Changing channel using ndscam and dvbviewer

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whereisglenn

27 posts

Geek

#31967 7-Apr-2009 03:08

I've got 7057 working smoothly with DVBviewer, DVSBridge, ndscam 0.0.0.7 and an infinity usb card reader. In fact it's working oh so well I don't what to play with it any more but....

How long should it take for an encrypted stream to be decoded by ndscam? It takes DVBviewer/mce 6-7 seconds to complete a channel chnage between encrypted streams. Is this normal? Changing channel between an encrypted channel and say TV1 only takes a second. I was hoping for an improvement over the STB setup using an IR transmitter.

Does anyone have any hot tips for improving this delay or is this the best I can hope for? Are the jaycar readers any faster?

Cheers.

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495 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#205690 7-Apr-2009 09:13

Thats as good as you'll get with DVBViewer and NDSCam. It will also tend to crash on channel changes every now and then and lose the tuner. SoftCSA (which is the bit that translates between DVBViewer and NDSCam) is unreliable, and uses heaps of CPU. This nothing to do with the reader either. Jaycar readers take the same amount of time.

A couple of options:

1. Change to DVBDream/NDSCam - channel changes average around a second or so ie just like a normal channel. Very reliable, free software. Very hard to fault other than it being single tuner only.
2. Change to NewCS instead of NDSCam. There some info in the HOW TO: Sky thread on how to make it work. Should be more reliable and change channels faster. NewCS will also support multiple tuners with the new version of DVBSBridge thats about to be released.

I can highly recommend the DVBDream option as a simple fix. Its fast, free (other than the DVBSBridge license which you have to get anyway) and easy to setup.

whereisglenn

27 posts

Geek

#205802 7-Apr-2009 17:16

Thanks for the heads up Rusty. It's been awhile since I read the sky thread - think it was at page 21 - now at 28.

I've got newCS v1.65 running with Acamd v0.6.0.2 and DVDviewer and channel changes are now normal - about 1sec. The 10sec glitch (albeit very slight) is back again using my infinity USB. I managed to eliminite this with NDScam and SoftCSA but looks like I'll have to play with the VCP defaults again. Anyone have workable settings for VCP under this or similar setup?

One problem I've got but haven't looked at troubleshooting yet is how to ensure everything resumes correctly after the pc wakes up from sleep. I noticed I had a failed record this morning. newCS is reporting "Reset Failed", so looks like it's lost the connection through the virtual usb driver. In fact I had the same problem with SoftCSA and NDScam eg. MCE reports the channel is scrambled because it can no longer connect with the reader.

Starting to wonder if I'll have more luck with trusty legacy ports and the jaycar reader. Or if writing a batch file to close and restart newCS when resuming from sleep will ensure media centre can record programs reliably. Other issues that come to mind would then include having to restart the dvbsbridge/dvbviewer after restarting newCS, which hopefully doesn't cause a failed record through mce by the time all the restarts take place. Sigh...

Rusty - Which card reader are you currently using, the infinity usb or jaycar? If you have a jaycar do you use VCP or the standard serial to com port? Have you had similar issues resuming from sleep? Damn - looks like more money to mercury's coffers.

I'll give your current setup a go tonight to see how it compares.

Cheers.

whereisglenn

27 posts

Geek

#205816 7-Apr-2009 18:05

UPDATE: Actually my problem with newCS "Reset Failed" definitely looks like an issue with infinity VCP and it's ability to inialise the virtual com after the PC resumes. Guess I will have to contact WB Electronics. Perhaps it's specifically related to win7. Anyone else had this problem on other flavours of windows?

Restarting VCP resolves the issue, but this is less than ideal. Looks like I'm heading to jaycar tomorrow.

Klathman

301 posts

Ultimate Geek

#205819 7-Apr-2009 18:20

I currently have a bit of a crappy solution but it seems to work.

I've got a shortcut in startup which loads the infinity util and autostarts VCP with a boost of 2.0.

Look here for doco on how to do it.

http://www.infinityusb.com/default.asp?show=supportdetail&ProductID=11&SupportID=23

Then I'm running NewCS also from startup as I haven't managed to get it to run as a service successfully.

Everything seems to start up fine and be happy this way with no lag or anything even with multiple channel decodes.

