Freeview and MediaPortal

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mm1352000

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#20641 1-Apr-2008 19:31

Hi

Like everyone else on this forum I've been really excited to try and get freeview HD going. Thus far I have been unsuccessful, having tried every programme I could come find and despite twiddling with every setting that could possibly be twiddled with. At some point I found cranznz's guide to doing Freeview with MediaPortal, and I'm trying to follow it through at the moment. I admit I'm struggling and I need some help!

So here is my setup:

(I live in Palmerston North, so aerial is pointing at Wharite)
Intel e6600 @ 3gig
Asus p5w dh dlx motherboard (with latest drivers)
Sparkle 6600gt 128mb video
Forceware driver 169.21 (latest)
Digitalnow DNTV! Live Quattro S/T tuner (with latest drivers) SEE http://www.digitalnow.com.au/product_pages/QuattroS.html
Creative Audigy 2 zs platinum soundcard @ 24bit 96kHz
Win xp pro 32bit
Latest svn versions of MediaPortal and TV Server
Using latest version of ffdshow for decoding video, and monograms aac codec for the audio

Okay so I've followed the guide (http://cranznz.googlepages.com/home) right through to the end very carefully. It took a lot of time as things have not always gone right, but I think I've managed to follow all the instructions properly. I was able to get my tuner to tune in the channels, and the tv server seems to run properly. However, when I went to actually the channels in MediaPortal itself, I got nothing (no audio or video). On looking through the server settings, I see that the channels have all info filled in by autotune BUT VIDEO AND AUDIO PIDs are missing! I think this may account for quite a lot of my trouble, so I'd appreciate it if someone could post the values on here for me cos I don't think my card is going to pick them up with a retune... In the meantime I'm going to keep trying cos I've got problems with audio sampling frequency and satellite video as well.

Thanks for your help in advance

geekiegeek

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#120307 1-Apr-2008 20:19

FFDshow wont work with DVB-T I dont think. You need to get PowerDVD 7.

mm1352000

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#120325 1-Apr-2008 21:17

Mmmm

Thank you for your input. I had wanted to avoid paying money for a codec. Do you know of any decent free h.264 codecs that will work with MediaPortal and do the job for Freeview? If not I will go and purchase pdvd 7. And it has to be the ultra version doesn't it?

Thanks

sbiddle

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#120331 1-Apr-2008 21:25

mm1352000: Mmmm

Thank you for your input. I had wanted to avoid paying money for a codec. Do you know of any decent free h.264 codecs that will work with MediaPortal and do the job for Freeview? If not I will go and purchase pdvd 7. And it has to be the ultra version doesn't it?

Thanks

To be completely honest if you haven't got money and lots of time to waste my advice to anybody wanting to build a HTPC for DVB-T would be to sit back and wait patiently in the mean time.

There are issues with every piece of software (GB-PVR, DVBViewer and Media Portal) as well as the Monogram AAC decoder that is required for audio. THere is also the cost of PowerDVD Ultra and the requirement for a video card that can support H.264 acceleration. Nothing is working perfectly yet but give it time and we'll get a far better idea.

In regards to codecs it's virtually a requirement to have a H.264 capable video card to get good decoding and decent picture quality. To enable this hardware acceleration you require a codec that can take advantage of that and at present the PowerDVD Ultra one is one of only a few codecs capable of supporting H.264 hardware acceleration using DXVA under XP or DXVA2 under Vista.

allstarnz

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#120352 1-Apr-2008 21:47

geekiegeek: FFDshow wont work with DVB-T I dont think. You need to get PowerDVD 7.

yes it does, that's what I use. Works better than the Cyberlink codec for me.

mm1352000

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#120500 2-Apr-2008 14:41

@sbiddle

I appreciate your advice and understand that nothing is perfect at the moment - I guess more than anything else I'm just trying my options to see what's possible right now. I've got what I think is a really great card that can do 2xdvb t and 2xdvb s, as well as 2xanalog/fm all on one pci-ex1 slot, and not one bit of software I have tried has been able to deal with all those formats properly. I was referred to MediaPortal on another forum (dvbowners) and thought I would give it a go... I like that its free and I like the TV Server. Potential is good but its just not delivering at the mo which is okay. I can get satellite going, but no analog or terrestrial. The only programme I've tried that almost did the business was Twinhan's Digital TV programme (v3.3 Build 08A). It gave me full sat capabilities, analog video with teletext but no audio (audio present in recordings so go figure!), and terrestrial video with no audio (except for on radio, and occasionally on tv 3 when they use AC3; h.264 used one of cyberlink's codecs I think)... I just want one programme that will do all four formats reliably! Maybe its too much to ask right now

I'm certainly not giving up hope for the future.

btw. for anyone reading this and wanting to know more about Digital TV, download is free right here http://www.twinhan.com/download_driver&software.asp In the install phase it may come up with a message saying no card detected, but push through cos it may still work. Did for me anyway...

