Where to from here? - Page 6

Adam, what settings are you using to convert your files to MP4? I tried converting some shows recorded on the HD channels for my kids to watch on the portable dvd player during a trip using the DVRMSToolbox setting to convert to MPEG and the resulting files are still huge. Over 2GB for a 30 min show. Obviously because it's still keeping the HD quality, which isn't needed on the DVD player. So a lot less convenient than just copying the Replay mpegs to a DVD or portable device. Presumably there should be a setting to downconvert the quality of the resulting mpeg, but I don't see it?

Thanks

I use an external to do this, MCEBuddy.

Using its default settings, I took an hour long Modern Marvels down to 412MB.

It has the ability to do a second pass, if you want, to try to get it down more.

I don't have it set up for any automatic functions; when I have a show I want to share with a buddy, I drag and drop it to a hotfolder and let it chug. Awhile later I come back to the exported file, and I drop it on an ftp folder.

(I'm telling you, with just a little bit of work Media Center users could participate in the Poopli world. The .wtv files have all the metadata necessary to provide listings to Poopli, and the third party tools are by and large already there to export/compress to .mp4 or whatever. All we need is a mechanism to transfer the shows to the right person.)

Since I'm continuously following this thread and learning (and GOOGLEing / Bookmarking), I just wanted to say "Thank You" for the 'Modern Day' information.

I have an All-in-Wonder 128 PCI Tuner card in my Gateway 6400 and I have 2 Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 150s and 1 WinTV-HVR 1600 still in their boxes, bought 'On Sale' while my health was declining, that I haven't gotten around to installing yet. If you know of a reasonable / reliable / inexpensive source for a couple of copies of WinXP Pro and WinXP Media Center Edition, please reply or PM me. Besides the Gateway 6400 (P3-933, 1GB RAM), I have a Dell 4100 (P3-933, 512MB RAM) and a Dell 400SC (P4-2.4, 2GB RAM) both with bad and/or flakey Boot HDDs that I would like to get back in service and experiment with as HTPCs (If anyone in Central NJ has something newer that they're planning to dispose of, please PM me and I'll come by and take it off your hands!). I also bought 2 media streamers (Seagate FreeAgent Theater+ and Patriot Box Office - less than $50 each from Newegg on Black Friday) with the future idea of being able to feed MPGs from various sources (ReplayTV, Hauppagues, Internet, etc...) to TVs if/when the ReplayTVs die or 'something else' (We all bypassed THAT bullet!).

Thanks!

Hey Ed - what are you using as your IR receiver?

Ya, initially I used this;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...tent-_-text-_-

It works great in MC with no drivers needed. I've since decided not to "expose" the media center PC to the family so I'm using this remote and other media center remotes to work the x-box extenders.

I then replaced this IR receiver with a Smapstream remote (got beta 64bit driver from them) and use that to control the PC via an IR remote that uses different codes than standard MC ones. This allows me to still access the PC when I need to and keep it isolated from the family.

That's not an IR receiver...it's a transmitter....

Oh, really? ya, but it also comes with a nice USB receiver...

The plus is that the remote has a few nice direct keys as well. I used this remote to learn codes for my pronto files.

I am looking also for an IR transmistter... I need to control 4 DISH boxes from one PC... any ideas/tips?

google USB-IRT don't know if they are still around but it was two way, usb tranceiver I think.

Thanks! I was hoping to do this in DVRMSToolbox, but MCEBuddy looks even better. Course, now I don't need it anymore since I'm obviously back from my trip, but good to know for future.

Thanks again.

That could solve 2... USBIRT has only 2 channels...

Hey Adam1991, I need some help. I just got around to trying DTB again on my 7MC setup now that this 64bit system is running well. I followed the How-to article, Installed DTB, then the MCE Plug-in, then ShowAnalyzer. Matched the settings they showed, re-booted, and now 7MC skips commercials! It even went thru the shows that were already recorded and marked them up as well, very nice. Accuracy seems pretty good, not perfect but good.

BUT, it only does this on the actual PC, not via the X-Box Media Extenders I'm pretty sure that you indicated that this should work for the media extenders as well?

