Why moderators are closing posts? (2 Viewers)

[Fidoboy]

i can't second this at all. i also have an analogue card and, problems or not, i asked DMAN for integration and 2 days later the svn supported my card. look at the SVN changelog at the home site or join the developer mailinglist to see that there are almost every week several analogue cards added by dman

further i appreciate that the devlopers are looking forward to get the next full release up and running and this HAS to be the priority atm!

Yes, he added support for analogue cards... but with frame skipping... and using 70% CPU, i think that that is not valid solution... First i tried MP using PlayTV Pro 2 and there is no support at all (i've sent the graphedit info two weeks ago) and now, using a WInFast TV2000 XP Expert (that is in the supported cards list) after some fine tunning, i can get it to work with RC 4 but there is a lot of delay between image and the sound and also too much frames are dropped... I've offered my services as coder, but still i get no answer (i have no experience with hardware coding, but still i think i could help...)

 

[Callifo]

Yes, he added support for analogue cards... but with frame skipping... and using 70% CPU

Does you computer meet the minimum requirements (2.8Ghz P4/AMD minimum for a SW card)? To get the tv engine to work with software cards they need them to feed an mpeg2 source (which is supplied via a software encoder; this is where the cpu time comes from). HW cards dont have the problem as they supply a mpeg2 source directly from the card and so cpu time is nice and low.

I've offered my services as coder, but still i get no answer

Perhaps head into IRC when the developers are around and they would be happy to listen.

 

[Spragleknas]

i can't second this at all. i also have an analogue card and, problems or not, i asked DMAN for integration and 2 days later the svn supported my card. look at the SVN changelog at the home site or join the developer mailinglist to see that there are almost every week several analogue cards added by dman

further i appreciate that the devlopers are looking forward to get the next full release up and running and this HAS to be the priority atm!

I agree on this too; I can only praise DMAN for all his effort on this - "succesfull" or not. Also; looking at the SVN's, much work is beeing done here...


Still; SW-based cards are far more common than HW - and again; how many HW-based cards are there to get? Which computer manufactorer deliveres a HW-based card with their solutions?

 

[FlipGer]

Hiho,

Still; SW-based cards are far more common than HW - and again; how many HW-based cards are there to get?

The requirements page of MP lists more than 60 cards.

Which computer manufactorer deliveres a HW-based card with their solutions?

Thats right. Not enough, if any. The question is why? Because manufactures always use the very cheapest hardware and want to get rid of their old stock of SW based cards.

Very IMHO, if you want a real HTPC with TV functionality you should never ever buy a SW encoding card or even buy a PC off the peg. But these are my two cents.

Why did I close the poll? Because MP does support SW encoding cards and this was discussed many times before. I did not want to snub somebody. Please do not get me wrong here. Help and requests are always welcome.

Fidoboy: Your computer should be decent enough to do SW MPEG encoding, so I think there must be something wrong with your setup (drivers, codecs, etc.). And coding help is always very welcome. Thanks for the offer. Just try to contact the DEVs on IRC. Or dig somewhat in the code and post patches on sourceforge.

Flip.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Look before the Testosterone Levels gets to High :wink:

Software AND Hardware has Moved on.
MP is doing a Bloody good job of keeping up with current trends.
Luckily for me, my choice of TV card was DVB-T as freeview great here in UK.
Have read and explained to me the various reasons, and many flaws with software based cards.
Sorry to sound so blunt, but you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

My opinion only

8)

 

[Fidoboy]

I like to read all of this arguments, they are so pretty, but i still have not a decent answer about why the old engine is not included in new releases. With sw based cards that engine was excelent... and without being too much technical i think that they only need some copy paste in the source code.

If (TVShowingMethod == "SWBasedCard") {
Call-to-old-routine
} else {
Call-to-new-routine
}

That's all... And yes, i've a PIV 3.4 with 1Gb of RAM that meets the minimum requeriments of new version, but still having frame drops... I know the effort that is being done here, i'm happy with the progress of the whole project but may be that some things are not being done in the right direction... That a lot of manufacturers are including sw based cards in their HTPCs is a fact, and it's the same if we like it or not... so i think that if MP wanna be a great project for all, and free for all (not like the M$ solution) it must continue offering different solutions for all... Actually is the ONLY software that offers: plugins, integration with ANT Movies, support for launching games and other external apps, internet browsing, news, online radios, etc, etc... only Meedio was near of that features, but unfortunately it was purchased by Yahoo, so i think that if MP gives a good support for sw based cards, it will take the adventage and becomes the leader of all HTPC software solutions with a lot of benefits... There are hundreds of users that could change their current software (MCE, MythTV,Meedio, Nero Home, NVidia nStant media, etc) in benefit of MP... the question is: can MP help to all these users? can MP use two engines for TV viewing? can be the old code included like a option, plugin or whatever??

