STB output resolutions & HD-PVR recordings

[Taddeusz]

Well, I received my HD-PVR today and got it set up. So far I'm really liking it! My only issue is actually with my cable box. Even though I have it set to "pass-through" for the video it only seems to want to output 1080i. It's a Scientific Atlanta 4240HDC. The options I get are Fixed, Pass-through, Upscale 1, and Upscale 2. Because of this all the SD channels get pillarboxed. I'm on an SDTV so it's only a couple remote clicks away on my HD100 so it's not a huge deal, just a little annoying. I'll play around with it though.

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Well, I received my HD-PVR today and got it set up. So far I'm really liking it! My only issue is actually with my cable box. Even though I have it set to "pass-through" for the video it only seems to want to output 1080i. It's a Scientific Atlanta 4240HDC. The options I get are Fixed, Pass-through, Upscale 1, and Upscale 2. Because of this all the SD channels get pillarboxed. I'm on an SDTV so it's only a couple remote clicks away on my HD100 so it's not a huge deal, just a little annoying. I'll play around with it though.

Turn the STB off, press and hold both the guide and info button on the front of the STB until a screen comes on that says "Press B to set up HDTV" or something like that, and then, using the remote, follow the onscreen directions to choose which of the 6 formats you want to allow. The 6 format are 1080i, 720p, 480i, 480p, wide 480i, and wide 480p.

S

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by sleonard

Turn the STB off, press and hold both the guide and info button on the front of the STB until a screen comes on that says "Press B to set up HDTV" or something like that, and then, using the remote, follow the onscreen directions to choose which of the 6 formats you want to allow. The 6 format are 1080i, 720p, 480i, 480p, wide 480i, and wide 480p.

S

Awesome! Thank you very much! That solved my problem. I guess by default these boxes are set to output only 1080i. I think I was more worried about 480i stuff taking up as much space as 1080i. It just seemed insane to record it that way.

Now if only I could get my USB-UIRT working in Vista x64 everything would be perfect. Dang Code 39 error.

[Opus4]

I moved this out of the general HD-PVR discussion to continue this topic separately...

This has been on my list of configuration things to play with & I finally got around to it today. At first, I thought it was going to record the 480i shows as widescreen because that's what my TV was showing via passthrough, but that must have just been a TV setting because a test recording looks correct. I'll see how the half-hour 480i recording compares to half an hour of 1080i.

I only configured 1080i and 480i on my SA 4250HD boxes because I'm told that the HD-PVR has an encoding problem with 720p and 480p where it will drop a few frames every 4.5-5 seconds, causing playback glitches at those times. Once that is fixed in a driver update, I'll try enabling those output modes too.

I've also configured the new experimental mmc/encoders/<###>/delay_to_wait_after_tuning property for the HD-PVR tuners to be 8000 ms so that it skips recording the channel change & the possible resolution change. The files are supposed to be able to play that way, but the format/resolution detection can be thrown off. Remember: the downside to using this property is that there will be a delay in the service (or UI if not using service mode) while this wait is occurring.

I'm not sure whether the 480i shows will look better recorded at 480i or 1080i... since the video is getting resized to fill my TV screen at different places.

- Andy

[Opus4]

Does anyone know for sure whether it is my imagination or whether channels may change resolution? It seems like one movie channel was broadcasting in 480i for some blurbs between movies, then switched back to 1080i for the movie, but I'm not sure that really happened. I also don't know how to check the resolution at various points in the HD-PVR recordings.

- Andy

[sic0048]

Yes I've seen that happen. At least with OTA digital stations (since I've only had Satellite for a couple of days now). I believe it has occured when the network is sending out an HD feed, but the local station has to splice in it's own commercials and doesn't have the correct HD equipment. So this might be something that happens less as less as HD becomes the broadcast standard.

I haven't seen it with satellite yet, but I'm sure there are some circumstances where it might occur. Basically anytime local ads might be run or in your example perhaps the "blurbs" between movies was only SD. That would make sense to me.

The resolution should not change during the broadcast of the "main event" but if you have watched local HD for any length of time, you've probably seen a station that has "fallen asleep" and forgettten to turn the equipment back to HD after their SD commercials have run. So you end up getting a few minutes of SD main event until they catch their error, or someone calls the control room to complain.

[sleonard]

I set mine to 5000 ms as soon as I saw this post. I didn't get a chance to test any recordings last night but I'll try tonight.

S

[phelme]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I only configured 1080i and 480i on my SA 4250HD boxes because I'm told that the HD-PVR has an encoding problem with 720p and 480p where it will drop a few frames every 4.5-5 seconds, causing playback glitches at those times.

I thought there was something odd going on here with occasional blips in the recordings. good to hear they're on it.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I've also configured the new experimental mmc/encoders/<###>/delay_to_wait_after_tuning property for the HD-PVR tuners to be 8000 ms so that it skips recording the channel change & the possible resolution change. The files are supposed to be able to play that way, but the format/resolution detection can be thrown off. Remember: the downside to using this property is that there will be a delay in the service (or UI if not using service mode) while this wait is occurring.

I'll have to give this a try but the only drawback I can see is if the two channels involved are at the same resolution so there would be no need to delay recording.

[Opus4]

I played around a bit checking recording sizes for 1080i vs. 480i output from my STB.

