Virgin Media box - rubbish, and it killed my PVR's EPG!

For many months Virgin Media have been calling me to try and get me to take TV as part of my package - I had telephone and data. Eventually the pestering ground me down and I said they could send me the set-top box but I resolved not to install it - I was getting an upgrade to 20Mbits and fixed-cost calls (i.e. standing charge only) so that it seems I'll be saving.
Well - once the box had been delivered I had to unbox it just to have a look and I realised they sent one of the H.264-capable Samsung boxes (HDMI o/p at 1080!). Sarah then said "...it has a better quality version of iPlayer than gets delivered over the web - could we use it for that?" so I ran a co-ax under the floor and installed it.
Of course it didn't work and after much tinkering in engineering menus I discovered that the smart-card wasn't paired with the box! So back into the carboard and stored in the cellar!
Whilst I was tinkering I set MediaPortal to see the box on it's S-Video i/p and was going to run an extra IR blaster so I could PVR cable-channels (in much the same way that TiVO works with Sky boxes). Last night I noticed that MediaPortal had stopped making off-air recordings and when I looked it was clear that it wasn't getting any EPG data. After much head-scratching I realised that if you define an external cable or Sky box it assumes that the EPG ain't coming from DVB-T any more - d'oh!

So - that Virgin box is staying in the cellar and ain't coming anywhere near my good working setup!

MediaPortal v.0.2.3.0 and software upgrading to fix problems

See a previous post from when I upgraded my PVR machine to v.0.2.2.0.

I've often been annoyed when people imagine that upgrading a piece of software is a suitable way to address a problem. Surely the best thing would be to find out what the real trouble is and sort it out rather than upgrading to a newer release in the hope that the trouble will just go away. Ten years ago when Avid v.7 was current being frustrated on many occasions by their tech support who would refuse to answer any questions until you'd upgraded to that week's point release version. See some more moaning about the state of software here. By contrast Lightworks always stood by previous versions of software. I can remember calling up with a problem on a v.2 Heavyworks when the current version was six! They had the attitude that version two worked (why would we have released if it didn't?!) and they were happy to support it.

Anyhow - getting back to MediaPortal - I should have followed my own advice! For the last month my install has been getting a bit slow and flakey. Given it's been running for nearly a year with only a couple of re-boots and maybe three defrags of the media drive I suppose I should have spent a bit more time tidying it up. Anyhow - excited by the shiny new version I backed-up my install, ran the uninstaller and then downloaded and installed the current release. I suppose my 2.0 Ghz Athlon board is getting a bit long in the tooth and the current release felt no more zippy or usable. So - back to v 0.2.2.0 and the mere act of uninstalling and re-loading made a work of difference. We're back to a fast, responsive PVR again. That version does everything I need and so we're happy again.
As an aside - surely it's possible for new versions to run better on aging hardware? Don't programmers learn new tricks about getting more from the platform? This seems to be the case with Leopard which runs a lot better on my G4 than Tiger did. Also - the very best games on any given console are the ones that come out towards the end of the machine's commercial life.

MediaPortal v0.2.2.0

This is an image I took on my 'phone - a panorama of Alexandra Palace on what is first really bright day we've had this year.
Anyhow - pressure of work and having taken a couple of days to go and visit my Dad in hospital has meant I've been a bit low on blog posts recently. Last night I re-paved my PVR - running the mighty MediaPortal and I have to say I am very impressed with the current build. I took the chance to repave Windows as well. Here are a few thoughts;

• Follow the recommendations on the requirements page to the letter - the MS HotFixes really do help! KB entry 896626 was en eye-opener! Apparently the DirectShow filter that extracts an MPEG2 transport stream from the 38meg Mux (as captured by the DVB-T card) has an issue if the PSI header is greater than 255 bytes. In the case of BBC2 and Channel Five (from the Crystal Palace transmitter) they are - something to do with the payload size of the interactive application. I'd got to the point were I'd lost count of the number of times I'd have to give up watching University Challenge because to a corrupt, stuttering file. I should have checked the updates pages more often!


