MVP Extender with Divx??

[techtips]

Probably an old topic, but with 4.1 with MVP MEdia extenders support DIVX streaming. I cannot seem to get it to work. I have a Plextor PVR and each time I select DIVX as Record quality, I cannot control or access the PVR from the MVP, change to anything other than Divx and I am fine.

THoughts??

-danny

[gplasky]

MVP doesn't support Divx.

Gerry

[techtips]

Dang.......

[joesmoe]

different file type(divx,avi , etc)support is the only thing missing from the mvp.hopefully this problem will be solved soon.

[MrApollinax]

If you search the forum there was a post about SageTV trying to support DivX natively in the future someday.

[gplasky]

What they'll be doing is software transcoding on the server side for the MVP. If you're looking for this make sure you have some heavy duty server hardware in place.

Gerry

[MrApollinax]

Isn't that what the Hauppauge software does currently? I can already play my Divx files within SageTV but to stream it to the MVP it'll have to transcode it?

[gplasky]

It is what the Hauppauge software does currently. MVP is a hardware decoder so it gets transcoded from Divx to mpeg2 on the server so the MVP can play it. And that will take horsepower.

Gerry

[MrApollinax]

That clears things up. It's a hardware limitation of the MVP itself. So even if Sage released an image for the MVP that supported DivX the MVP wouldn't be able to decode it because it only has the capacity to decode MPEG1/2. It now makes more sense why Hauppauge is doing it the same way. In that case what will the minimum size processing power needed for this? 2.0Ghz?

[pftg4]

Why don´t you guys go over to gbpvr and try there dvd to mvp plugin it´s been out for a couple of months you go to your dvd collection select a dvd then it is trancoded on server side and played on the mvp never tryed it myself but they have it over there so it can be done(not sure how good it is either but it is a start)

hope this helps

[mikejaner]

The GBPVR plugin which transcodes DVD to MVP isn't doing that much work since DVD's are MPEG2 (don't get too hung up on my explaination, cause it's probably a little more technical, but this is the idea of it). It's just stripping the VOB headers and putting straight MPEG2 headers back on.
In the Divx situation, the machine is actually having to decode an MPEG4/Divx stream, then reencode it to MPEG2 in at least realtime, so it playsback at 30fps. This is pretty hard on the CPU, and I would recommend at least a 3.0Ghz class machine.

[pftg4]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

The GBPVR plugin which transcodes DVD to MVP isn't doing that much work since DVD's are MPEG2 (don't get too hung up on my explaination, cause it's probably a little more technical, but this is the idea of it). It's just stripping the VOB headers and putting straight MPEG2 headers back on.
In the Divx situation, the machine is actually having to decode an MPEG4/Divx stream, then reencode it to MPEG2 in at least realtime, so it playsback at 30fps. This is pretty hard on the CPU, and I would recommend at least a 3.0Ghz class machine.

is the gbpvr not a good idea??? then from what i heard it works pretty good thought is was a good start and someone with studio could maybe make something similar

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by pftg4

is the gbpvr not a good idea??? then from what i heard it works pretty good thought is was a good start and someone with studio could maybe make something similar

I was just supporting what gplasky was saying, where it's going to take alot of horsepower to do Divx. What they have done for GBPVR and DVD for the MVP is a great idea. I can't wait for somebody with the skillz to do it for Sage. I think both can be done, it's just I wanted to warn people that you'll be looking at alot of processor usage for a Divx playback, so don't expect to have it work perfectly until you hit the 3Ghz range.

[MrApollinax]

When i used the Hauppauge solution playback was really choppy with a 1.6Ghz processor. When I got my new system up annd running i didn't notice too much playbcak issues with a 3.0Ghz processor. I don't remember what my CPU load was at the time but i think it was a pretty heavy resource hog. That's why I was excited when I thought SageTV would nativley support DivX playback it'd be less stressful on my system than transcoding on the fly. All i really want is a less space heavy format with good picture quality. However for the price per Gig on HDDs and the low cost of the MVP it may be a better solution to go with a large external drive for the recordings i want to keep.

Also I believe Hauppauge recommends at least a 1.8GHz machine for transcoding DivX. Can anyone confirm it works?

[reverse]

For what its worth, Divx playback is great with the standard hauppauge mvp software. I basically have the (sage) server setup to record what I want to watch later, and use the mvp to read the resulting mpegs and it does it well. I can still access my divx collection and music as well so until Sage extender supports Divx, along with other formats the MVP already supports, I'll stick with the standard MVP software.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by MrApollinax

In that case what will the minimum size processing power needed for this? 2.0Ghz?

From the hauppauge site, it says:

*Note: you need a 1.8Ghz or faster PC to play DivX movies.

So plus CPU power for SageTV menus and stuffs, I say a 2.0ghz processor is a minimum requirement.

[krutaw]

Originally Posted by pftg4

is the gbpvr not a good idea??? then from what i heard it works pretty good thought is was a good start and someone with studio could maybe make something similar

See... that's what I'm saying. Okay, I get the fact that the processor would need to be a workhorse, but I think it would be less than what some are speculating here. I mean, the hauppauge software works very nicely for Divx on the same system that I'm running my main SageTV Server on currently. Having said that, it's only a 1.8ghz system.

I think the real thing that's holding us back here is that nobody has come up with a good way to do it. I'm not saying that I have the skills to complete this (far from it), but I do have a theory...

http://www.quixotic-research.net/ind...d=22&Itemid=38

Based on the infomration from that link, I was able to stream divx from VLC on both a Mac and Windows box to the MVP. With that said, I know that the menus have to be setup to stream to the XCard, why couldn't something similiar be done for the MVP to play the menus like a video through VLC or something similiar?

Or heck, how about someone just re-write the webpage interface that's provided with the default Hauppauge software so that it will interface with the SageTV server. We know that's possible. And we also know that the MVP is web driven, and supports Jscript.

Thoughts?

[blade]

Sage has already said that they plan to add divx transcoding for the MVP. I think right now it's undocumented, but a few people have claimed it worked for them.

I doubt anyone will put in the time or effort to create a work around knowing that Sage is planning to add official support in the near future.

[krutaw]

Originally Posted by blade

Sage has already said that they plan to add divx transcoding for the MVP. I think right now it's undocumented, but a few people have claimed it worked for them.

I doubt anyone will put in the time or effort to create a work around knowing that Sage is planning to add official support in the near future.

No disrespect meant at all here, but am I the only one that remembers that we have waited for years to have Sage implement things in the past? I mean, look at Studio, or heck, look at the MVP itself.

No, I'm betting someone out there that has the skills to pull it off wants this as badly as some of us do.

[neuromancer9]

Originally Posted by blade

Sage has already said that they plan to add divx transcoding for the MVP. I think right now it's undocumented, but a few people have claimed it worked for them.

I doubt anyone will put in the time or effort to create a work around knowing that Sage is planning to add official support in the near future.

Any clues as to how to try out this undocumented feature? I've seen it mentioned several times, but have no idea how to enable playing divx files through the mvp - when i try, i get an error about unable to play the media type