Nice product but.....

[jerrytaff]

Hello,

 

So far I'm pretty impressed with the pro version. Picture quality is good, and I even managed to record 2 channels simultaneously while watching a third. I'm particularly impressed with the EPG. I have seen dedicated hard disk recorders which take the best part of an hour to populate; and then lose the information when switched off.

 

I haven't really investigated the plugins yet. The scheduler and the videorecorder seem to give more control than the basic app, but for my wife to use this, simpler is better, so I'm hoping not to need to use any of them.

 

I had a bit of a problem over the tuning, but it automagically resolved itself. I started off by scanning with transedit and exporting. Importing into DVBViewer gave all channels working, except for ITV1 which had no sound. (for 2 days - multiple reboots etc). I blew away the channel list, and got DVBViewer to scan. This gave me non-working programme-crashing duplicates for every channel, so I deleted them. This totally confused the programme and the channel I got bore no relation to the channel I requested. So, I blew that channel list away, and tried again with transedit. This time around it found the ITV mux at every frequency it scanned! So, I powered down, powered back up, and lo and behold, I didn't need to rescan, every channel was working, (with sound) with no duplicates. How? Why?

 

I have a number of questions:

 

1) How do I get the scheduler to work? The menu option is greyed out.

2) Does anyone know how to use the remote that comes with the kworld dvbt pci card?

It uses ir, and using the remote software that came with it, some of the keys (eg channel up/down, volume up/down) work provided mouse focus is in the correct window. Other buttons like power on and record don't work at all.

3) Is there anyway to get the picture and sound back after it crashes without a reboot? This has happening to me all to often. It seems I can crash it almost at will once the OSD menu is displayed. Is this a known problem?

4) It occasionally drops a few frames, despite the fact that the processor spends most of its time 20-30% loaded. What are the best filters to use? I have an Nvidia geforce 4 MX420 graphics card. Should I go for the nvidia video decoder?

5) what are the pros and cons of using the mixing renderers as opposed to the overlay mixer?

6) Why do I get the mtv2 logo appear when I select ITV2? (the channel is correct - I haven't loaded any channel logos myself, but somehow, this one seems to have attached itself). How do I remove it?

 

I haven't given the usual hardware/software info, because I suspect that all these questions have obvious answers for those in the know.

 

Regards,

 

Jeremy

[Guest Oliver]

1. http://www.DVBViewer.com/oliver/Optionen.html#extopt

 

3. Download skyreset from the service center.

 

4. Shouldn't be. How did you check this?

 

5. The overlay mixer is way faster than VMR. VMR offers better transparencies, though.

[jerrytaff]

1. That's the menu option that was greyed out. However, looking at the .rtf file that comes with the scheduler plugin I realise its because I didn't have my user account set up to use a windows password. The scheduler that came with the card, and pvrscheduler, which I have also used apparently bypass the windows task scheduler; so I'd never discovered that the scheduler needs a password.

 

3. So that works on non-satellite cards as well? I've also had the software lock the mux a couple of times -so I can only get the channels for a specific frequency. Once DVBViewer has caused the problem, my other software suffers the same problem.

 

4. Not sure what the question is. Processor loading is from windows task scheduler. Dropped frames are from observation; It is especially noticeable watching football. I don't get the problem using the software that came with the card, but, using the same filters it is much worse using mediaportal. Actually it looks to me as if it could be some software element deliberately discarding frames in order to restore sync between sound and vision. On a long recording the software that comes with the card gets itself out of sync.

 

5. Thanks. Actually, the overlay mixer doesn't seem to give any transparency at all on my system.

[Guest Lars_MQ]

3. No it only works for B2C2 cards. this answer could have been avoided if you gave further hardware informations.

 

4. you can't measure the cpu load with the taskmanager, there may be short peaks the taskmanager won't show. Set in Options the priority to high and if you have a HT system uncheck the use first cpu only. Dropped frames kann be quite accurate observed on the property page of the dvb source (view/filters). There you can also test when this discontinuities occur.

 

5. correct, Overlay has no tranparencies but normaly the better picture with lower cpu load.

[Guest Oliver]

so I'd never discovered that the scheduler needs a password.

It doesn't. I have no password. But you can change the security settings of windows (see scheduler manual).

[jerrytaff]

so I'd never discovered that the scheduler needs a password.

It doesn't. I have no password. But you can change the security settings of windows (see scheduler manual).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I meant that by default, without a registry hack, windows does not allow task scheduling from users who log in without a password. That is why the scheduling option was greyed out. The scheduler plugin text says as much, and shows how to change the registry settings. That is fine, but until you give up with the inbuilt scheduling, and start looking at the plugin, there is nothing to point this out. May I suggest that the DVBViewer manual could usefully be improved to point new users in the right direction?

[Guest Oliver]

Well, the manual points to the scheduler from the service center which provides further instructions.