TV Recording... - 2007/06/13 17:47Looking for some advice here.
I would simply like be able to record TV on my PC for later streaming via the ShowCenter..... (I have a Cox DVR but it has limited space and what is saved isn't permanent).
What tuner card do you folks use/recommend for this purpose?
ThanksShowcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/15 09:13None of you guys have tuner cards?Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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admin
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/15 09:31I have recently purchased a Nova-T500 dual DVB tuner card which is now installed in my server. Unfortunately, the server doesn't have a monitor, keyboard or mouse connected so it's not doing much at the moment.
However... and please everyone, don't expect this anytime soon... a friend is creating a small windows program that should allow me to control any Windows MediaCenter compatible capture card from the command line (or via a webservice).
Once he has that working, I'll probably add a feature into Swisscenter for viewing TV guides and selecting programs for recording. (LiveTV is also a possibility, but I think the ability to schedule recordings is far more useful to begin with).
Rob Player : Pinnacle Showcenter 200 and 1000 (wired ethernet) Server : Windows XP Pro running on an Athlon XP 2200, 768 Mb RAM, 1.8 Tb storage.
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didierm
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/15 17:30Stu2j wrote: None of you guys have tuner cards?
Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150.
Very good price/quality ratio, hardware MPEG2 encoding. Almost no server load : negligible load average on a PIII 733 MHz, 15% CPU when recording on software RAID0 (RAID5 for archiving).
Excellent stability under Linux MythTV 0.20 ; hasn't failed me yet (255 days uptime, Fedora Core 5).
Didier
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didierm
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/15 17:39admin wrote: Once he has that working, I'll probably add a feature into Swisscenter for viewing TV guides and selecting programs for recording.
Regarding Linux users : no need to reinvent the wheel.
1. MythTV
MythTV comes with a plugin, MythWeb.
This plugin allows for MythTV front-end control through ... (brass intermezzo) ... a web interface.
TV guides, recording schedules, etc. can all be controlled with a web browser.
By means of the 'Browse Web' SwissCenter module, one can access the interface.
Unfortunately for ShowCenter purposes, the interface uses some AJAX/Javascript, and is due to the screen layout and the limited HTML support of the ShowCenter somewhat restricted.
MythWeb also supports a WAP interface, but I did not yet manage to get this running.
2. VDR
MTPCenter (from Matthias Panczyk) uses VDR. I did not try this feature yet, but appearantly it supports live streaming, recording, scheduling etc.
Didier
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didierm
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/15 19:01didierm wrote:
MythWeb also supports a WAP interface, but I did not yet manage to get this running.
OK, MythWeb identifies mobile phones through HTTP_USER_AGENT, retrieves screen sizes, and switches to a fitting template (mythweb/includes/mobile.php).
The WAP template is already very usable (clean HTML, no JS), but could use some modifications to take advantage of the ShowCenter larger screen real estate (compared to mobiles).
Time permitting , one of these weeks I'll have a look at adding the SC's user agent string to MythWeb's identification code, and adapt the WAP theme somewhat.
Seems like people with MythTV are in for a treat.
Didier
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/18 00:20Well, this decision was made for me as I received a Hauppauge WinTV Go Plus for father's day.
Clearly this is not a top of the line card but it installed in minutes and appears to accomplish the task. My main interest was not to watch tv on the pc (although I can now) but to simply click on a program guide to record a tv show that could be streamed to the Showcenter and this card seems to do it pretty well.Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/21 12:43As you all know, the biggest problem with recording TV is the commercials. I found a program called "VideoReDo" that automatically strips out all the commercials and it will allow me to "trim/edit" the video (for instance to remove the end of a program that was recorded on the front). It's pretty nice.
However, before I buy it, I was wondering if there are any better products or utilities out there for accomplishing this task and what other products folks are actually using.
Thanks for any input...Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/22 10:10Interesting side effect...
I just sort of stumble into things and this was one of those things I hadn't even thought about but adding the TV Tuner card made it REALLY easy to transfer VHS to the media server ....
Just can't wait to see that wedding video again Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/06/26 13:21Stu2j wrote: I found a program called "VideoReDo" that automatically strips out all the commercials ... before I buy it, I was wondering ...what other products folks are actually using.. Hmmm... I guess I'm the only one stripping out commercials
Guess I'll register VideoRedo as I haven't found anything better...Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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afzal
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/08/23 02:49I was going to post somewhere else looking for help, bu tthis might be a good opportunity.
I have a media server (but not Windows Media Center!, it's XP) that hosts my Pinnacle 1000g server and files. It also has a Hauppauge Win-TV Nova-S Plus DVB-S satellite card.
I'd really like to be able to view the programs through my Showcenter. My dream would be to be able to change channels and get EPG information as well through the showcenter, but for the moment I'll settle for the former.