I've been using the 3.8 GB/hr setting for my HD-PVRs -- 1080i recordings are coming in a little under that.

SageTV automatically reduces the recording rate for 480i recordings (divides the rate by 2.5; 40% of the original rate) & I ended up with just under 1.5 GB/hr for 480i recordings. Interestingly, an HD recording that started with a few minutes of 480i, and thus had the auto rate reduction, ended up recording at close to the original 3.8 GB/hr setting, so there seems to be something else going on in the HD-PVR encoding process. Maybe there is some sort of per-resolution recording rate control -- that's just speculation on my part; there also may not be that sort of control.

To see what the HD-PVR would do on its own I disabled that recording rate scaling & the 480i recordings ended up at around 2.8 GB/hr, or 75% of the rate setting. So, it is able to reduce the rate on its own in some way.

- Andy

[jasongrimme]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I only configured 1080i and 480i on my SA 4250HD boxes because I'm told that the HD-PVR has an encoding problem with 720p and 480p where it will drop a few frames every 4.5-5 seconds, causing playback glitches at those times. Once that is fixed in a driver update, I'll try enabling those output modes too.

Hey Andy,

This is the first confirmation that I've found that anyone has verified there is a problem w/ 720p output and th HD-PVR dropping frames (playback appears to stutter).

I've been following this thread pretty close, and while folks are recommending using 1080i, I didn't see any mention of a new driver coming. But, I am from Wisconsin and very distracted by the Brett Favre story (maybe you've seen some coverage of it) and I miss a lot of this that are abvious and right in front of my face.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by jasongrimme

This is the first confirmation that I've found that anyone has verified there is a problem w/ 720p output and th HD-PVR dropping frames (playback appears to stutter).

I've been following this thread pretty close, and while folks are recommending using 1080i, I didn't see any mention of a new driver coming. But, I am from Wisconsin and very distracted by the Brett Favre story (maybe you've seen some coverage of it) and I miss a lot of this that are abvious and right in front of my face.

I don't know who Brett is or why she is in the news in Wisconsin, but my post shouldn't be taken as any indication of an imminent driver release; I was just commenting on a known issue.

- Andy

[jrog]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I don't know who Brett is or why she is in the news in Wisconsin, but my post shouldn't be taken as any indication of an imminent driver release; I was just commenting on a known issue.

- Andy

I'm not sure what the issue with 720p is, or if there is any issue with 720p on the HD-PVR at all. I have been using 720p exclusively since I got my boxes in the original batch, and I have zero issues with the files created by the HD-PVR on my PC and on my HD-100s, AS LONG AS I use version 20080519-0 Firmware. Any firmware newer than that introduces the skipping that looks like every 4.5-5 seconds. If I switch back to the 519 firmware, all my recordings play fine again. I have seen others notice this. I can't imagine it's a driver issue with the HD-PVR, but maybe it is.

I only use 720p, as all my TVs are only 720p, and it should save on recording space. For SD material, which isn't much, I use a PVR2-USB to record, so I never notice 480p content through the HD-PVR.

[Narflex]

Originally Posted by jrog

I can't imagine it's a driver issue with the HD-PVR, but maybe it is.

We are 100% sure this is an issue in the HD-PVR driver(firmware actually) at this point. Hauppauge has been notified of the problem and they are working to correct it.

A detailed stream anlysis of the HD-PVR's H.264 encoding does show that there are errors in some of the buffering indicators which hardware decoders rely on to properly playback the streams.

Yes, the quick data seems to point to the HD-100 being the problem since there is a firmware version that does work correctly with those recordings.....but it's just because that version has H.264 decoding limitations that were addressed in a newer firmware and by properly implementing that H.264 decoding it exposed flaws in the H.264 streams being generated by the HD-PVR.

But again; I stress that this is an issue in the HD-PVR driver and Hauppauge is aware of it and is working on a solution.

[jrog]

Thanks for the detailed information. I know it can be frustrating when fixing a bug exposes another!! And in someone else's code, it can take time to get them to fix it.

As a hardware engineer, the first thing I blame is, of course, the software!! haha

I'm hoping that the new driver from Hauppaugge fixes a lot of things, like the silly 5.1 limitation, and this framing issue.

[ben_95sl1]

Has this been confirmed to be isolated to any specific resolution (ie. 720p)? Are there any issues with playback on a sagetv pc, and perhaps also with enabling hw accel from the video card?

thanks
Ben

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by Opus4

I don't know who Brett is or why she is in the news in Wisconsin, but my post shouldn't be taken as any indication of an imminent driver release; I was just commenting on a known issue.

- Andy

Hey Andy,

Do you know who Brett Favre is now?

B

[Taddeusz]

Anyone know when this imminent release of new HD-PVR drivers is supposed to take place? I'm waiting on pins and needles.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by bcjenkins

Do you know who Brett Favre is now?

Should I, for some reason? Did she hit the national news or something instead of just being a local Wisconsin story? Was John Edwards seeing her? I ignored the name attached to his story, so maybe that's it. The only Brett I remember is Brett Somers; she used to be on Match Game in the 70s, according to IMDB.

- Andy

[bcjenkins]

I am sure it went from local WS to local NJ by now. But perhaps the news isn't your thing