 

[Maschine]

If (TVShowingMethod == "SWBasedCard") {
Call-to-old-routine
} else {
Call-to-new-routine
}

Damn, if it's that easy and you are a SW-developer why don't you just do it? A little bit of copy and paste can't be too much for dev! Once you have a solution (which should be there today or tomorrow as it's soooo easy) you can share the changed files via the sf.net patches section. If it's a good solution we can think of putting it to SVN.

Go go go!

Maschine

 

[FlipGer]

Hi,

With sw based cards that engine was excelent...

No, it was not. If you could have read all those post in those days, you might understand why this engine has been taken out:
- Why does my SW card not timeshift?
- Why does TV go black when I record with my SW card?
- Why does audio not work with my SW card?
- Why does recording not work with my SW card?
- I only get 0kb files on recording with SW card!
- Recordings with my SW card do stutter and have frame drops!
- Why does my SW card not work?
- etcpepe...

Sorry again, I fear I got too sarcastic. :twisted: This is not meant to hold someone back to include the engine back again. Its just a warning.

Its nice, that MP 0.1.3. does work with your SW card. But it simply did not work with all SW cards.

Flip.

 

[dman_lfc]

Here are the facts...

1. S/W cards were never officially supported in MP
2. The engine required further work for Philips based chipsets in particular.
3. Alot of complaints were made about the ability of not being able timeshift.
4. Alot of complaints were made about dropped frames.
5. Alot of complaints were made about higher CPU usage in MP compared to xyz (non DirectX) application.
6. Oh and then there were... let me see... more complaints about not being able to record programme synopsis information etc.

Points 1 & 2 we could start working on.

With the project plan for 0.2.0 we were planning to move towards Transport Stream & Program Stream recording without using the M$ DVR-MS engine we use today.
With that in mind and the many complaints above we decided that there would be one 'recording' format for Analogue whether it be h/w or s/w based and that would be to use MPEG-2. Points 3 - 6 could be sorted with this descision & with clear details of encoders supported with cpu requirements etc.

Unfortunately moving away from DVR-MS proved a vastly difficult task so we decided to stick with it a little longer.
The change to one recording format for Analogue could be done with a dirty 'work-around' until I had the time to work through a new s/w encoding engine which will work with the new recording engine planned after 0.2.0.

At the end of the day if you're using a s/w card today with 0.2.0 RC4 then thats the recording & timeshifting results you're going to get unless you get more efficient MPEG-2 encoders for your system or a faster CPU. Some people are happy, some are not but if we're going to continue to provide a TVEngine at all it needs to be as simple as possible and easy for us to support.

To be honest the best solution as mentioned in this thread and to many users in the past is to buy a h/w encoding card then all your s/w encoding problems go away.

Remember all, we do this in our spare time. Unfortunately spare time has not been a luxury for me of late and rantings on the forums for a free & open source (not to mention kick ass) application is not giving me much motivation.

Note: I have not been approached about coding for MP or assitance with the Software Engine whatsoever.

DMAN

 

[samuel337]

Guys, calm down!

The guy had a legit point he wanted to make (why can't the old TV engine supporting sw cards be re-added alongside the new engine) and DMAN provided him with the answer (the old TV engine was not perfect, had problems etc., hence not supported).

The fact of the matter is that - the old TV engine was not as stable as fidoboy thought (even though his worked 'excellently') and hence it was dumped.

Other TV programs accomplished sw card support, and good on them. But the lack of manpower in MP meant that the devs never got the sw engine to work as well as they liked it to. Sure yours may work well, but if it was readded (assuming it was possible without a lot of work), other users may have issues. Seeing as it is old, the devs do not want to support it anymore (unless of course, someone wants to step up to the plate). Now, you can't tell the other users who have problems - sorry, this was only added in because the minority had success with it and if it doesn't work, bad luck.

As for the sw vs. hw debate - maybe its important to realise that the future for most countries is digital TV. And from a technical perspective, digital TV cards are a lot more like HW analog TV cards than SW analog TV cards (both provide a MPEG2 stream from HW), so it would make sense for the devs to focus on those two (given the limited resources).

Ok, that's my 2 cents,

Sam