help building a pvr

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › help building a pvr

tiggy

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#14343 28-Jun-2007 20:57

Hi all, first post!

I am wanting to build a pvr and have some simple questions that I just cant figure out from reading other posts.
Will probably use a hauppauge prv150 and gbpvr software.
already have this:athlon 2200+, 6600GT, msi something or other am2 mainboard, 500gb hd.
I want to use this for sky, and think that this would be a anologue video (composite or s-video) input into the pvr150?
Anyway can you control sky from the computer with a remote control, i.e. if I wanted to schedule the computer to record a program using nz epg would I have to make sure that sky is on that channel at that time or else gbpvr will just record whatever the video input is, say a different channel. Is this what the remote control and IR blaster is for?

Thanks!

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#76446 1-Jul-2007 10:47

Looks like you haven't had much response to this.

It's a bit topic and nobody can really answer this in one response.

But you say you are getting a Hauppauge PVR150 and using gbpvr. Then I would suggest you head off to www.gbpvr.com to learn more about setting up a PVR.

Basically you are going to need

1. a epg - xmltvnz is the best bet there and there are numerous guides around the place on how to get the feed and create the xmltv formatted feed that gbpvr needs
2. a IR blaster - that is a device that gbpvr can control to emit IR signals to the Sky box when the desired channel is to be recorded. I use a USB-UIRT but I suspect the MCE blaster could do it also
3. No idea about the Sky box connectivity but I suspect the best way is to capture the s-video output from the box and send that to the PVR250. If no v-video then composite would do okay.

Larry

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

tiggy

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#76466 1-Jul-2007 13:06

Thanks Larry,
It was the part about the IR blaster I didn't understand, so gbpvr can actually control the sky box through IR. That makes sence as i couldn't work out how you would change sky except constantly use two remotes, one for sky and one for the pvr.

lchiu7

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#76491 1-Jul-2007 17:53

gbpvr works fine with the USB-UIRT. Basically you train it to recognise the numbers from 0-9 from your (Sky) remote and at the appointed time it beams the signals from the USB-UIRT to the cable/satellite box. I suspect it would also work fine with the MCE emitters also. That is really the key part of the pvr (apart from the epg). Allows for unattended recording based entirely on the epg

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

mruane

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#76586 2-Jul-2007 13:36

In my case, trying to use the USB-UIRT with GBPVR and a MySky box proved to be a complete failure because of the IR receiver in the MySky box. In almost every case, GBPBR could not accurately set the MySky channel (i.e. it would fail to pass at least one of the digits to the STB). A non MySky PACE or Moto STB might be more reliable though - but the MySky was just a pain. In the end, I gave up trying to drive the STB from GBPVR.

I will be interested in your results. The sweet spot would be a Sky STB that had a USB or serial connection for channel changing.

Cheers Mike

grant_k

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#76592 2-Jul-2007 13:55

mruane: In my case, trying to use the USB-UIRT with GBPVR and a MySky box proved to be a complete failure because of the IR receiver in the MySky box.

It may be a silly question

...

But if you have MySky, why would you want to bother with GBPVR?

Quite possibly there is some reason I haven't thought of, but I would be interested to hear your rationale.

Cheers,
Grant.

execute22

66 posts

Master Geek

#76619 2-Jul-2007 17:35

Why GBPVR, why not MediaPortal
Checkout mcraenz's setup:
http://mcraenz.googlepages.com/mppvr

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mruane

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#76629 2-Jul-2007 18:35

Grant, frankly, the main reason for using GBPVR is accessibility to the system from the network. I can program the recordings from the net whilst I am out of town very easily. I can even stream programs over the net from the web interface to GBPVR. GBPVR can also record with more flexible options, whereas the MySky can only follow a series (via the Series Link). With GBPVR I can record a specific program regardless of what channel it appears on or what time. I also store recordings on the server PC so that they can be played to any room that has the MediaMVP present. Each user can be watching whatever recorded program they want. You just can't do that from a MySky.

I can also easily transfer recordings to DVD from the PC, doing that from the MySky is a pain. The touted feature of net access to the MySky may improve things - but I am not that confident. Sky seem to be paranoid about remote access. Still I will watch that development with interest.

I use GBPVR for recording FTA material on TV1,2,3 or Prime (via a dual tuner card) and the MySky box for - well SKY only. If I could gaurantee an ability to change channels on the STB I would probably use GBPVR for ALL recording and forget about the MySky box (although its a bit late to change that decision - money's already been paid!).

In so far as Media Portal is concerned, I tried it and liked it. My thoughts were that the picture quality was marginally better than GBPVR (but there would be many that would disagree), but the MP TV Engine is still quite some way from prime time, whereas GBPVR just works (well for me anyway). The ability to work with MediaMVP was also another consideration because it represents a very effective TV media client and it all runs under Windows. Media Portal is probably better suited to a dedicated Media Centre PC though (i.e. in the living room), whereas I just record onto a media server and then rely on media clients to deliver content.

Each to his own I guess...

Cheers Mike

lchiu7

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#76644 2-Jul-2007 19:38

mruane: In my case, trying to use the USB-UIRT with GBPVR and a MySky box proved to be a complete failure because of the IR receiver in the MySky box. In almost every case, GBPBR could not accurately set the MySky channel (i.e. it would fail to pass at least one of the digits to the STB). A non MySky PACE or Moto STB might be more reliable though - but the MySky was just a pain. In the end, I gave up trying to drive the STB from GBPVR.

