of yuk.
So this is why I’m kind of sad – I can’t use 2 programs for a HTPC (TVCentral for DVB and MP for the rest…) If I would know that another DVB-C card would run just fine in MP I probably would buy it, but browsing the forums seems that others do have problems with other cards as well. I even don’t know where the problem lies – DVB hardware / drivers / soundcard / MP software – somehow I think the DBA driver stuff is kind of borked a bit.
Is WDM+DVB really impossible in MP? I do not need time shift. I only want to watch TV and sometimes capture it as MPEG.
What could/should I do to continue/finish my HTPC project? Can someone give me a recommendation / tips?
I really do like MediaPortal a lot - if only I could get DVB-C working right...
I’ve invested a lot of spare time to get my HTPC project working and spent more money than I initially wanted. Started at the end of March this year because the local cable TV provider began shutting down some analogue channels and integrating more digital ones. Most of the “stand alone†versions for recording DVB convert digital to analogue and then analogue to digital that then is stored by a dvd burner. So I thought: this can’t be it – build yourself a HTPC. Until then I captured analogue cable TV with a Hollywood DV Bridge and with some advanced (time & processor) intensive filtering I got quite good results. Only some dot crawl I did not get rid of. I stored my processed / edited captures in xvid format.
No more processor intensive filtering I thought with my HTPC + DVB-C card.
I was searching for some software and found TVCentral and MediaPortal. Then I was searching for a DVB-C card and found the KNC-one that supports TVCentral and got some good critiques as well – then bought it.
I had an old AMD Athlon 1000 with a VIA KT 133 chipset and 768MByte Mem – I thought this must be sufficient for a HTPC.
Ordered some more parts: HTPC case, silent fans and coolers, then began building things together. Used a prof. audio card from RME for sound output from my main PC. With the Globe TV/TVcentral under w2k, TV worked more or less OK except some stuttering -> processor was a bit weak. I did not like the media part & look and feel of TVCentral so I switched to MP. It was quite an adventure to first even get the KNC card detected during setup – found out that had to use XP, that I do not like much. But I liked MP a lot so I started with XP. I used a lot of time to get XP like I wanted it. The dvb audio was stuttering with TV and Radio, so I got a faster CPU on ebay – the fastest that this mainboard supported was an Athlon XP 1800+. Faster CPU – problem stayed. Ordered a 320 GByte HD also for my HTPC. Found out that the RME Pro soundcard could be the cause – with onboard sound the problem was smaller. So ordered a new soundcard a M Audio Delta 196. Got the soundcard an ooh no freezing XP during boot – VIA KT 133 was the problem. So I bought an Asus nForce mainboard A7N8X-E Deluxe + 2x512 Corsair Mem. So finally the hardware seems to be all OK.
Downloaded a lot of covers for my MP3s even scanned some I did not find.
But it seems I do not get the DVB-C working OK – ooh no! Sometimes there is no TV sound, switch sound channel from unknown to AC3 and back sometimes solves the problem. Then after a channel switch there is “no input signalâ€, sometimes there a some stutterings, sometimes activating time shift does not work (no signal) and finally I discovered that the capture is stored in some proprietary ms format that needs to be converted also… tried a lot of stuff to get rid of the DVB problems (ms patches, latency changes … different svn) but it seems I just don’t get DVB work the way it can be used day to day in a HTPC. And in Music sometimes audio stays mute – a replay (back) of the mp3/track solves this. Today I did a w2k test install with the WDM drivers an TVCentral and DVB worked like a charm channels switch fast all very stable – like it should work in a HTPC – but the rest of TVCentral is kind of yuk.
So this is why I’m kind of sad – I can’t use 2 programs for a HTPC (TVCentral for DVB and MP for the rest…) If I would know that another DVB-C card would run just fine in MP I probably would buy it, but browsing the forums seems that others do have problems with other cards as well. I even don’t know where the problem lies – DVB hardware / drivers / soundcard / MP software – somehow I think the DBA driver stuff is kind of borked a bit.
Is WDM+DVB really impossible in MP? I do not need time shift. I only want to watch TV and sometimes capture it as MPEG.
What could/should I do to continue/finish my HTPC project? Can someone give me a recommendation / tips?
I really do like MediaPortal a lot - if only I could get DVB-C working right...