Startup seems to be about 3secs for a SD channel but up to 15secs for the HD channels. Channel changes are about 1-3secs for SD and 5ish for HD.

whereisglenn

27 posts

Geek

#205839 7-Apr-2009 19:21

Thanks Klathman. I think I will still proceed with the jaycar unit and eventually sell the infinity usb. My current setup has been absolutely flawless, day in day out on vista and I want the same reliability with win7. Hopefully that isn't asking too much. I'm going to try dvbdream tonight with ndscam as per rusty's suggestion.

Just to confirm my channel changing times are much faster than yours. I'm getting 1 sec changes on sky PPV, so not sure if your setup is the same as mine but you should be able to improve on 5 sec. Startup is also faster. Cheers.

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#205860 7-Apr-2009 20:34

I'm using a Jaycar through a standard serial port.

I'm currently using DVBDream with NDSCam 0.007, and DVBSBridge v1.0 (1.2 has some big issues with Windows 7) under Windows 7 7068 . For a single tuner solution its as close to perfect as you will get. Channel changes average about a second SD/HD makes little difference, no glitches whatsoever. Occasionally (1 in 30) you get a slow change which might take 3-5 seconds.

DVBDream won't come out of standby (well NDSCam won't anyway), so I don't use it. If somethings scheduled during the night I leave it on, otherwise I flick it off. Only takes around 45 seconds to boot into Media Center, so its not that much of an issue for me.

I run DVBDream from startup through the task scheduler, using the /minimized option.

The Jaycar reader doesn't work out of the box with NewCS. I can get it to read the card, but it won't lock it down. I believe this has to do with the way NewCS uses the serial port. Apparently a USB to serial cable may cure this, might get around to trying it tommorow. The only reason I want to do this is for multi tuner. If you only want single tuner just stick with the DVBDream/NDSCam solution - its trouble free.

The only issue I currently have is that from startup Windows 7 doesn't like tuning into a Sky channel. This is a known issue with 7068 (playready), didn't exist in 7057, so I'm sure it'll disappear sometime soon.

whereisglenn

27 posts

Geek

#205871 7-Apr-2009 21:52

From what I understand it is not the jaycar card reader that is incompatible with newCS but the com chip on your card or motherboard. Apparently not all chips work with CS. Users from other boards report that the Sunix PCI Com card does however. Now just need to find one to test.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#205945 8-Apr-2009 10:00

Yea - I knew about the serial port issue (incompatible UART's). I've tried it on 4 different motherboards (both AMD and Intel), and a couple of notebooks without success.

Apparently the USB to Serial Cable also gets around the UART issue, yet to try it to see if it works.

whereisglenn

27 posts

Geek

#206528 12-Apr-2009 10:29

I went ahead and ordered a Sunix PCI serial card. God knows how long I've spent trying to get newCS working on serial. Still have probems coming out of standby the same as the USB Infinity. My preferred setup would be to run newCS on com1 with DVBviewer and restart newCS (newCSgui) on startup and resume. Of course I could be chasing a ghost. One must strive for the best.

Also I tried your setup Rusty (DVBDream) but found that its picture quality was lacking when compared. Also I couldn't get cyberlink (v9) or nvidia purevideo to run with it. I should probably try install an earlier trial version of cyberlink and see if that works. It's currently using ffdshow. Has anyone noticed the difference in picture quality between DVBviewer and DVBDream?

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#206554 12-Apr-2009 14:40

The picture quality inside DVBDream is average to say the least, it doesn't use EVR - however if your using DVBSBrige this is somewhat irrelevent, as Media Center does all the display work.

All DVBDream does is pass the decoded TS to Media Center. Running through DVBSBridge there is no difference in quality between the two, they both just pass the decoded TS stream to Media Center.

I got it running with the new MS Decoder, it looked sort of OK, but it still doesn't use EVR so DVBViewer is always going to look better as a native display app.

I don't install any third party codecs, I just run it in renderless mode. To me its just another hidden app which runs in the background on startup.

taylorit

73 posts

Master Geek

#207301 16-Apr-2009 13:37

RustyGonad: The picture quality inside DVBDream is average to say the least, it doesn't use EVR - however if your using DVBSBrige this is somewhat irrelevent, as Media Center does all the display work.

All DVBDream does is pass the decoded TS to Media Center. Running through DVBSBridge there is no difference in quality between the two, they both just pass the decoded TS stream to Media Center.

I got it running with the new MS Decoder, it looked sort of OK, but it still doesn't use EVR so DVBViewer is always going to look better as a native display app.

