My advise: do not buy the wMVP

[Franc]

Man, am I sorry for ever buying that piece of ...

Since day 1 it has been a struggle. Connecting but not starting up (hanging boot screen), connecting but so terribly slow that I could hardly navigate through the menus, let alone play any video.

After 1 week of wanting to smash it (only the fact that it cost me 140 euros stopped me from literally banging it against a wall), I decided to buy a wifi extender to see if that would help, as the device seemed more reliable if I kept it within very close range of my wifi router.

Indeed, this helped and now I could watch TV/Video/Music upstairs too.

Somewhat happier.

Until 2 days ago. I took it downstairs again, within 2 meters (line of sight) from my router, not using the extender, which had been working for over a month.
Started up okay, network okay (got an IP address, found the server) but then it hung with the band of noise at the bottom, just before you see the Sage boot screen.
It never got any further than that and I had to leave it unplugged from power for 5 minutes before I could attempt to start it up again.
No luck, same thing. Rebooted server, switched from UI to service mode and back, reboot server again, taking the device even closer to the router....NOTHING helped.
The only way to fix this appeared to be using the Extender again (which I keep upstairs normally to also extend the wifi for my laptop).
It works okay with the Extender, but overnight, for some reason, it just decided to stop working with the internal wireless network!!

So now I have to drag 2 devices along with me whenever I want to watch TV.
I can live with that (although my wife thinks I am nuts), but I have a feeling I could have saved a lot of money by buying the simple wired version.

Hauppauge should be sued for selling this wireless piece of crap.

Aaahh, I feel much better now

Buyers, BEWARE!

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Franc

Hauppauge should be sued for selling this wireless piece of crap.

Buyers, BEWARE!

I agree on both points.

But the problem is, the general public is eaither not picky about what they consider to be "working well" or enough people just get lucky.

I had a wired one and gave it away because I considered it unfit for sale.

Simply trying to skip through commercials would hoplessly confuse the damn thing.

As to buyers - if you bought one through a "normal" retailer you can return it for a refund in most cases.

But never buy one through Sage. Why? Sage refuses to abide by the standard practice of a money back guarantee. I asked about it when I heard that Sage was selling Sage branded versions and thought maybe I'd give an MVP another chance.

But when I asked about a money back guarantee, they flat out said it was against their policy, citing some lame excuse about "licensing".

Buyer beware indeed.

[garyellis]

I never bought the wireless ones, because my TV doesn't move, so why would I need an MVP that could move.

Anyway, I bought 2 MVP's and they have worked pretty much flawlessly from the minute I took them out of the box. And the picture quality is better than what I get form my "cheap" video card in the main server.

Gary Ellis

[sjgore]

I can understand your frustrations, because I had exactly the same problems about two weeks when I bought my first wMVP.

On the rare occasion that I got past the boot screen, the menus would take at least 5 seconds to respond to the remote, and videos played in fits and burts with long pauses inbetween.

In the end, on the recommendation of somebody on this forum, I bought a Belkin Wireless-G Access Point to go with my Belkin Wireless-G Router.

With my wMVP hard-wired to the Access Point (and the wMVP settings changed from 'wireless' to 'wired') my MVP now works flawlessly with SageTV.

Had I known about these problems with the wireless versions before my purchase, I could have saved myself £30 by getting the non-wireless MVP.

Hopefully this thread will prevent others from making the same mistake!

Steve.

[Franc]

I agree, once it works (and as long as it keeps working), image quality is perfect. It's just that wireless part that's just worthless.

I bought wireless because my router is on the other side of a wall and high in a closet, without any possibility of having UTP from there to my TV (without driving the wife insane, that is )
That and the fact that I can take it upstairs now and maybe one day have one in my son's room.

[Franc]

Originally Posted by sjgore

With my wMVP hard-wired to the Access Point (and the wMVP settings changed from 'wireless' to 'wired') my MVP now works flawlessly with SageTV.

Exactly what I'm doing now

Originally Posted by sjgore

Had I known about these problems with the wireless versions before my purchase, I could have saved myself £30 by getting the non-wireless MVP.

Exactly my point

[sjgore]

I never bought the wireless ones, because my TV doesn't move, so why would I need an MVP that could move.

It's nothing to do with whether the MVP moves, it's the fact that you don't have drill and cut your house to pieces trying to lay network cables!

Steve.

[Franc]

Originally Posted by sjgore

It's nothing to do with whether the MVP moves, it's the fact that you don't have drill and cut your house to pieces trying to lay network cables!

Steve.

Soooo good to find out I'm not alone in this

[garyellis]

understand..that wasn't a problem for me..I already had the cables run from "pre wireless days"...

Gary Ellis

[FidgetyRat]

I feel for you guys.

But we have had "don't buy wireless MVP" threads since they started being produced. You had quite a bit of warning from this board. It is unfortunate it is such a miserable device, but can't really blame sage for that.

Also chiming in on the <3 my wired MVP.


Then again, i'm so anti-wireless its not funny. Give me the speed, stability, reliability and security of a good wired network any day.

[sjgore]

You had quite a bit of warning from this board.

Unfortunately for me, I bought the MVP and then found this board whilst googling for alternative PVR software!

