HDTV Network Encoder v0.9.0 07-08-05 - HD Support for Sage!

[Crazedz]

I couldn't get anything to tune on 0.8

Foolio what did you mean you moved the tuner to another pc and it works in that? Were you able to move it back to the old pc and have it still work? This is my main box and the sage box i do have a couple other pc's but none of them were going for a sage box so i'd have to get it working on this one which from the sounds of it might require a reinstall of windows. Needs it anyway but i was wanting to hold off on it for a while longer. Question how many of you guys are running the latest fusion drivers? I noticed theirs a new set of drivers on the dvico site dated 4/22 and i think i saw one dated 4/14. Think the latest i have is the 3/15 drivers so maybe that has something to do with it.

I downloaded the latest drivers and will give that a try and see if it makes a difference.

And stealth i kinda meant we should chip in to get you a card for all the work you've done and are doing to get this card working as well as to keep working on. Personally QAM for me is not needed as theirs only 2 channels avalible up here over cable but i realize that others can get more or it;s their only option as OTA is outside their range so it would be nice to have working. I feel we should get you the card so you can use it to further the cause and as a thanks for what you've done so far it's great.


As for other HTPC software supporting the fusion cards like Gam yeah i knew about that and i had posted in a thread on the Sagetv forum about it back in january i believe seems nobody really paid attention to me. I had done some testing on it and they did manage to get the fusion working on the .1 channels but couldn't at that time get it workign on the lower subs though that may have changed. Also gam had a bit of playback issues and problems with getting the tuner to switch channels off and on sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't prompting a restart. Plus it was much more dificult to setup the channels in gam and since it's no ware as nice a good as sage and since they seem to have started charging for it i decided to wait and see how it develops. I had also taken some looks at others that were claiming support for fusion as well as i recall Beyond claimed fusion support but was buggy same for MCE 2005 and the other was Media portal but i didn't try out their software (not really tried it real quick the card didn't work and i didn't have time to mess with it at that point) so i couldn't say how good the card worked with their software.

Anyway i decided to sit back for a bit and see what developed then along came the unc and then you so i haven't looked back at the others so far.

I have to say that of the free or were free one's gam was the best stability wise but their were others out their that looked much more polished though they weren't working on HD when i looked at them so that gave gam a leg up on them. Personally i was pulling for sage support of HD as sage beats gam in every way other than support for HD.

Ya know im not sure how gam is currently supporting the fusion cards but at the time i was their they were doing it through BDA or at least thats what i believe. Anyway Gam had a whole lot of setup options which was both good and bad, It was quite hard to setup and easy to get yourself lost in trying to get the thing working. Which also made it easy to messup while trying to tweek it. All in all some nice options but also very confusing if you don't have at least a decent idea of what your doing. I would hope since they decided to charge for it they took some time to address a few of it's ease of use/setup flaws.

The media portal i did take some looks at their site and did try their software package briefly but didn't spend any real time on it. It was kinda at the end of my time that i had free to mess around with it as other things started to take up my time again. So i looked some at their site but at the time they were claiming support for a few cards but i didn't find any real info on people useing the cards and the things they were trying to get them working in media portal. So at the time it seemed like it was just as buggy as the others so i decided as i said to sit and wait to see who would come up with a reasonable solution.

Anyway i stopped playing with them back in january after the holidays so it's been a few months in which time things might have gotten more stable on the them. Gam did need a serious hand with it's configuration tool it gave to many options though that might possibly be a good thing stealth you might be able to find some things out by looking at the gam cofig tool.

[chrisc16]

Originally Posted by SD_Entertainmnt

For those that are interested I have purchased an Avermedia A180 and should be here Wendsday. I will be putting it in a MCE box but will definitaly spend the time to try to get it working with Stealth's plugin.

SD: I'm looking forward to hearing your results. I'm on the fence trying to decide which to buy: the HDTV Wonder, which will almost certainly work since the developer has one, or the A180, which I'm not even sure will work without MCE. Of course the fact that the A180 is nearly half the price muddles everything up.

-Chris

[Crazedz]

Originally Posted by Stealth1971

flashbacck - can I get the same info I asked Foolio for in post #58?

thanx - the debug/console output will help get the bottom of this

I am think I am going to to order a Fusion card sooner than later so that I can debug faster and see the results you guys are... (Also Comcast broadcasts quite abit "in the clear" over QAM)

Gah! you posted before me.