Are there settings, perhaps in the remote tab, that the article didn't mention?? I'm so close to everything being perfect... I don't know where to go for help on this. I do have Sage loaded on this PC but it's not running as a service, I just use it for occasional manual recordings for other projects. I don't know if DTB looks at that install and configures remote access in some way as to mess up MC Extenders?

Any pointers would be appreciated!

hmmmmmm. Yes, it works on the extenders as well.

Methinks that you need to delete the extenders, restart, then re-add them. It has to do with registry settings for the extenders themselves, I think. Let it rebuild those registry settings WITH knowledge of the MCE plugin.

All I can tell you is, I got ShowAnalyzer working (and everything else) first before I added the extenders, and the extenders just went in like magic.

Accuracy for me is better than what Replay had downgraded to over the past couple of years. Mythbusters for some reason stopped skipping entirely, and I had some wonkiness with a few other shows. ShowAnalyzer brings it all back.

What's lacking is the ability to easily combine MCE Plugin and its remote key setup with the standard 7MC and its ability to let you skip ahead or back a certain amount of time or jump to a certain time in the show. The MCE Plugin keystrokes override that. Yes, I can redefine the MCE Plugin keystrokes; I just haven't sat down to it and tried to square it all away. I've just defaulted to using FF and RW when I want to manually go somewhere inside the recording. It's not as elegant as "4500 jump" or whatever, but it gets me there without my having to worry it to death. Plus, I rarely have a need to jump to a certain time in a show. When that need arises past a certain threshold, no doubt I'll dive into it and screw up my MCE Plugin settings.

Maybe some custom remote settings files for my Harmony 300....hmmmm.....

btw, I thought I would not like the post-processing of shows compared to Replay's realtime processing. I think I was wrong. The post-processing takes only a couple of minutes, AND it will even process a show as it's being recorded if it's not doing anything else (it waits for 10 or so minutes into the show and then starts, and hangs on until the show ends) so that's kinda like real time.

More importantly, if it missed a show or you want it to reprocess, just hop into the SA user interface and make it so. THAT'S something we never had in Replay.

Beware: a few times I went to watch a show, and 7MC/MCE Plugin immediately said "there are no commercial markers; process now?" That's code for "SA is munged and has been stuck on one file for the last 15 hours now, buddy, so just restart the whole computer". Yeah, in theory you're supposed to be able to cancel a stuck process, but that never works for me. Restarting does, and what the hell--restarting never hurts regardless.

What 7MC gives up in appliance-like behavior--rest assured, it gives up more than I like--it gives back in other features. Of course, if I didn't have plugins installed in the first place, it wouldn't act wonky, right? But I love ShowAnalyzer.

Bingo! Thanks for the quick response. I deleted them, re-added, and they now skip commercials the same way as the mothership.

I agree that the show analyzer CA is better than the 4000's and it's a welcome feature on 7MC! I also really like Remote Potato and the "My Channel Logos for 7MC" add-ons as well. Now 7MC is really nice to look at and work with.

You have been a bright star leading the way to a great 7MC experience, thanks again.

glad I could help. Any tidbits you've found along the way yourself are more than welcome; my goal is as Replay-like an experience as I can manage. So far it's pretty much there, but there's always room for improvement.

I'll be checking SA, but do you know offhand if all of the xml and other files created to mark up a show are deleted when the show is deleted?? I use an SSD for my boot drive and a raid drive for the TV Video files, I see that some log files for SA are on the SSD and the rest are on the raid with the TV files. Just wondered if I need to be the cleanup guy or if these progs are tidy with these things?

Also, when searching for a solution to the extender CA issue, I found another article on How-to setup DTB and SA in 7MC by Mike Garcen. After loading the 3 programs he mentions this config add-on;

10/28 EDIT: Note If you use an EXTENDER check that;

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVer sion\\Media Center\\Service, AlwaysUseFPD(DWORD) = 1"

I've no clue what this does, I didn't see that dword but went and created one, rebooted, and don't notice anything different.

I'm half wondering about that myself. They're *supposed* to be deleted, but...I have a directory full of stuff. It may be early stuff, the result of my messing around, getting it all squared away. I'll have to look more closely.

