Thinking about going with DirecTV - What will I need to make it work with SageTV?

[HelenWeathers]

I have H20s, H21s and 1 H24. The H20s work very well with USB-UIRT and USB channel changes, the H21s & 24 seem a bit sluggish to me in that department but work. All work with the HD-PVR (which doesn't record 3D or 1080p).

[Evil_Attorney]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

I get some great recordings using variable bit rate with the HD PVR. I have the following line in my sage.properties file to define a quality named MyBest which uses variable bit rate:

mmc/python2_encoding/H.264\ MyBest\ VBR=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=1|outputstreamtype\=1

At 1080i I can't see any difference between the HD PVR and OTA.

Helen, is there a noticeable picture quality difference between your custom setting and the standard "best" setting in Sage? Did you do any comparison between your higher VBR and a higher CBR setting with regards to picture quality?

[stanger89]

I had one set up like that but never use it because I couldn't tell any difference. I posted short clips (not torture tests by any means) a while back from my R5000 and HD PVR.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

Helen, is there a noticeable picture quality difference between your custom setting and the standard "best" setting in Sage? Did you do any comparison between your higher VBR and a higher CBR setting with regards to picture quality?

I do see a noticable difference in the 1080i recordings - not so much with the 720p recordings - but the 720p recordings have a much smaller file size than at the Best default setting.

EDIT: I tried the same mmc setting with vbr\=0 (false) and it wasn't much different than the Best H.264 setting.

[Evil_Attorney]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

I do see a noticable difference in the 1080i recordings - not so much with the 720p recordings - but the 720p recordings have a much smaller file size than at the Best default setting.

EDIT: I tried the same mmc setting with vbr\=0 (false) and it wasn't much different than the Best H.264 setting.

I just tried a vbr and cbr setting. My hd200 seemed to choke or pause a bit at the beginning of each recording starting. It's possible there was a slight reduction in compression artifacts but it wasn't obvious. I may play around with them a little more.

[gtd885a]

Well, so far so good. Built my new Sage server last night, set up the HD-PVR using the IR blaster that came with it, and everything seems to be working fine (for now at least). It was a pain to go through the guide and pick all of the correct channels (only preset options were 'basic' and 'extended basic', ugh), especially since the setup is so slow to tune, but other than that it was pretty smooth.

Cautiously optimistic...

[stanger89]

FWIW, you don't need to tune them to enable/disable them.

[teedublu]

I noticed no Peak Bit Rate setting ( |peakvideobitrate\=bps ) was used -- above. It makes sense to specify this when using VBR -- otherwise, you don't know what that peak level is going to be, since I haven't seen any info on it (such as a default ratio etc) .

I found on MythTV some info that shows some command-line arguments that support the Peak Bit Rate setting up to 20.2 Mbps. A little math check shows a factor of approx 1.5 over the video bit rate (max of 13.5mbps), which may be the default ratio anyway.

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR

TW

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by teedublu

I noticed no Peak Bit Rate setting ( |peakvideobitrate\=bps ) was used -- above. TW

The TME software that came with the HD PVR allowed you to set variable bit rate based on variable average or on variable peak.

I messed around a lot with different settings (not really knowing what I was doing), and that was the one I settled on. Happily, I might add.

[gtd885a]

Originally Posted by stanger89

FWIW, you don't need to tune them to enable/disable them.

Yeah, I know, but for some reason a lot of the channel #'s that were in the SageTV guide were different from the ones in my channel guide from DirecTV, so I was having to test a lot of them (I picked DirecTV Atlanta for my guide, maybe that was wrong).

Also, when I was setting up the blaster, I wasn't sure which Model/CodeSet to use for the H23. I ended up with DirecTV and CodeSet 197 by letting it test them all. It seems to work, but is there a better setup (couldn't find this info for some reason)?

[gtd885a]

Ugh. I just added my HDHR and now my HD-PVR blaster says "No blaster HW found". Nothing is tuning now. Could this have anything to do with the IR blaster associating itself with the last tuner installed? Any advice?

[gtd885a]

Ok, so i uninstalled Sage and everything Happauge, rebooted, reinstalled HD-PVR stuff, rebooted, configured IR, reinstalled Sage, configured HD-PVR, rebooted.

Still didn't work. It was like the HD-PVR and Sage weren't talking. So just for the heck of it I power cycled the HD-PVR, then it started working. That was last night. This morning nothing works again.

[gtd885a]

Well, I loaded 1.5.6.1 a few days ago and it has been stable so far. No missed recordings or channel changes for a few days (this reminds me of when I was trying to get firewire recording working so many years ago, lol).

I do notice some odd skipping though. The device just stops recording for a second or two periodically (I have it sitting right next to me and I notice the blue light goes off during a recording sometimes). That may just be a bad signal though, not sure.

[Evil_Attorney]

Originally Posted by gtd885a

Well, I loaded 1.5.6.1 a few days ago and it has been stable so far. No missed recordings or channel changes for a few days (this reminds me of when I was trying to get firewire recording working so many years ago, lol).

I do notice some odd skipping though. The device just stops recording for a second or two periodically (I have it sitting right next to me and I notice the blue light goes off during a recording sometimes). That may just be a bad signal though, not sure.

That happens with mine too. Since mine are in the closet, It is difficult to correlate it anything. The video in my recordings all seem fine, but I get 2-3 sound dropouts in my recordings per hour. I am connected to my Directv boxes via SPDIF, so I suspect that it is an audio interruption or issue that is causing my problem. I have heard many complaints (on other forums) that Directv's audio signal causes periodic dropouts in 5.1 sound that can be augmented when your surround sound receiver "re-determines" what format the audio is in.