See told you chipping in for the cuase would be a good idea

BTW i went back to .7 as i couldn't tune anything in .8 But that could just be a symptom of whats giving me trouble in the others only more pronounced.

[Stealth1971]

Originally Posted by Crazedz

Gah! you posted before me.

See told you chipping in for the cuase would be a good idea

Yeah - it would be much easier if I had one... and thank you for the appreciation and kind words.

and true - any $$ help to get a Fusion card from any of the users would be appreciated Is PayPal the accepted donations method?

Now let me see if I can get us back to a working state - it seems that vers 0.8 wreaked some havoc...

[Stealth1971]

Originally Posted by SD_Entertainmnt

For those that are interested I have purchased an Avermedia A180 and should be here Wendsday. I will be putting it in a MCE box but will definitaly spend the time to try to get it working with Stealth's plugin.

Definitely curious about this - a friend is building his first HTPC - I would rather him spend more on his graphics card than an HD Tuner card.

[Stealth1971]

Anyone that has a Fusion card and that has tried version 0.8 - can you forward the Program Console output and the debug.txt file?

BTW - I hope everyone backed up there ServiceLocator.xml before installing version 0.8 and then copied it back!!!! Sorry if I wasn't clear about that...

[pen25]

Originally Posted by Stealth1971

Yeah - it would be much easier if I had one... and thank you for the appreciation and kind words.

and true - any $$ help to get a Fusion card from any of the users would be appreciated Is PayPal the accepted donations method?

Now let me see if I can get us back to a working state - it seems that vers 0.8 wreaked some havoc...

im thinking we need to send an a180 and a fusion ;-)

[Crazedz]

Originally Posted by Stealth1971

Yeah - it would be much easier if I had one... and thank you for the appreciation and kind words.

and true - any $$ help to get a Fusion card from any of the users would be appreciated Is PayPal the accepted donations method?

Now let me see if I can get us back to a working state - it seems that vers 0.8 wreaked some havoc...

Yeah i think paypal should work. Only used it once myself to buy sage, As i recall it wasn't hard to do and i was able to take moeny right out of my checking account so it should be doable for me just need to know were to send it. Of course i wouldn't be able to send the money till thursday (payday for me).

I was able to record both enterprise on 29 and 24 on fox in hd still have to do the channel changes through the fusion app but at least it's working.

24 came out looking great at dvd standard settings i was just floored by how crisp clear and detailed it looked. Even the commercials were impressive. File size came out to 3.74g. A little to big to fit 2 episodes on a dvdr so i think next week i'll have to try the dvd longplay or maybe one of the variable settings like dvd standard variable to see how much i can bring the shows down without loosing much of the quality for the recordings.

Question that came to mind.
I remember that dvico back in january came out with dual tuner BDA drivers for useing dual fusions in a system so i was wondering would HDNE be able to work with two fusions in a system and if so how would that work?

Sorry if that getting a bit ahead of you but it came to mind and i had to ask.

[Crazedz]

Originally Posted by pen25

im thinking we need to send an a180 and a fusion ;-)

I haven't looked at this a180 so i don't know what it's like do you have a link to it so i can see what the fuss is about.

[salsbst]

24 came out looking great at dvd standard settings

Do recording quality settings really have an effect on an HD stream?

[stanger89]

They better not

[flashbacck]

Originally Posted by Stealth1971

Anyone that has a Fusion card and that has tried version 0.8 - can you forward the Program Console output and the debug.txt file?

BTW - I hope everyone backed up there ServiceLocator.xml before installing version 0.8 and then copied it back!!!! Sorry if I wasn't clear about that...

I dunno what happened, but when I tried 0.8 again last night, it worked! I have a series of recordings set up for tonight that should test it. I'll try to get the output and debug.txt from that. But my internet is still down at home so I probably won't have it until tomorrow.

The quality settings shouldn't have an effect on HD. The stream is already encoded in mpeg2, isn't it?

HDTV's got me thinking about how to fit another harddrive in my mATX case . 160gb used to be something like 3 days worth of TV. Now it's less than 20 hrs.

[Crazedz]

Originally Posted by salsbst

Do recording quality settings really have an effect on an HD stream?