Steve

[ybrew]

Wired MVPs work great if run in wired mode.

Luckily I only bought one. Wireless *worked* but way too much stutter. Really unwatchable. No problems once I wired it.

The last 3 I bought have been the wired versions.

[Franc]

What I don't understand is that someone can build a wifi extender (like I have from Sitecom) works works perfectly when you wire the wireless MVP to it, but that Hauppauge can;t manage to put a decent wifi device in their MVP.

I mean, I pay 50 euros more to have a wMVP, only to have to spend another 56 euros on an extender that does what the wMVP should be able to do.

Does 6 euros really make a difference on a piece of wifi equipment??

[stevech]

the wireless MVP probably has a very poor antenna and inferior WiFi radio as compared to WiFi products per se.

If you cannot route a cable to the locale, then a solution is to buy a decent WiFi bridge and use the wired MVP. And follow all the guidelines on best WiFi coverage configurations. There are some good tutorials on http://www.dslreports.com/forum/wlan

"Without Mobility, Wireless Isn't Needed"

(except in homes where cables are too hard to run)

There are ways to put the MVP in a central location and modulate it onto an unused TV cable channel ($30 modulator) and feed the IR remote via cable TV coax or RF/Wireless IR extender.

[Fluffdaddy]

Franc, my old wireless MVP Poll backs you up

http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=19724

[Franc]

Yeah, I see.

Sorry about this rant guys, I was just soooo fed up with the thing.

Or not even the MVP itself, just the wifi part.

Connected to the extender it works wonderfully well. I can now even walk past it without video stuttering or MVP rebooting (yes, that happend ALOT with the wMVP on its own).

So I am now on the look out for a wired MVP to use upstairs so I don't have to carry it around with me anymore. But thos dang things are hard to come by.
The store I bought this wMVP was first out of stock for the wired ones, 3-5 days delivery on the wireless, now they are both out of stock without telling if and when they'll be available.

If anyone has one for sale and lives in Europe, let me know!

[jrolson7]

I think since you've bypassed the built in wireless on the MVP it will be smooth sailing now.

I've just added the wired MVP with Sage TV to my setup, and I'm really liking it. Figured the built in stuff in the wMvp was probably an afterthought, like the TV out on a video card, plus I already had a wireless bridge to use on it. It's working nicely with SageTV on a USRobotices G wirelss network, connected to USR G wireless bridge. I'm impressed with the smoothness of the video and the of the menus.

While it's not as responsive as it is when run on a PC, Sage TV on the MVP runs way ahead of the rest of the DVR software pack. And it's relatively easy to configure.

I've experimented with several different DVR software's, and they are so slow on the MVP that I know I would not be patient enough to use them for long. I think Sage on the MVP is roughly as quick or maybe a little faster then the Replaytv box I used to have. Video quality out to standard definition TV is quite good too, far better then any PC video card output I've tried. I use the video out on a PVR 350 as well, also excellent quality and the aspect ratio can be adjusted in Sage to fit the screen perfectly. I've not tried HDMI / DVI video cards, I would expect that to be superior. But then I'm only outputting to SD TV's so far.

Could have saved a ton of time if I had tried Sage first, but it seems that it doesn't get as much attention as some of the other DVR software on the Internet reviews, I suppose because of the $$ factor.

Now I'll have to add in some STV's just to muddy the waters a bit, it's just working too well and all the fun is gone

[martin]

I managed to get my wired MVP working through Wi-Fi, but not without some grief. I was motivated to get it working, because running a wire through two floors to the server was going to be a lot of trouble.

Through trial and error, the only thing I found that worked was a pair of Linksys WAP54G wireless-G access points configured as a wireless bridge. First I tried setting the access point to be a normal ap client to a WRT54G access point, but the MVP could not boot. The MVP has to be plugged directly into the WAP54G without passing through a hub or a switch (tried both). Once I found this combination it has been working great.

I also had to replace my cordless phone with 5Ghz phones to reduce interference with the Wi-Fi.

AFIK, the WAP54G is the only Linksys access point that supports a bridge mode.

Martin

[stevech]

quite a few wireless ROUTERS have a bridge mode. These can be cheaper than an ACCESS POINT or a BRIDGE because of the popularity of routers. Belkin's w-routers usually have a bridge mode. The WAN port isn't used in bridge mode.

[jrolson7]

Good point - I'm using the USR G bridge only because I already had one.

Now that I've used the MediaMVP for a while I've found there are a few issues with it. One is that the text is fuzzy and hard to read on a standard definition TV. Increasing the font size a few points using SageMC make them look much better and they are much easier to read now. Not quite as good as they should be, and not as good as one would get from a dedicated DVR like a Replaytv or Tivo. But nothing horrible.

Also it seems the themes function in SageMC does not play well with the MediaMVP. Themes work fine on a clean install, but after a few reboots of the MVP the themes no longer work, they can not be changed either on the MVP or on the server PC. This may be because I have SageTV installed on the F: driver instead of C:, going to re-install on C: to see if that fixes the themes problem.

A tip for the new installs: don't expect wireless network connections to work as reliably as a wired connection. It won't. If you want the ultimate reliability, then run a wire.