I don't know exactly why the registry entry you show is mentioned, but I have seen it mentioned with respect to "hey, my extender quit doing CA, what can I do".

Checked and sad to say that it does leave about 6 files behind after a show is deleted.

In my RecordedTV Folder, 3 Files,
.vprj, .xml, and wtv.chapters.xml all with the deleted show name.

In my Users\\public\\Dvrms Toolbox\\CommercialsXml are two more. .vih and .xml, again with show name.

In my Users\\public\\Dvrms Toolbox\\FWLogs are one last showname.log file

That's a lot of crap to leave behind. With all of this sophistication, you would think it would check for orphans and delete these when the main stored show was gone???

One last point, the family watched a few shows together tonight, I didn't mention the new CA feature in 7MC. They are used to 10 years of Replay CA and after only a few skips in 7MC they were saying "wow, that thing is great!". It really skips well, transition wise.

I seem to recall some sort of "clean up" menu item in the SA user interface. I'll have to take a close look.

In the meantime, let's ask over in the SA user forum...

Hey guys - couple more media center questions...
1 - pause buffer.
On replay, you can watch the pause buffer through to the end after the device changes channel to begin recording. We use this a LOT here...
Can you set media center to do this too? So far it seems not...

2- Anyone have the hauppauge colossus? I'm having a hell of a time getting the internal blaster to work for crap.

Congratulations you beat me to it!

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you won't regret it. Much more forward thinking and versatile than the Judas-Kiss of the cetons.
Also in that more recent review, he talks about the blaster modes and possible fix for the BSOD problem. It won't be all smooth sailing and lollipops but you are definitely heading in the right direction for more control of your HD future.

...and yet, it is not at all necessarily so that recordings made with the Ceton are copy protected.

Why are you saying that they *are* all copy/DRM protected?

ken - any answer to the "watch the pause buffer" question?

I would say yes, that you could watch the pause buffer. This may depend on how many tuners you have in your system. On mine with 4 analog and 4 digital tuners, the show I would be watching would have one tuner and pause buffer tied up.

If additional simultaneous recordings come up while I'm watching another, 7MC will just grab the next available tuner and record in the background.

But no way in a 1 tuner situation then...
and, to follow up,
No way to determine which tuner a recording is assigned to (since you're probably better off combining the guide, right?)?

I believe you can assign the different guides to different tuners, I don't. I haven't seen a way to see which tuner is assigned to a recording. There is an add-on that allows you to have LED or Keyboard lights indicate certain states, like multiple tuners in use and extenders in use.

thanks.
One guide = simple
that's what the wife expects...

Whats nice is that you can sweep to the left of the guide and select favorite lineups so the wife can have her own lineup subset.

I have our Replays and 7MC running, programmed the remote to access either system with 1 button and let it rip. So far they've migrated to the 7MC and haven't looked back. My daughter likes the 7MC guide the best, especially with the "My Channel Logos" add-on., it's really nice. I just don't have the heart to bring down the Replays just yet...

Adam, a question, do you ever have the saved shows guide loose the show thumbnail photos? I have seen this recently and a quick re-boot of the 7MC restores them but I'm curious as to why they would go away.

Very occasionally on the main "Recorded TV" screen I'll see just a blue square instead of the first frame thumbnail from the latest show, but once I go into that show and see all the recordings there, it's always been good thumbnails for all shows.

BTW, I had a burp a couple of weeks ago that had me tearing my hair out. A couple burps, actually. For some reason, the ShowAnalyzer .xml files were being created and then were going away immediately. To fix that, I ultimately uninstalled and reinstalled both DTb and SA--but SA would stop after 10-15 hours, and I had to reboot. (In addition, after the first reinstall SA wouldn't update its GUI.)

I quickly suspected that SA wasn't the problem, but that DTb and its directory watcher was. The answer was NOT to go ahead and get the latest DTb from May, but instead go back to the original March version of DTb. Once I did that, the directory watcher started working right and hasn't burped yet. I also did a repair on SA, and that fixed the GUI update issue.

Heads up.