Best DVB Plugin? Dream vs MT vs Viewer

[xred]

After a lengthy hiatus I am looking to setup my SageTV server again with DVB support. When I last ran my SageTV setup the only option was the MyTheatre plugin, but now it looks like there are some more options, notably DVBDream and DVB Viewer.

I'm running 2x Twinhan VP-1020a boards (soon to be 4) and I am looking for comments from anyone who has used these plugins and can comment on the functionality and stability of these vs. each other. I'd rather not spend time testing out each of these if someone out there already has this wisdom to impart.

Thanks in advance

[Motofreak75]

DVBDREAM ! it has a lot of options.

H.264/Mpg2 that works
uses half the ram/cpu (than if you ran MT with epg paser on)
There is a lot of FTA HD channels (depending what part of the globe your on theres 4 useful FTA H.264 1080 channel in NA and another 26 HD mpeg 2 if you have BUD plus all the wild HD feeds )

Did a I say faster channel changes ?


Want more? try it out, its not as bad as MT was for years, DO remember dealing with the pain.

enjoy

[johnnytyler]

I second that, I have been using Mytheatre plugin for years, and recently changed to dvbdream plugin. It is AWESOME, I have a genpix with the HD100 extender, I am no longer looking for the right codecs or tinkering with my system except for upgrades. I LOVE IT. In addition it is easy to setup and now has ported EPG for any channels that are not part of the zap2it lineup.

[xred]

Thanks for the reply. I'm specifically interested in a couple of issues with DVBDream;

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

DVBDREAM ! it has a lot of options.

H.264/Mpg2 that works
uses half the ram/cpu (than if you ran MT with epg paser on)

How does DVBDream handle multiple cards / multiple HD streams? Does it have to be run in multiple instances like MT? My big beef with MT (and what I am dreading with 4 cards) was having to run multiple instances. It was fairly stable for me with SD, but I'm worried the extra stress of HD will rock the boat.

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

There is a lot of FTA HD channels (depending what part of the globe your on theres 4 useful FTA H.264 1080 channel in NA and another 26 HD mpeg 2 if you have BUD plus all the wild HD feeds )

Biggest Dish I have is a 33" so no luck with C-Band stuff. What sats in NA have FTA HD?

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

Did a I say faster channel changes ?

I had heard the DVBDream had faster channel changes, but I had also heard that about the DVB Viewer plugin. Anyone tried these two for comparison?

[Motofreak75]

Xred

If you have a T8psk card than you can get the h.264 fta channels on Echo5. (free for now) and a most of the other HD is on C-band.

I run two 1020 DVB cards (& one is usb unit) and I run a quad core cpu now and a total of 7 tuners (2 dvb+2x ATSC+1x PVR500) and don't notice anything but the ram limit with PVR500 drivers (4 gigs) I run separate folders for DVB dream and rename the exe to make sure nothing conflicts. And have been running it for a long time without issues.

I haven't tested out DVB Viewer plugin and I know its not for me. But that's more of a personal preference to me.

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by xred

How does DVBDream handle multiple cards / multiple HD streams? Does it have to be run in multiple instances like MT?

I can't answer you for DVBDream, but with DVBViewer all you need is one instance, then in my plugin you create as many lineups as tuners.

Regarding HD: DVBViewer will not take up much memory if you don't use audio/video with my plugin or the fast channel change on back to back option (you need fast channel change if tuning is slow because of a CAM). Even if you use audio/video : only one playback graph will be created at any time, so one or four tuners = same load.

I had heard the DVBDream had faster channel changes, but I had also heard that about the DVB Viewer plugin. Anyone tried these two for comparison?

DVBViewer may be a little slower than DVBDream. DVBViewer is initializing the card only when needed (except if you use audio/video / fast channel change in my plugin), that's why it will be a little longer but much more stable (when I decided about DVBViewer / DVBDream for creating a recorder plugin, I choosed DVBViewer because it has a very strong reputation of stability and it does have an API so the plugin is very clean)

A few comments: DVBViewer is not free and doesn't have a demo version. My plugin also extract teletext subtitles in real time (in SMI files) if you have any use for subtitles.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[cychou]

Sorry to interrupt here! What is the advantage of using these plug-in's vs. the build-in DVB support of Sage?

I have been using the DVB function in Sage for about 2 years now, and found it to be unreliable. Should I be looking into these plug-in/network encoder?