I currently use MyTheatre on my PC to view programs, and I have AVBroadcaster and VLC installed as well. I can broadcast using them, but I don't know how to broadcast TO the showcenter and was wondering if someone here can give me a clue .
The card gives me an MPEG2-TS stream, broadcast using UDP through AVBroadcaster. VLC can capture that and stream it out, if necessary transencoding or encapsulating to various formats including MPEG1, MPEG2-ES, AWF, etc.
So, my questions are: Can the showcenter be pointed directly at, say, a HTTP broadcast by VLC of the stream? (I've tried, but it doesn't appear to work)
Do I need, instead, to have a web page with some sort of code that the showcenter understands to tell it what to expect and point it at the stream, and if so, what sort of code?
Is there something else I need to do?
Any and all help would be MUCH appreciated.
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admin
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/08/23 06:57See swisscenter.co.uk -> Documentation & FAQ -> Development Notes -> Syabas Browser Information for finding out details about the way links work on the showcenter:
In brief, yes you can get the showcenter to playback a HTTP broadcast by createing a playlist which includes the URL and sending it to the showcenter.
The main problem is controlling the TV whilst playing it back on the showcenter. Unfortunately (and this is my biggest problem when writing swisscente) none of the buttons on the remote control are passed back to you. The only buttons that work on the remote are the playback buttons (stop, pause, <<, >>, etc).
I'd suggest that you send multiple URLs in the playlist, with the first item mapping to the URL for channel 1, the second item mapping to the URL for channel 2, etc - that way, pressing |<< or >>| on the remote would simulate changing channel.
Rob Player : Pinnacle Showcenter 200 and 1000 (wired ethernet) Server : Windows XP Pro running on an Athlon XP 2200, 768 Mb RAM, 1.8 Tb storage.
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afzal
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/08/23 07:21Thanks!
A few years ago when I bought my showcenter, I remember trying to find out more about syabas extensions. It's nice to have an "official" file.
I'm presuming that the invocation would be something like
where the Create_Stream_CHX_Url would have tobe something that changes channel as appropriate, then redirects to the stream?
Is there anything special about the stream itself that needs to be taken into account? Does the showcenter need to know it's dealing with a stream and not a file?
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admin
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/08/23 07:56That's exactly right.
As far as the file/stream question... well it doesn't matter. The file is streamed by the webserver anyway, so there's no difference.
The only thing that might trip you up is the fact that a file has a fixed length, whereas a live TV stream will be constantly growing. However, I believe there's a parameter that goes in the <a> link (PCTV or something) that tells the showcenter it's a growing file.
Rob Player : Pinnacle Showcenter 200 and 1000 (wired ethernet) Server : Windows XP Pro running on an Athlon XP 2200, 768 Mb RAM, 1.8 Tb storage.
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afzal
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/08/23 08:06hmmm, didn't see anything in the documentation on a PCTV option, although for another system I did see reference to having to have "/&ext=.mpg" trailing the absolute url to the stream so that the machine knows it's going to get an mpg stream.
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afzal
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Re: TV Recording... - 2007/09/14 07:24Well, after a number of trials and tribulations, I managed to get it working in a way.
I'd like to share with you my learnings. First though, a bit about my setup.
I have a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-S plus card. My satellite setup is an offset with 3 Quattro LNBs, feeding Spaun Diseqc switches. I mention this as one of my biggest probles was in getting the card to change channels! If anyone would like, please let me know.
Not having the time to write a DBV app I got a DBVCore based app called MyTheatre. It's quite well featured, having stream capabilities, plugins for web-based EPG and channel control, etc.
Before everything else, I wanted to see if I could get the Showcenter 1000g to read a stream. This turned out to be far more difficult than I imagined. For some reason, UDP streams in either Uni or Multicast caused the Sc to refuse to boot! I believe it may be a problem with it's network interface. After many attempts, I finally got the Sc to work with a HTTP stream (however, see later). Unfortunately, myTheatre can only stream using UDP.
I, therefore, setup MyTheatre to stream UDP on the local loop (127.0.0.1) and I installed VLC on the same server. I used VLC then to read the local UDP stream, and resend it as HTTP.
There are some other issues that VLC helped with. My SC could not read MPEG transport streams (TS) nor could it seem to deal with program streams (PS). VLC can take an MPEG-TS and turn it into en elementary stream (ES).
However, the SC still refused to read the stream until I used VLC to encode it as an MPEG1 stream!
So, in MyTheatre I chose to transmit an MPEG-ES stream ,that VLC picked up, wrapped as MPEG1, then retransmitted using HTTP. Even then, the SC needed to be told what was coming down the stream. So, the entry in the playlist looks like this:
Channel 1¦0¦0¦http://mystream:1234?&ext=.mpg¦
This worked, although sometimes it takes a while for the SC to correctly read the stream.
