Does the WinTV-HVR-900 (USB) work with Mediaportal?

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Quidam

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#27323 22-Oct-2008 08:45

Hi.

When I upgraded my HTPC I also went with a dual-slot graphics card (8800GTS/G92-512) which means I have no room for my MCE-150 PCI card (for analog)

It appears that the WIN-TV-900 would be a good option for me since it is USB, and includes DVB-T as well as analog. The primary reason for using it would be for getting Prime (analog) but the Digital tuner could also be useful as I've noticed that even with the Nova-T 500 (dual DVB-T) there are times when I get recording/tuner conflicts (normally when I have two programs recording on the same time-slot then I try to add a 3rd recording immediately before or after the other 2).

However, since the 900 uses software mpeg-2 encoding for analog (not a problem processing wise as I'm running a E6700 CPU) I'm not confident Mediaportal will support it.

Can anyone confirm it works?

Cheers
b

"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)

mcraenz

1140 posts

Uber Geek

#172691 22-Oct-2008 08:53

Strongy recommend you find a unit with HW encoding, it's going to save you a LOT of hassel.

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Quidam

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#172692 22-Oct-2008 09:03

Hi Mcraenz (ps thanks for you great user guide on setting Mediaportal up -which was a great help when I first got into this)

Based on my research, it does not appear there is such a thing for USB analog.

I also took a look on Mediaportals documentation for supported hybrid tuners, and the HVR-900 is listed:

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/manual/Supported_TVCards/Hybrid

It would be great if someone can confirm whether they are using this tuner with Mediaportal, but failign that I'll probably take a punt. If nothing else, it will still give me an additional dDVB-T tuner.

"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)

Quidam

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#173969 27-Oct-2008 23:17

For what it's worth -an update. Although no one confirmed they have used the HVR-900, I did purchase it, and it turns out I did not quite get what I was expecting.

I got the HVR-900H -I assume a new revision of this Hybrid USB tuner.

It turns out Mediaportal (well TV Server to be accurate) supports the Digital tuner, but not the Analog tuner.

I also found that I needed to download WinTV off the Hauppauge website since New Zealand gets Powercinema and the only way to install the SoftMCE encoder is when installing WinTV. (Trying to install thr SoftPVR stand-alone caused the BSOD)

And yes, the analog tuner works fine via WinTV -too bad WinTV sucks hard. Very very hard.

Regarding Mediaportal/TV Server. I get the strong impression that TV Server has been designed to genericaly support any TV card that conforms to specific standards, and it is my guess that this is why the Digital portion of the HVR-900H works. I should mention it also recognises the analog portion but when trying to auto-tune, it simply doesn't find any channels.

I also tried GB-PVR and basically got the same results. It had support for the Digital side of the 900H, but did not recognise the analog side.

ps. although this may be obvious to the veterens, is it correct to assert that with digital broadcasts, you are receiving pre-encoded H.264 (for example) whereas with Analog you need to first encode the analog signal into Mpeg2 (for example) which is why Hardware encoders for analog tuners are such a big deal.

"There is no way to Peace -Peace is the Way" (A. J. Muste)