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by cychou

I have been using the DVB function in Sage for about 2 years now, and found it to be unreliable. Should I be looking into these plug-in/network encoder?

If you find native DVB in SageTV unreliable then you should try these plugins (with my own setup with DVBViewer I never had one failure ever : crash or even dropped packets)

Regards,
Stéphane.

[herrdude]

It would be great if one of these plugins allowed us to listen to the satellite radio stations (sirius and xm).

Is that remotely possible?

[VCAT]

I've used both MT and Dream. Overall Dream is better because it is mp4 compatible, uses less cpu memory, changes channels faster, and its channel scanning / editing is easier than that with MT.

There are some disadvantages of Dream though. The first is card compatibility. Only a few cards are supported. Diseqc switching simply doesn't work as well as with MT, where it is effortless. You gotta tinker with diseqc switching in Dream and for some cards it will never work reliably.

So if you have a genpix, then Dream all the way. Otherwise it depends, but if your card is supported then Dream gets the edge.

[xred]

Originally Posted by herrdude

It would be great if one of these plugins allowed us to listen to the satellite radio stations (sirius and xm).

Is that remotely possible?

Radio station support is being looked at according to author of the DVBDream plugin.

I don't know if its planned for the DVB Viewer one or not.

[xred]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

I can't answer you for DVBDream, but with DVBViewer all you need is one instance, then in my plugin you create as many lineups as tuners.
.

So with your plugin its possible to have custom lineups PER tuner? This would be fantastic as it looks like I am going to have 2 Twihan tuners that do NOT support Turbo8SPK (req'd for HD on Echostar) and 2 Genpix tuners that DO support it. The two sets of tuners will have to have separate lineups for the same service providers if the Sage scheduler is to have a hope of working.

Another big plus for DVBDream is the direct injection of the EPG data in to Sage. Does the DVBViewer plugin do this or is the XMLTV plugin still used for this?

TIA

[StephaneM]

Originally Posted by xred

So with your plugin its possible to have custom lineups PER tuner?

You can create as many lineups as you have tuners. This is how it works:

* When you create a lineup, the plugin shows you the entire list of channels you are able to receive within DVBViewer (that is for all tuners)

* You then select the channels that you are able to receive on one tuner only

* In DVBViewer you have to create channel groups and specify which card is able to tune each group (or more than one group). In your case you'll have to create a group for the Turbo8PSK and make sure that this group is only available for the twinhan (generally speaking for the best results a tuner should only receive one group, this way you are sure that DVBViewer will only select the tuner that can receive this group, is the group is shared between tuners, DVBViewer may select the wrong tuner)

Another big plus for DVBDream is the direct injection of the EPG data in to Sage. Does the DVBViewer plugin do this or is the XMLTV plugin still used for this?

Not currently.

Regards,
Stéphane.

[xred]

Originally Posted by xred

This would be fantastic as it looks like I am going to have 2 Twihan tuners that do NOT support Turbo8SPK (req'd for HD on Echostar) and 2 Genpix tuners that DO support it.

Just to update this thread, DVBViewer REQUIRES a BDA driver which the Genpix Skywalker-1 does not support (http://www.dvbviewer.info/forum/inde...owtopic=26406).

DVBDream and MT are the only DVB apps with Sage plugins that also support the Genpix device at the current time. Since MT doesn't really support MP4 that leaves DVBDream as the only solution for those who are able to receive Turbo8PSK signals.

This made my decision a lot easier.... =)

[xred]

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

I run two 1020 DVB cards (& one is usb unit) and I run a quad core cpu now and a total of 7 tuners (2 dvb+2x ATSC+1x PVR500)

Quick question on this; so you're running 3 instances of DVBDream (2x Twinhan 1xGenpix) correct? If you're using DVBDream to extract EPG Data, I take it only one instance needs to be configured to extract the EPG data assuming all instances have access to the same sources.

From what I can see DVB-Dream has to be run in full separate installs e.g. (c:\DVBDream1 ; c:\DVBDream2\) and doesn't have the \card1 \card2 functionality that Mytheatre had. This will be interesting in multi-DVB card setups where there are 4 or more tuners!

[sabre]

May be a silly question, but where do i find the DVBDream network encoder. I could not find in any searches, only find MT and DVB Viewer. Thanks

edit - i guess i see it. i was expecting a really long thread like the others. looks like it is supported at another side.

[49studebaker]

The latest version of the DVBdream sagetv plugin is here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9EVQYDJL

Can someone download it and post it. For some reason I can not download it.