HD-PVR Setup Stories

[wayner]

Has anyone written and posted a "best practices" guide for using the HD-PVR with Sage, particularly for someone who already has other Hauppauge tuners installed?

I am new to Sage, but I have used MCE for quite a while and used BTV a wee bit as well, and I will be shortly installing and configuring Sage and my HD-PVR. Should I install Sage first with my other tuners and get it working and then install the HD-PVR later or should I do it all in one fell swoop?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

Has anyone written and posted a "best practices" guide for using the HD-PVR with Sage, particularly for someone who already has other Hauppauge tuners installed?

I am new to Sage, but I have used MCE for quite a while and used BTV a wee bit as well, and I will be shortly installing and configuring Sage and my HD-PVR. Should I install Sage first with my other tuners and get it working and then install the HD-PVR later or should I do it all in one fell swoop?

I'm in the process of writing that article.

But for now I'd recommend you install the HD-PVR first and then the other Hauppauge devices. If you want to install all the others first and then the Hauppauge HD-PVR that will work also, but you'll have to do the HWClear.exe and then reinstall all the hauppauge drivers. In the end it won't matter, but Hauppauge does a terrible job of installations with other Hauppauge devices. And I used the USB-UIRT as my IR blaster as it's better than Hauppauge's.

[wayner]

Thanks Brent - can you use firewire to change channels with Sage - would this be an even better option than the Hauppauge or USB-UIRT blaster? FYI - my cable box is an SA3250HD although I may use other SA boxes as well.

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

Thanks Brent - can you use firewire to change channels with Sage - would this be an even better option than the Hauppauge or USB-UIRT blaster? FYI - my cable box is an SA3250HD although I may use other SA boxes as well.

Yes you can. And I think firewire would be the best option for channel-changing if it works for you. I have a SA4250HDC that I need to set that up for, but just haven't gotten to it yet.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Brent

But for now I'd recommend you install the HD-PVR first and then the other Hauppauge devices. If you want to install all the others first and then the Hauppauge HD-PVR that will work also, but you'll have to do the HWClear.exe and then reinstall all the hauppauge drivers.

Why do you say you'll need to run HWClear if you've already got other Hauppauge tuners installed? Maybe you'll need to try something like that if you want to use the HD-PVR's IR blaster, but I left my 2 PVR-USB2 and PVR-250 as they were & simply plugged my HD-PVRs into the USB port, pointed the driver installer to the driver location, and everything worked. SageTV tech support did the same thing on their system when they installed HD-PVRs on multiple PCs. When they did completely clean installs, they installed the HD-PVR last.

Of course, I had no desire to use the HD-PVR's IR receever or blaster & luckily the PVR-USB2 that acted as an IR receiver previously continued to do so. You may need to play around a bit with drivers to use the blaster, though.

- Andy

[Brent]

I originally did it for the IR Blaster which I ended up not using so yeah your right Andy that you only need to do that step if you are using the Hauppauge IR Blaster.

[rerooks]

I just received a HD-PVR and installed it. I had a few problems with the install of the HD-PVR , but a power cycle on the device seemed to work on installing the drivers.

My configuration is as follows:

Windows Home Server
Athlon 64 Dual Core 939 3800
2 GB RAM
2 PVR-150 from Hauppauge
1 HVR-1600 from Hauppauge
1 HD-PVR
USB-UIRT

I have the WHS version of SageTV Media Center. I am running the 6.4 Beta (RC) of it. On the WHS, I can change channels and see the video (I have only tried the analog channels). If I go to my HD Media Extender (HD-100), I cannot see any video at all.

I did go to sage.properties (and then sagecient.properties) and added in

videoframe/aac_audio_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Audio Decoder
videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Video Decoder

..and then I restarted. I didn't help any. I also re-started the HD-100. No luck.

Any thoughts?

[Opus4]

Did you update the beta firmware on the HD100?

- Andy

[rerooks]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Did you update the beta firmware on the HD100?

- Andy

No. I hadn't. I just did. It really seemed to do the trick! Thanks!

Just a comment. I did read through quite a bit of the posts before I started this process. Two things weren't apparent to me. The first was that I had to upgrade to Sage 6.4 beta, and the second one was to use the HD-100 beta. Maybe I missed that. I guess that is because things are so new right now.

Also, as additional comments. I did run that utility to uninstall the drivers for all my Hauppauge devices first, but I didn't bother to remove them. I still couldn't get the drivers to install for the HD-PVR. I even tried to remove the USB cable and even put it into a different USB port, so it would look again. It didn't help until I power cycled the HD-PVR.