I will be interested in your results. The sweet spot would be a Sky STB that had a USB or serial connection for channel changing.

Cheers Mike

I don't have a Sky box - I have TCL cable. In this instance there is no problem with the USB-UIRT controlling that. I have the USB-UIRT about 3cm in fromt of the cable box and it changes channel correctly all the time

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

lchiu7

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#76645 2-Jul-2007 19:40

...
In so far as Media Portal is concerned, I tried it and liked it. My thoughts were that the picture quality was marginally better than GBPVR (but there would be many that would disagree), but the MP TV Engine is still quite some way from prime time, whereas GBPVR just works (well for me anyway). The ability to work with MediaMVP was also another consideration because it represents a very effective TV media client and it all runs under Windows. Media Portal is probably better suited to a dedicated Media Centre PC though (i.e. in the living room), whereas I just record onto a media server and then rely on media clients to deliver content.

Each to his own I guess...

Cheers Mike

Out of interest, with a PVR150 card, since the card does mpeg2 compression in hardware, what effect would the software have on the PQ? All I would image is that the software drives the card and uses settings to indicate what level of MPEG2 compression to use and the card does the rest.

I like gbpvr - does the job fine and of course, locally written and supported!

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

grant_k

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#76655 2-Jul-2007 20:28

mruane: Grant, frankly, the main reason for using GBPVR is accessibility to the system from the network. I can program the recordings from the net whilst I am out of town very easily. I can even stream programs over the net from the web interface to GBPVR. GBPVR can also record with more flexible options, whereas the MySky can only follow a series (via the Series Link). With GBPVR I can record a specific program regardless of what channel it appears on or what time. I also store recordings on the server PC so that they can be played to any room that has the MediaMVP present. Each user can be watching whatever recorded program they want. You just can't do that from a MySky.

I can also easily transfer recordings to DVD from the PC, doing that from the MySky is a pain. The touted feature of net access to the MySky may improve things - but I am not that confident. Sky seem to be paranoid about remote access. Still I will watch that development with interest.

Yep, those are some very cool features for sure.

Just last night my wife was lamenting the inability to program MySky remotely. I guess we will hang out for the new version due next year. I just don't have the time to set up a system like you've got, but I will keep GBPVR in mind if that situation changes in future.

There is also the odd time it would be handy to archive a program onto DVD and MySky's facilities for doing that are less than impressive. It seems crazy that we cannot just hook up the MySky USB port to our laptop and download the file...

Thanks for your explanation Mike.

mruane

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#76676 2-Jul-2007 22:43

Ichiu:
Yes the PVR150/500 cards do the Mpeg compression on the card, but GBPVR can control the quality. I usually record in Medium or High quality so I guess the software is interacting with the card. I would not want to give the impression that GBPVR is not as good as MP though - far from it. I am a great supporter of Sub and GBPVR and, like you, I also like to support a local product. So PQ aside, I would not swap from GBPVR to MP, the difference was just not that noticable.

Grant:
Setting up a PVR does take some time, but its definetly worth it. My system now runs completely unattended. It keeps my recordings in the database and just picks up the next season of a program and looks after itself. Episodes like Judge John Deed, which play infrequently are always recorded. Programes that have a double length end of season program are always recorded. I just set and forget it. The EPG data does need to be watched, but a quick look at the Web interface will confirm if that is up to date - and I can do that over the (smartphone) phone if needed.

The Mysky software is not the most stable as you will know, so that is a compelling enough reason for me. Of course, the Yellow delete button is another of my pet hates on the MySky! I would love to meet the person who arranged for program's to be deleted with the yellow button without first asking for confirmation! Can't recall how many unwatched programs have been accidently deleted - thanks SKY!!!

Cheers Mike

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lchiu7

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#76698 3-Jul-2007 10:36

Just a couple of points

1. gbpvr does control the compression rate on the PVR cards. I suspect however, if two different software products were using the same card with the same compression settings, then the quality would be the same

2. My PVR setup is pretty much unattended also. The only hassles I have are with i) Sky's site timing out so the xmltv doesn't always complete properly and ii) occasional bugs in xmltvnz that Reven hasn't been able to resolve where a programme can be coded as running for 2-3 days! To mitigate that I have often delete all the soap and resource files before running xmltvnz again which adds to the data capture effort

But OTH it's a good way to setup a PVR.

I see that Tivo has plans to come to NZ. If they manage to get a epg source and we could find ways to pay for that. I would do that in a heartbeat

Larry

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

BigMal

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#76721 3-Jul-2007 13:25

Tivo has been here (unofficially) for a few years and works brilliantly but only the series 1 models work.
Check out www.nztivo.net

When Tivo officially open here I believe they will only be doing a FTA epg but don't quote me on that.

lchiu7

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#76722 3-Jul-2007 13:40

I knew tht Tivo has been here a while- Hack the kernel in a US Tivo to enable PAL, solder in a tuner if you want to do OTA recording else tap into your cable box or Sky box. And use a hacked epg like xmltv. What I commenting on was their official release into this marketplace which means they need a reliable epg.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

mruane

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#76723 3-Jul-2007 13:42

Hi Larry,

Ah, EPG, that's an interesting topic eh? I just cannot accept that I might have to PAY for information about what an organisation wants to sell me. Surely that is the thin end of the wedge. But then again, I am assuming that I am the customer. In reality, the advertisers are the customer and I am the product!!!

Such is the way of broadcasters...

Cheers Mike

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