• Try and keep your media drive on a separate IDE/SATA bus to your system drive and DVD drive. You want the maximum uninterrupted data rate to that drive.


• If (like me) you use a mouse-type remote then you need to find the right skin that supports both the extended OSD (on screen display) AND the top-bar. The best one I found was BlackTwo


• nVidia 5600 graphics card - most of the reason for upgrading was that the old Riva128 card I had was DirectX 7 only and the recent builds require a DX9 card. However - although the 5600 has excellent video-rate output (720x576 at 50 interlaced fields) the analogue video signal (both SVideo & RGB) is noisy. Strangely it is fine when in NTSC mode. Since my TV is dual-standard it makes little difference, but worth knowing about.

So, if you want a PVR then save yourself some cash and home-brew one with an old machine and base it around MediaPortal. It is faster, more stable, more fully-featured than Windows MediaCenter edition and because it's open source it's free. I've been using my rig to watch the test HD transmissions from Crystal Palace and am very impressed. You could also look at MythTV.

Dilemmas!

Advertising sucks! BUT it does pay for us to look at free web content. The image on the left is how Firefox displays the page and the right is IE6 - I love the fact that I don't have to waste time and bandwidth downloading adverts (aside from wasting my valuable time reading them!) but it got me wondering how the advertising community will respond to digital platforms' abilities to strip out unwanted content. With my PVR running MediaPortal,
and hence being able to strip out TV ads before I have to see them, and me never seeing them on the web I must represent a total lack of funding to advertisers - heck, I even buy a bag of Revels before I go to the cinema - apparently the pop-corn is the loss-leader on the film nowadays.

Homebrew PVR, part 4

Wow - I have got my PVR running exactly as I wanted! If you scroll down to part 3 you'll see how easy it was to get the remote control from the Compro card to talk to Media Portal (although the on-screen display kinda obviates the need for anything other than a wireless mouse) - or indeed any other IR device. The last bit of the puzzle was having it power-up and down by itself to make recordings - there is a plug-in called PowerSchedule that does precisely this.

The software seems to drive the card better than the Compro app - recordings never drop frames, it is never out of sync and it never fails to lock to a channel (none of which can be said of Compro's DTV app). It also happily runs a slideshow of your photos, plays an MP3 list AND makes a six megabit (well, on BBC channels anyway!) MPEG2 recording simultaneously. I'm a fan - the EPG is superb and as I mentioned - it makes Windows XP Media Centre look clunky.

If you do hose it up check out the "My Weather" pluggin.

Homebrew PVR, part 3

My ongoing efforts to build a really usable PVR took a couple of steps forward this weekend - The link is a previous post with a few thoughts and observations. As ever with these projects I only have stolen hours here and there and so if it is working adequately then it is a while before I get to optimise things!
Anyhow - I did the following mods:

• Replaced the barely-adequate processor - it was an AMD 1500XP and so I dropped in a 1900XP I found on eBay. Much better! No more dropped frames and/or audio sync issues. Also - the Compro card always finds the Mux when you switch channels - previously it would drop the Mux if you went between (say) the BBC channels and the ITV ones.
  
• Connected the remote power up/down connections to the Compro card - fantastic! The card has a battery-backed clock on board and so will boot the computer, make a recording and power down again and it really works. Having just got my first >£200 electricity bill I'm impressed with this! You can even use the remote control to power up and down.

My next step is to repave the machine with Media Portal - Saul (work mate) really rates it and it seems to be much more usable than XP Media Centre and supports more devices. For my own reference here is a walk-through on configuring Compro IR remote under MediaPortal.
I'm also going to replace the aged graphics card with a dual-RAMDAC one (I have an ATI 7500 doing nothing) so I can use Powerstrip to for a 720x576x50i output (although the SVideo o/p @50hz looks OK).
Wait and see!