Ya know im not really sure. I always assumed that the bitrate and muxing was handled by whatever the filters were useing to mux and dump the file to the drive. I do know that Dvico's HD to Mpeg2 tool can change the bitrate as well as the quality and format it converts the hd file to. I do know that some of the filters have settings to change the bitrate in the graphs for data going through them. How do you think sage changes the bitrate for shows and tuners? It's done in the graph. Though as i have also seen some filters don't allow the settings to be changed so i belive it would depend on the filters being used.

But im no expert by any means so i could very well be wrong and probably am So i guess we would have to hope somebody who know more about this comes along and responds. Hey Stealth you wrote this program so im guessing you'd know what about this so is it possible to change the quality settings for HD streams like this?

[stanger89]

The difference between Sage (recording SD) and capturing HD, is that Sage (or the card more correctly) is creating the MPEG stream, and can create it at whatever quality you want. HD however, is broadcast as an MPEG-2 transport stream, all the card does is capture it and write it to a file.

[Crazedz]

Originally Posted by stanger89

The difference between Sage (recording SD) and capturing HD, is that Sage (or the card more correctly) is creating the MPEG stream, and can create it at whatever quality you want. HD however, is broadcast as an MPEG-2 transport stream, all the card does is capture it and write it to a file.

Doh!

Yeah sorry your right bout that. Im more than a little tired i've only had a few hours sleep over the whole week so im a bit brainfried.

[pen25]

Originally Posted by Crazedz

I haven't looked at this a180 so i don't know what it's like do you have a link to it so i can see what the fuss is about.

you can goto avermedia and search for a180 it was an oem for mce and if you do a search in google for mce a180 youll find the cards. it cost me 89 + shipping from aver but that was because everyone else is sold out. you can buy them when they get back in stock for as little as 75 acedemic superstore has them for 75 but the problem is you have to be a student parent of a student a teacher or school to buy from them.

i get mine tomarrow so ill test this with the demo of sage. ill let you all know.

[jchiso]

I'm looking to set up a Fusion Gold 3T as a network encoder for a Sage system, and have tried running HDNE but I get a "Capture Plugin unabled [sic] to create and initialize" error message. I did not install the PowerVCR demo, as I don't want to clutter this system needlessly. I have PowerDVD 5 on this system. Is the PowerVCR app absolutely required? What happens after the demo period runs out and I unistall? Will the network encoder still function?

[flashbacck]

You need PowerVCR for the filters. The filters aren't locked, so they'll still work after the demo runs out.

[jchiso]

As for the other part of the question, will the filters remain if the app is uninstalled? For the record, I installed PowerVCR and the same error occured.

[jchiso]

If I may, let me throw out a few questions as a sanity check. I would like to add HDTV recording to an existing Sage setup via a Fusion HDTV Gold T card that's housed in a network-attached computer.

The Sage system currently hosts two Hauppauge PVR-150s; each with EPG and programming for satellite, cable, and over-the-air digital from a DirecTV HD set-top box. All video signals are SVHS.

I would like to use the system with the Fusion card for EPG and programming for OTA digital channels only. I have SageRecorder installed on this system. I use UNCs visible to both systems as Sage video directories, i.e. "\\SageServer\Video", "\\NetStorage\SageVideo", etc.

Here's how I believe the software should be installed in this setup:
Sage Server System:
- SageTV
- HDNE
- .NET1.1
- PowerVCRII (Demo)
- NVIDIA DVD Decoder
- Modified .xml file with local digital channel lineup

HDTV Host System:
- SageRecorder
- BDA (Fusion) drivers
also installed on this system, not sure if needed here
- .NET1.1
- PowerVCRII (Demo)
- PowerDVD 5

I would like to set encoder merits such that the HDTV Host system is the highest, then the PVR-150s. This should allow digital OTA broadcasts to be captured via the Fusion first, and then on the PVR-150s, if the Fusion is in use. All satellite- and cable-based programming would be captured via the PVR-150s.

I'll also modify the Sage.Properties file on the Sage server to add the "mmc/encoders" data for the network encoder with the applicable hostname and port parameters.

Assuming I am able to get HDNE to work, is my logic sound? Are the software elements on the correct systems? Is there anything I am overlooking?