I don't install any third party codecs, I just run it in renderless mode. To me its just another hidden app which runs in the background on startup.

Hey Dude any luck with multiple tuners yet..? as realy starting to miss this feature from the old MCE500 and svideo days of having 2 sky decoders stacked up.. hehehehe

We have a couple of guys from M$ in the office and I keep hassling them about native support for softcams within Win7MCE.. not holding my breath...

RustyGonad

495 posts

Ultimate Geek

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#207315 16-Apr-2009 14:27

Wouldn't that be beautiful. Native MDAPI support in Media Center... Somehow I think it would be easier to sell a fur coat to PETA, a nuclear sub to Greenpeace, fake tan to Michael Jackson and tax cuts to Labour...

I actually think the current solution is better. Without going into all the detail, ignorance of the ICT flag is bliss...

The multi tuner DVBSBridge is due sometime this later this week. They're taking signups for the alpha if your interested, but I think I'll wait till the beta... I'll let you know once its working.

Klathman

301 posts

Ultimate Geek

#207332 16-Apr-2009 15:55

Just to go back a little. WB Electronics are looking at fixing the resume failure with their VCP software so hopefully that will be sorted soonish.

Also I've managed to get my channel changes down to about 1-2secs with a startup of 5secs irrespective of HD or SD by changing the codec I use from the PowerDVD7 one to FFDShow. Seems a bit weird but....

Tuning in the second channel also seems to take up to 5 secs but I guess that is essentially a startup as well and includes the login to newcs by the new card.

whereisglenn

27 posts

Geek

#207712 18-Apr-2009 00:50

For anyone having trouble getting newcs running on windows with the 'not ready server' message I can confirm that purchasing a sunix pci serial card and the following newcs.xml config work a treat. I purchased my card from acquire - their pricing usually isn't too shabby.

Klathman - I've given up on my infinity USB. I find the VCP driver too flaky on win7 and even configured with a boost of 2.0x the card access times ranges from 360ms to 450ms so the odd glitch is visible. Perhaps when Martin @ WB Electronics updates it next I will give it another shot. In fact what I'd really like to try is running infinity USB and newcs off my synology nas. Maybe that will get times back down below 300ms like I get with com1 and the jaycar reader. Also solves S3 sleep issues.

The trick with the newcs.xml config was to ensure carddetect=no. It's yes by default in most configs.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<newCSconfig>
<readers name="Phoenix">
  <device>
   <name>Phoenix Interface</name>
   <type>phoenix</type>
   <mhz>357</mhz>
   <node>com1</node>
   <parity>none</parity>
   <reset>normal</reset>
   <export>yes</export>
   <enabled>yes</enabled>
   <blocksa>no</blocksa>
   <blockua>no</blockua>
   <blockga>no</blockga>
   <blockc0>yes</blockc0>
   
   
   <crypto-special>no</crypto-special>
   <PTShandshake>no</PTShandshake>
   <carddetect>no</carddetect>
   <newcamd_port>15000</newcamd_port>
   <autosid>yes</autosid>
   <priority>round</priority>
   <Seca-PPV>no</Seca-PPV>
   
  </device>
</readers>

<debug>
   <password>newcs</password>
   <level>normal</level>
   <type>init</type>
   <output>console,tcp</output>
   <console_options>normal,init</console_options>
   <tcp_port>1001</tcp_port>
   <tcp_options>normal,init</tcp_options>
</debug>

<newcamdserver>
   <enabled>yes</enabled>
   <name>newcs</name>
   <deskey>01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14</deskey>
   <user>
    <name>user1</name>
    <password>password1</password>
    <hostname>localhost</hostname>
    <port>15000</port>
    <au>on</au>
    <sidoverride>off</sidoverride>
    <spider>no</spider>
   </user>

</newcamdserver>
</newCSconfig>

WaffleMakerMan

138 posts

Master Geek

#207750 18-Apr-2009 11:51

Yeah the carddetect= this held me up for ages trying to get newcs going, but its been flawless for me since I set it up, maby just lucky with my motherboard but I just have it directly connected to the com port header inside the case... No trouble reconnecting from standby after resume but thats with Mediaportal and Acamd so different software etc...

@ whereisglenn about the 10sec glitch did you try playing with "tswait=" in Acamd to see if you could eliminate it? Just a thought.

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