One additional question, was it necessary to modify both sage.properties, and sageclient.properties? I am not sure what the different is.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by rerooks

One additional question, was it necessary to modify both sage.properties, and sageclient.properties? I am not sure what the different is.

What properties are you referring to?

If you mean the ArcSoft decoders you mentioned previsouly, that has nothing to do with playback on the HD100. To affect playback on a PC, it would have to be in the proeprties file for the UI in use. The first page of Appendix A in the SageTV PDF manual explains which properties file is which.

- Andy

[sorrowstyr]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Of course, I had no desire to use the HD-PVR's IR receever or blaster & luckily the PVR-USB2 that acted as an IR receiver previously continued to do so. You may need to play around a bit with drivers to use the blaster, though.

- Andy

Lucky! I think that is why you didnt have to.
Since I didnt even know I had a firewire port on my STB I tried to do the HDPVR setup without the HWclear, but it is necessary for the IR Blaster. Hauppage driver and apps compatibility is terrible. Once the blaster was reinstalled via cd after the wipe, then the IR blaster worked. I tried just reinstalling without HWclear, and it refused to see an IR blaster detected.

But after screwing with that, and seeing the terrible performance of the Hauppage IR blaster I would have to say anyone trying this, dont use it. It is incredibly slow and painful. I changed from the IR blaster to firewire the channel speeds lower from 40 seconds per change to 8 seconds!!!

Soooo much better, and now its actually usable.

I still have an audio delay issue and people look like they are lip syncing.

There is an issue if I tune to some SD channels that the HD extender stutters.

Suggestions?

Thanks for the great documentation btw for the Firewire Andy and MeandMaui.
-G

[Steve52]

According to graphedit my .ts file audio goes to the ArcSoft Audio Decoder and then to the AC3 filter before finaly going to the default direct sound device. Is this how it should be?

[wayner]

Andy - Is there a quick link on setting up firewire channel changing? My cable co (Rogers in Toronto) inconsistently applies 5C so I don't think I can use it to record but it should work for channel changing. I found a long document but it seems to include lots of other firewwire settings which is beyond what I will be able to use.

[impro]

After a complete uninstall of sagetv and hauppauge drivers I got shaky video on my HD-100.
Changed the usb ports and after 5 different ones the the video was excellent. The audio however is delayed.
When I got the the shaky video the audio was fine. Very strange behavior.
Now I am watching with the audio delay.
I believe this is a sagetv issue since the Arc software playbacks perfectly.
I might be wrong.
I am sure that everything will be fixed.

TRY EVERY USB PORT IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING SHAKY VIDEO.
I am looking in to a USB PCI card since my integrated usb controller is sharing IRQ


HD-PVR. Hauppauge 1600 qam.AMD X2 5000 Asus M2n-sli 32 deluxe wifi edition. 3 Raid 0 raptors.Sonicwall TZ 180. Hd-100. LG 42' Plasma.

[rubell]

Do I have enough horsepower in my WHS to connect a HD PVR to it? It was built to just be a WHS before I discovered SageTV so it's kind of light...

Intel Celeron 430 @ 1.8GHz (45watt)
2GB RAM
GeForce 7150 on board video

Thanks.

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by rubell

Do I have enough horsepower in my WHS to connect a HD PVR to it? It was built to just be a WHS before I discovered SageTV so it's kind of light...

Intel Celeron 430 @ 1.8GHz (45watt)
2GB RAM
GeForce 7150 on board video

Thanks.

Not for playback, but should be fine for server recordings.

[rubell]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Not for playback, but should be fine for server recordings.

Perfect, thanks. It's headless and is just a server. Playback will be on an the HD extender and on a Media Center PC. That is until I love it and buy lots more HD extenders .

[rubell]

Originally Posted by mayamaniac

Not for playback, but should be fine for server recordings.

One more question, what about for transcoding over Placeshifter? I would imagine the server has to handle the load for that, right?

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by rubell

One more question, what about for transcoding over Placeshifter? I would imagine the server has to handle the load for that, right?

I don't think its possible to transcode the HD-PVR files, at least not yet. I have a 2.5Ghz Quad-core and I'm doubting it is powerful enough for HD H264 transcoding. Your CPU should be fine for transcoding SD MPEG2 to the placeshifter. That Celeron is single core so it might not be up to task for HD MPEG2 transcoding though. You might want to upgrade to a dual core if you plan to transcode HD to the Placeshifter a lot.

[Taddeusz]

On that note, I wonder if SageTV is ever going to get a multi-threaded transcoder? Sure would make upgrading my server to a quad core more less pointless.