DVBDream as network encoder ?

[johandm]

Hi all,

I have been using SageTV 2.2.7 for a very long time now, and I am planning a major upgrade soon to bring it up to the latest version + install a dish antenna and add DVB-S tuners...

In my search of what is out there, I ran accross DVBDream, (http://www.dvbdream.org/) from what I read it looks like it is a nice package. (Have not tried myself yet though)

I was wondering wether the DVBDream software (which can stream the video to clients over a LAN connection) can be used as a "network encoder" that provides the video to my SageTV server over the LAN.

Is there anybody who has experience with that ? (or other suggestions) ?

Ideally, I would like a black box that can has 4 (HD) tuners that I can hide somewhere in the garage, seperate from my SageTV server machine. In fact I think the "HD HomeRun" (http://www.silicondust.com/main/inde...od&productId=5) would be ideal for me, but I don't think it supports DVB-S...

Thanks,
Johan.

[marsh9man]

I don't know anything about dvbdream, but there is a plugin that supports mytheatre as a network encoder for dvb-s. It is very reliable.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...81&postcount=1

[johandm]

Thanks for the reply marsh9man.

Yes, I had seen the thread you refer to as well.
Do you know if I can have multiple (say : 4) tuners in one machine and then run 4 sessions of mytheatre at the same time (to provide Sage with 4 tuner sources) ?

Thanks again,
Johan.

[AtariJeff]

Yes that does work. I ran it for a while but ultimately had to give it up because MT is incredibly unstable and a resource hog - especially when running 4 instances of it at the same time.

[johandm]

Hi AtariJeff,

Thanks for this information.

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

...because MT is incredibly unstable and a resource hog...

That was my general impression about MT after reading the whole thread; it makes me very hesitant to even go this route. I don't want a system that I have to baby sit the whole time. I travel a lot, so it happens often that I am away from home for more than a week where I want it to be reliable.

I'll start buying my own equipment soon. We'll see, I'll be monitoring these threads and I will also let you know my findings.

Thanks again,
Johan.

[xred]

Originally Posted by johandm

Thanks for the reply marsh9man.

Yes, I had seen the thread you refer to as well.
Do you know if I can have multiple (say : 4) tuners in one machine and then run 4 sessions of mytheatre at the same time (to provide Sage with 4 tuner sources) ?

Thanks again,
Johan.

I run a P4 2.4 GHz machine with 1 gig RAM and 2 Twinhan 1020A cards in it and it runs great. I reboot it about once every two weeks or so. My main SageTV machine is an A64 3000 and it uses the MyTheatre machine as network tuner just fine. A couple of recommendations on the setup if you go with it:

Run WDM drivers for your DVB cards under Mytheatre if at all possible. The drivers that come with MyTheatre are recommended as they are the ones it is tested with and will usually cause less problems.

If you need EPG data exported out of MyTheatre (very handy) setup only one instance of Mytheatre to grab the data. Disable EPG parsing in the remaining instances.

[johandm]

Great, thanks for this info xred!

[grooves12]

Although, the Mytheatre Network Encoder works for the most part I would really love to see a DVBDream plugin.

Mytheatre is a resource hog, it crashes regularly, it takes forever to do transponder scans and then does not pick up the proper channel information half the time, it has little support for updates (especially for a pay application), and the BIG ONE it does not support h.264 streams.

DVB Dream seems to be the better application, and I would love to have a network encoder for Sage compatible with it. In fact I would be willing to pay someone to develop one for me, since I have no programming skills. I've tried to get the Universal Network Encoder working, but it seems the way DVBDream uses the Directshow filter to create the transport streams is not compatible with the UNE. (But I could be just be configuring it wrong.)

[grooves12]

See this thread: http://dvbn.happysat.org/viewtopic.php?t=41365

A working version of a network encoder for DVBdream, would love to see if someone with access to h.264 streams can get them working in Sage.

[mach5]

Originally Posted by grooves12

See this thread: http://dvbn.happysat.org/viewtopic.php?t=41365

A working version of a network encoder for DVBdream, would love to see if someone with access to h.264 streams can get them working in Sage.

Thanks. Been looking for this too.

[mkanet]

I'm not sure how active that forum is for the SageTV DVBDream network encoder; or if the development for it is still going strong. I'm hoping someone here might be using that network encoder and has a suggestion for my post in that forum thread (last post). All I want is for the network encoder to put DVBDream in an "untuned channel" state after the network encoder is done streaming. Otherwise, DVBDream stays stuck tuning that channel; eating away at CPU cycles and other system resources; even if DVBDream is in renderless mode sitting in the windows system tray. This is particularly problematic for channels that are high bandwidth or on a huge transpoder with lots of channels.

Maybe SageTV by now has full native support for DVBWorld tuners; and, DVBDream is no longer needed?

[harco]

I've been using the DVBdream and the network encoder since it came out with a lot of success. I have 3 dvb-s cards so I'm running 3 instances of dvbdream all the time. They launch in renderless mode and use minimal cpu.
I don't know of a way to stop it from tuning and in my case I wouldn't want it to. I have a subscription and the updates to my package would not happen if it were not tuning when they send them. As long as you stop tuning in Sagetv then the recording has stopped, nothing being written to the hard drive. I think thats the best it will do.