WMC Live TV Tuner

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Did you check your CPU usage? Maybe the codec you're using doesn't work well with the H.264 that's being encoded.

I set everything to default and changed the audio renderer to directsound to the device I am using and everything works great.

One more thing I really do not need that tuner plugin do I? I thought opendct handles the tuning.???

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I set everything to default and changed the audio renderer to directsound to the device I am using and everything works great.

One more thing I really do not need that tuner plugin do I? I thought opendct handles the tuning.???

You do not need the tuning plugin. You are correct.

The tuning plugin is for people who want to use this tuning method with native SageTV devices.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

You do not need the tuning plugin. You are correct.

I have a few things I want to Optimize including my bitrate etc... I appreciate your assistance anything pops up will post also will post what I have that works.


PS I am not using wget ... still using powershell the raw settings seems to have worked.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

I have a few things I want to Optimize including my bitrate etc... I appreciate your assistance anything pops up will post also will post what I have that works.

Any time! I was really alarmed at how much trouble you ran into. Being that I endorsed the capture device so much, I really feel some responsibility to help. Especially since you're probably one of the first people other than myself to use these HDMI encoders.

I'm interested in your impressions on overall picture quality once you get things where you want them, too. I think it's sharper than the HD-PVR. I'm just looking for a second opinion.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

Any time! I was really alarmed at how much trouble you ran into. Being that I endorsed the capture device so much, I really feel some responsibility to help. Especially since you're probably one of the first people other than myself to use these HDMI encoders.

I'm interested in your impressions on overall picture quality once you get things where you want them, too. I think it's sharper than the HD-PVR. I'm just looking for a second opinion.

The Device is simple to configure it is a matter of configuring OPENDCT and I am still wondering why LAV filters had problems with H264. Using the window 10 default decoders fixed the problems.


I also have to figure what is the best resolution to set the PC to right now I have it at 1080.


PS Quality is great I can finally record and watch DRM in SageTV without a Cable Box... I am watching 1080P at 5000 bitrate on my Shield no problems using the mini client.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

The Device is simple to configure it is a matter of configuring OPENDCT and I am still wondering why LAV filters had problems with H264. Using the window 10 default decoders fixed the problems.


I also have to figure what is the best resolution to set the PC to right now I have it at 1080.


PS Quality is great I can finally record and watch DRM in SageTV without a Cable Box... I am watching 1080P at 5000 bitrate on my Shield no problems using the mini client.

That's especially interesting since I'm using LAV Filters myself on the Windows Client. Maybe upgrade to the latest?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

That's especially interesting since I'm using LAV Filters myself on the Windows Client. Maybe upgrade to the latest?

It was th Audio Renderer it was set to default. Set it to default directsound and now it works fine using Lav Filters. I keep forgetting that setting Sage to the default direct sound device you are using improves performance.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

It was th Audio Renderer it was set to default. Set it to default directsound and now it works fine using Lav Filters. I keep forgetting that setting Sage to the default direct sound device you are using improves performance.

That's a good tip and definitely not an obvious one.

[nyplayer]

One thing I noticed it does not appear to be stopping WMC from playing Video when you hit stop in SageTV.... I will post a log when I can.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

One thing I noticed it does not appear to be stopping WMC from playing Video when you hit stop in SageTV.... I will post a log when I can.

That's actually a bug I discovered too. It's fixed in the next beta.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

That's actually a bug I discovered too. It's fixed in the next beta.

Yeah I saw it wasn't issuing the stop command to WMC.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

Yeah I saw it wasn't issuing the stop command to WMC.

I'm thinking I'm going to set that up with a delay in a future release, such as after 15 seconds of no further activity, the stop command is executed. That way, if you're just changing channels it doesn't do a complete stop/start.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

I'm thinking I'm going to set that up with a delay in a future release, such as after 15 seconds of no further activity, the stop command is executed. That way, if you're just changing channels it doesn't do a complete stop/start.

Great Idea.

[nyplayer]

The stop command is causing a problem if I am watching liveTV and change channels if it takes a little while to tune ... the blue overlay will cover the Video and all you see is a bluescreen with sound.

Edit I had to remove the stop entries in my properties files.

Re-Edit again .... It appears in my case using wget has no problem with the stop command.

[Fuzzy]

So is the only purpose of all this to avoid having a STB?

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

So is the only purpose of all this to avoid having a STB?

You do not need an STB or Hauppauge HDPVR or an Ir Blaster (using Hd Homerun)..... I use it to record my DRM and playback... at the moment I have a lineup only with the DRM channels.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

So is the only purpose of all this to avoid having a STB?

If you search back through this thread there is a device from some Chinese company that captures video from the HDMI port, strips the DRM, and then streams it on the network (like the HDHomeRun). OpenDCT then can interface with the HDMI capture device and present it as a network encoder.

[EnterNoEscape]

Originally Posted by nyplayer

The stop command is causing a problem if I am watching liveTV and change channels if it takes a little while to tune ... the blue overlay will cover the Video and all you see is a bluescreen with sound.

Edit I had to remove the stop entries in my properties files.

Re-Edit again .... It appears in my case using wget has no problem with the stop command.

It's probably a timing issue. Unfortunately I can't get much information from WMC when I'm telling it to do things. I added the delay I was talking about earlier to a copy that I'm using right now and so far it's working well. I just want to work with it a little more to be reasonably sure it's not going to fire off the stop command while you're actually trying to watch something.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by EnterNoEscape

It's probably a timing issue. Unfortunately I can't get much information from WMC when I'm telling it to do things. I added the delay I was talking about earlier to a copy that I'm using right now and so far it's working well. I just want to work with it a little more to be reasonably sure it's not going to fire off the stop command while you're actually trying to watch something.

Ok because it did happen again even with WGET.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

So is the only purpose of all this to avoid having a STB?

I think a block diagram of the setup would be helpful. I think it works like this:


Get a capture device that supports cable card (like HDHR Prime) and install a cable card from your cable company.
Get a PC with Windows Media Center installed (this could be your Sage Server, or a different PC).
Get a WMC extender for each tuner in your cable card capture device.
Get an HDMI network encoder for each tuner in your cable card capture device (there are a bunch of these available from various Chinese companies).
Install OpenDCT somewhere (either the Sage Server PC or the WMC PC - could be same PC).

When you want to watch or record something, Sage will send a tuning request through this that will cause one of the WMC extenders to try to watch "live tv" on the requested channel. The WMC extender will trigger WMC to tune in the channel through an available HDHR Prime. The WMC extender doesn't need to be connected to a TV, the HDMI encoder grabs the signal directly from the HDMI cable, encodes it to h.264, and makes it available for streaming across the network. OpenDCT grabs the stream and saves it to a file for Sage to consume.