Changing channels was another difficult problem. When I changed channels on MyTheatre, the SC would often loose the signal completely. I more or less solved this be restarting the reading on the SC side.
The easiest way for me to do this was to have a playlist with the same line (above) twice! That way using the next button I could go to the next playlist item which caused the SC to reload the same stream.
As so few buttons are usable I decided to make channel changing a menu that then invokes the script that changes the channel and feeds the playlist through to the SC. So, when you use the stop button during viewing, you go back to the channel menu. By the way, the link that invokes that script looks like:
<a href="chg_and_view.php" VOD="PCTVPL">.....
If anyone has any questions, let me know.
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2008/01/07 11:42I was thinking of grabbing a Pinnacle PCTV HD PCI card so that I can control the PVR functions via the ShowCenter vs having to be at the PC (since I intend to have 3 ShowCenters, this seems like a big plus). Of course I realize that I would have to use the Pinnacle software to do this until such time as Swiss added the feature
Per my understanding of Rob's post above, any future SwissCenter changes would be ok with any card fully compatible with Windows® Media Center which the Pinnalce cards all seem to be.
I have searched and can't really find any user reviews on controlling the PCTV cards with the ShowCenter and if there is anyone here actually doing this, I would appreciate knowing how well it actually works.Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2008/01/10 09:28You guys ain't going to believe this (or maybe you will). I asked Pinnacle support to provide me with a list of PCTV tuner cards that would work with the ShowCenter... here is the exact response:
"The list existing is outdated and the products are not available anymore for purchase. Newer products have not been tested with the ShowCenter series"
Just friggin unreal Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2008/01/11 11:57Just snagged a ShowCenter 200 off ebay for $50 to complete the set.
Three is the magic number. I'll now have the media everywhere that I need it. If I can just get the PVR functions working, I'll be in media heaven.Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Pernod
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Re: TV Recording... - 2008/01/11 12:13I'm using some generic DVB-T PCI card from K-World that came with the PC. Then use Windows Media Center with Vista Home Premium to do the recording to my 'Recorded TV' folder which is a Video (not TV Series) media location in SwissCenter.
Since it's recording digital broadcasts in dvr-ms format the file contains programme information, actors, synopsis, etc. which SwissCenter 1.19 scans and stores in the db.Player : Netgear EVA700 & Popcorn A-100 (081106) Server : Vista SP1 Home Premium (Simese 2.07, SwissCenter current SVN) Spec : Intel C2Q Q6600, 2GB RAM, 1Tb storage.
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2008/01/11 12:44Ya know.. I wouldn't be the least bit interested in recording television if I hadn't discovered VideoReDo Plus which allows me to edit videos quickly and easily (I can edit a twilight zone episode in about 30 seconds). Now, I am almost fanatical about it and the PVR runs all night every night recording stuff.
The WinTV2000 is ok (except that sometimes it fails to change the channel) but my real goal now is the ability to check the schedule and program the PVR via the ShowCenter interface. In theory, I should be able to do it using the Showcenter software and a Pinnacle PCTV card. We'll see...
Of course if you guys could get it built into Swiss Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2008/01/12 23:07I just love shopping on ebay after the holidays. Just picked up a brand new PCTV Pro card for 99 cents. It isn't going to cost a lot to test this out Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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Stu2j
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Re: TV Recording... - 2008/01/18 16:01Well, thank God it only cost 99 cents.
I messed around with this darn thing for almost a whole day trying to get it to work and what a waste of time.
After installing all the software and various patches to make it work, you must have the TV viewer running on your PC for the ShowCenter to detect the PCTV card (in other words, it isn't really detecting the card but the fact that the software VCR is running). While the recording functions did work, there is no "guide" so you have to have the information handy and I could never get any kind of playback (on the ShowCenter) to work. Even worse, I couldn't get the ShowCenter to recognize it's own watch folder so it wouldn't even playback previously recorded clips unless I moved them.
The deal killer for me was that it records in a format that isn't recognized by VideoRedo and if I can't edit the TV shows, what's the point?
The good news is that it's a pretty decent card and installation and setup was a snap. Programme changing was a breeze and everything seemed to work.
Well, now I know why Pinnacle abandoned this and I'll just go back to scheduling recordings with the PC.Showcenters 1000g/200/250HD Popcorn Hour A-100 Netgear HDX101 Powerline Adapters Windows XP Simese 2.07 running latest SVN NAS Server IBM NetVista 900Mhz/256RAM
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stillspirit
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Re: TV Recording... - 2008/02/23 16:16Hi, 1stly - Fantastic Pinnacle SC200 replacement software. Absolutely first rate. 2nd - Just want to put my 2 cents in asking for a PCTV or alternate TV Card controller in the front end. Would round out this package perfectly.
Forums 
, one of these weeks I'll have a look at adding the SC's user agent string to MythWeb's identification code, and adapt the WAP theme somewhat.
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