@allstarnz

I'd be really interested to know what version of ffdshow you use. Mine is rev1920 from here (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=173941&package_id=199416). Audio does what it should, but video doesn't seem to go at all. I've discovered the preview feature in the TV Server and discovered I can get audio from terrestrial coming through fine with the Monogram codec - no video though. This says to me that I must have a problem with the video codec. It never pops up in the taskbar like the audio one so I'm gonna try reinstalling. As I said, please let me know what version/revision you use.

Thanks all

sbiddle

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#120502 2-Apr-2008 14:47

I believe the Cyberlink H.264 codec is the only one suppported my Media Portal. GB-PVR has support for FFDShow and Cyberlink. sub (author of GB-PVR) has mentioned in the past that MPEG4 codecs aren't as easily interchangeable as MPEG2 codecs.

The FFDshow codec doesn't support hardware acceleration so isn't really of any use for a production system since H.264 hardware acceleration is virtually essential to deliver a good quality picture.

cranz

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#120509 2-Apr-2008 15:06

First off thanks for reading my guide lol!

CoreAVC 1.6.5 works a treat as a Software decoder for Mediaportal (google is your friend), I haven't used ffdshow for h.264 but I've heard it can work - but only sometimes

As for the Video/Audio PID's in TVServer, mine are all 0 also. I'm not sure why this is but it doesn't affect the channels.

Which SVN snapshot versions are you using? Today I tried to use 18463 (last nights build) and was unable to turn TV on - Streams and everything worked correctly but when turning TV on it would freeze for 10 seconds then go back to the same screen. I believe builds between 18123 and 18463 suffer from a problem with TSreader.ax (which is used to show you the TV streams)

At the moment I'm using SVN snapshot 17666 and am having no problems (watching parliament right now! not very interesting..) so you could try this build as I know myself and mcraenz are both using this with no problems.

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allstarnz

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#120510 2-Apr-2008 15:12

I'm using the latest build of FFDShow on one PC (28 March 08 SSE) - as per this blog

On the other PC i'm not sure, it could be a couple of months old by now.

If you're running a 6600GT, hardware decoding isn't going to be much help to you. It'll probably run worse than getting the CPU to do the work for you.

mm1352000

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#120511 2-Apr-2008 15:13

All

I just made a great discovery which I thought I'd share with y'all. I mentioned the Digital TV programme in my last post. Well I had given up on it and uninstalled it at that point, but I just reinstalled it to give it another go. Functionality hadn't changed so I went back to mediaportal and discovered I now have a new h.264 video codec in mediaportal's options. Terrestrial now works for me!!!!!!!!!!

The best thing about it is no paying US$100 for powerdvd 7 ultra - nothing against pdvd, but I'll take the free option in this case!

fyi. Cpu usage is between 20 & 30% on my e6600. Not sure if sse or its extensions are being used, but the plugin does come in regular, mmx, sse, sse2, and sse3 varieties. I'm no video buff but quality seems okay. Far better than analog anyway

link to free download of latest version of Digital TV: http://www.twinhan.com/download_driver&software.asp

Any questions, just ask and I'll try help.

cranz

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#120512 2-Apr-2008 15:17

Good stuff! great to hear,

Would be interested to hear how your system handles TV3 as this is where most machines struggle.

geekiegeek

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#120514 2-Apr-2008 15:31

allstarnz: I'm using the latest build of FFDShow on one PC (28 March 08 SSE) - as per this blog

On the other PC i'm not sure, it could be a couple of months old by now.

If you're running a 6600GT, hardware decoding isn't going to be much help to you. It'll probably run worse than getting the CPU to do the work for you.

Interesting, I was using an older tryouts version. I'll give this a go. Did you happen to watch boston legal last night? what was the CPU usgae like?

mm1352000

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#120515 2-Apr-2008 15:32

@cranznz

Your guide is great - it should be me thanking you for producing it! It must have taken quite some time...

@allstarnz

I seem to be using the same version of ffdshow as you: r1920 sse2. Seems odd that you could get it working and I couldn't. Maybe it doesn't like spaces in the folder name? Anyhow not too bothered with it now that I have stuff working.

Okay well my machine is running an e6600 @ 3g and 2g memory at ~940MHz 4-4-4-12. Pagefile is turned off (so runs in memory). I'd give you a screenshot of tv3 and cpu usage but I can't seem to put it in this post. Let me know how and I will put it in. As an indication it seems to be ~30-40%, but this is only stickytv we're talking about. Oh, by the way I'm using build 18436 of MediaPortal and TV Server.

allstarnz

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#120518 2-Apr-2008 15:45

geekiegeek:
Interesting, I was using an older tryouts version. I'll give this a go. Did you happen to watch boston legal last night? what was the CPU usgae like?

Yes, I did watch it, purely to marvel at the 'HDness', check my blog, which even has a purty graph in it. My other PC (Q6600) seemed to handle it ok, using basically the same setup.

mm1352000

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#120520 2-Apr-2008 15:59

Right, that took some time but here is a link to my screenshot

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25266998@N06/2381144489/sizes/o/