Placeshifter and HD-PVR without stutters

[apschaefer]

I have been trying to smoothly stream HDPVR video files via Placeshifter and remote extenders for the better part of two years now with no success. I have looked at everything from ffmpeg versions, automatic conversion of all of my video files, even making a feature change request for a definable buffer size. I haven't found anything that has made any impact on my constant (every 3-7 seconds) rebuffer stutter, until today.

I just had an 'aha' moment while trying to use Placeshifter with HDPVR videos. And its so much of a no-brainer that I cannot believe I hadn't tried it before (I am sure others have, so don't laugh too hard)Just in case someone else didn't think of this yet...

Switching your default recording quality from Best H264 to Fair H264 in the Sage Settings is enough to get smooth as silk HDPVR transcodes through Placeshifter on older processors (a quad core Q6600 in my case). Test it with LiveTV.

So I am happy to report that Placeshifter is finally working for me without preconverting any video. Its a bit of a quality hit, but its a lot easier than converting every video I record, and for a lot of 4x3 content, its barely noticeable

[Chriscic]

I haven't played with Placeshifter much myself, and only on my home network. Interesting that it's so hard to get smooth transcodes. For comparison to another program, Air Video transcodes my best quality 720P HD-PVR files extremely well over even 3G, and my sever is running only a Core2Duo at 2.4ghz, which obviously has a lot less horsepower than your Q6600. Sage placeshifter must be inefficient and not be using all four of your cores.

[darcilicious]

I have been trying to smoothly stream HDPVR video files via Placeshifter and remote extenders for the better part of two years now with no success.

If I recall, SageTV is working on updating the built-in transcoder for v7 which may improve things for the Placeshifter...

Air Video transcodes my best quality 720P HD-PVR files extremely well over even 3G

Do you have any 1080i files to test with? I haven't tried with AirVideo with my 1080i / .ts files in quite a while but they have been problematic previously.

[Skirge01]

While that is certainly "a" solution, it's definitely not the optimal one. Essentially, rather than transcoding selected recording to a lesser quality on the fly, you're simply recording at the level SageTV can Placeshift them at. I watch far more shows via the SageTV client than I do via Placeshifter, so I'll take the higher quality on my TV, with the understanding that I can't Placeshift them.

[davenlr]

Ive been trying to get my HDPVR to play over Placeshifter, and even using your suggestion, and setting the bitrate as low as it will go, results in audio, with what I would call, random still frames for video. Im using a AMD64 2.5Ghz with a Nvideo 8500GT. It will play the HDPVR (full bitrate) with Arcsoft fine, and the Placeshifter will play full 1080i HD video from my HDHomerun fine, just wont play the HDPVR HD stuff, although it will play the SD channels from the HDPVR ok. Im thinking its something to do with the Placeshifters H.264 codec, but thats just a guess.

Glad you got yours working though. I dont watch Sage on this computer enough to warrant a media extender for it.

[Spectrum]

V6 Placeshifter cannot handle interlaced content from the HDPVR. This has been fixed in V7 and even though it's in beta it's very stable. It's in RC stage now so it won't be long before it goes gold