Hauppage finally sent back my PVR 500 card. They were nice enough to do a RMA even though I had already had it for months. It never worked and never worked and new drivers never made it work, so they finally fixed it. Or maybe they sent a new one? Who cares, now every channel is crisp and clear. A good SD signal with a good encoder actually looks pretty good on a LCD. Deinterlacing is nice too, but it makes my system lag a bit...
Also, I got a response from Snapstream about problems with my beyond TV installation. They said it was a HD problem. After inspection, it looks like I had my master HD in the slave spot and the slave HD in the master spot. Swapping that and it seemed to work through the night, fingers crossed.
Showing posts with label Beyond TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Beyond TV. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Beyond TV Issues
The HTPC in the bedroom has issues. We have a WinTV 500 MCE card that does hardware encoding of two channels at once. Problem is, it is very grainy, especially on low channels. Even the good channels are wavy. I have tried everything to get it to work, but finally I am sending it back to Hauppage to get replaced. For now, it does a moderately terrible job of tuning stations.
I settled on Beyond TV as my software. It was easy to use and it worked. Compared to my problems setting up MythTV and Media Portal, Beyond was super simple and it worked. Mostly. After I had actually paid to register the software ($100) we realized that it crashed every night if you were watching live TV. Great. Now I have to try to get it working to a point where it is stable.
But really, the main advantage of this setup is the mpg files it records in: They are playable on the Tivo HD. I can record TV shows on the HTPC then move them to the Tivo. It also works with DVDs. So we have two more tuners and nearly a TB of storage added to our AV system.
I settled on Beyond TV as my software. It was easy to use and it worked. Compared to my problems setting up MythTV and Media Portal, Beyond was super simple and it worked. Mostly. After I had actually paid to register the software ($100) we realized that it crashed every night if you were watching live TV. Great. Now I have to try to get it working to a point where it is stable.
But really, the main advantage of this setup is the mpg files it records in: They are playable on the Tivo HD. I can record TV shows on the HTPC then move them to the Tivo. It also works with DVDs. So we have two more tuners and nearly a TB of storage added to our AV system.
Friday, December 28, 2007
BeyondTV in HTPC
So I finally go a working PC in our bedroom. After struggling with MythTV installs, I finally gave up and ran XP with Beyond TV. This installed easily and works nicely. The interface is snappy. The interface is intuitive, like a Tivo, but generally more options. Using a WinTV 500 card, I can record two streams at once. It seems to work well with finding shows and dealing with conflicts and priority issues.
I also got Beyond Media, so I can watch DVDs, home video, pictures, and MP3s as well. They have a plugin to stream XM radio too. This is slick overall, but it is not integrated with Beyond TV, they are two separate applications. No big deal, I mostly use the TV application. It would be nice to have the skins be similar though...
We have had problems that are still not sorted out. I got a dud Win TV card that has a terrible signal. They switched up production about a year ago and I got one of the first new cards that did not have working drivers, and still after using the drivers it is still not great. I have an RMA to send it back.
The overall system is nice but loud. I should get a new Mobo with a quiet fan, but that is a job for another day.
The biggest issue is that Beyond TV dies on me. We leave live TV on overnight and the system generally hangs by morning. I sent the following the them, but after two days I have heard nothing:
I also got Beyond Media, so I can watch DVDs, home video, pictures, and MP3s as well. They have a plugin to stream XM radio too. This is slick overall, but it is not integrated with Beyond TV, they are two separate applications. No big deal, I mostly use the TV application. It would be nice to have the skins be similar though...
We have had problems that are still not sorted out. I got a dud Win TV card that has a terrible signal. They switched up production about a year ago and I got one of the first new cards that did not have working drivers, and still after using the drivers it is still not great. I have an RMA to send it back.
The overall system is nice but loud. I should get a new Mobo with a quiet fan, but that is a job for another day.
The biggest issue is that Beyond TV dies on me. We leave live TV on overnight and the system generally hangs by morning. I sent the following the them, but after two days I have heard nothing:
While running BTV and BMedia, the system is never stable more than 24 hours. We start live TV at night when we go to sleep, by morning the system is hung.
Menu bars, window frames are black, the little images in the tray are black. The warning says no D3D device available.
Sometimes it loses the Hauppage Wintv 500 location and claims no devices are present.
Sometimes it loses the TV recording directory, so it can't record.
Sometimes it locks the machine so hard you have to unplug it (not just hold power). Usually, the OS is still running but killing all the BTV processes does not seem to fix the issue or allow you to restart without a reboot.
Sometimes it loses all the setup information, so you have to enter your shows to record again from scratch and put in your configuration.
I have turned off XP system screen savers and the BTV screen savers.
I turned off auto updates, thinking that was causing trouble.
I turned off ShowSqueeze which was scheduled after midnight (seems to happen mostly at night).
The system is still not stable for long periods of time.
Noting interesting shows in the logs.
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