Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by matt91

Ugh. I had to do this for something a year or two ago when I needed a certain cable "immediately." I couldn't bear to look it up on monoprice to see what the cost differential was.

Alas, I guess there is some benefit to being able to drive out and buy something right away rather than wait for shipping.

LMAO, after thinking about how much BB was going to charge me vs monoprice I remembered that I already had analog stereo cables and opted for that instead. They work fine.

SHS, I shut down Sage and put those lines into the sage.properties file but they don't show up as choices anywhere in Sage.

Slugger, luckily for me my HD-PVR's only work with mmc/hdpvr_magic=false. When Narflex introduced that setting I set it to true and immediately starting having problems. Set it back to false and I went back to my normal HD-PVR instability level.

S

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by Wrx4me

I received mine on Monday but had to remove it due to stability issues which also affected my once stable farm of 2 HDPVR's. But this weekend I intend to re-enable it and test some more. It seems that most of the users not having any problems are using stereo audio and not spdif so I will try it again without optical audio and see how stable it is. This may just be the same growing pains experienced in the early days of the HDPVR with spdif.

My suspicion (confirmed by Slugger) is that Colossus + HDPVR = trouble. All my problems occurred with the Analog audio (not SPDIF).

If I get time today, I may try the hdpvr_magic=false trick. Otherwise, I'll stand pat until the next beta.

[videolog]

Been reading til my eyes bleed.

Does anyone have Colossus and HD-pvr working together?

[AlphaCrew]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I just made the change on both my units. The movie I first noticed PQ issues on is showing again on Monday on the same channel I previously saw the issue, so I'll be doing a nearly direct comparison. If I see the artifacts go away, I'll record it at the old setting again and post some screenshots of both, so people can see the difference.

Can someone please tell me where to put the string in the new sage.properties setup.. (HD-PVR)

I placed the string:


mmc/python2_encoding/HDPVRMax=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

at the top of the text file, and while the option shows up under the quality settings, it does not appear to change the actual recording.

any idea's

[sleonard]

It doesn't change the actual recording because it is the same as the built-in "Best H.264" on the HD-PVR (13.5Mb/s = 5.9 GB/hr).

I tried adding the 20Mb/s setting for the Colossus but can't get it to show up in the UI.

S

[Wrx4me]

Originally Posted by spacecadet

My suspicion (confirmed by Slugger) is that Colossus + HDPVR = trouble. All my problems occurred with the Analog audio (not SPDIF).

If I get time today, I may try the hdpvr_magic=false trick. Otherwise, I'll stand pat until the next beta.

You maybe onto something there, Colossus standalone = acceptable instability
Colossus+HDPVR = All hell breaks loose. We need people who have the later combination to post their settings and what works for them. I will try to confirm the former by removing my HDPVR's and running only the colossus for a while and see what happens. I have some children shows recording now so I dare not make a change now or else I will hear it from my 5 year old.

[AlphaCrew]

Originally Posted by sleonard

It doesn't change the actual recording because it is the same as the built-in "Best H.264" on the HD-PVR (13.5Mb/s = 5.9 GB/hr).

I tried adding the 20Mb/s setting for the Colossus but can't get it to show up in the UI.

S

Ok, so if that is the case, then this entire conversation (in context to my prev. complaint) is completely mute. I would have suspected that at the very least the recordings would be recording at CBR, instead of the default VBR..

Mamma Mia...

[uberpixel]

Just wanted to report that after a few mis-steps on the install, my Colossus has been running without issue for the last few days.

Video quality looks a little rough, but I found that my default recording quality was set on Good. I've upped it to Best but haven't taken a close look since then.

This is my first foray into the HD-PVR world - so it took me a while to figure out which drivers I needed vs. which I did not. Specifically I neglected to install the IR blaster driver the first time around...

Also, I'd like to have comskip on my H.264 files - so I'll be sending a long overdue donation to comskip.org.

-uberpixel

[sleonard]

I may have spoke too soon. I'm not sure if the built-in setting is vbr or cbr. I think it is cbr.

I also changed:

mmc/python2_encoding/HDPVRMax=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

to

mmc/python2_encoding/Colossus=videobitrate\=20000000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

and used that instead of what SHS posted for the Colossus and it shows up in the UI and records successfully. I haven't yet analyzed the resulting file to see what/how it changed.

S

BTW, it shouldn't matter where in the .properties file you put it but I usually put it in alpha order to match the rest of the lines.

[sleonard]

I have one Colossus and 2 HD-PVR's working successfully. I had to use analog stereo on the Colossus because S/PDIF won't work in Sage but that had nothing to do with the HD-PVR's.

I just installed the Colossus yesterday afternoon/evening so I don't have much recording time with the new setup but so far so good.

S

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by sleonard

BTW, it shouldn't matter where in the .properties file you put it but I usually put it in alpha order to match the rest of the lines.

Sage will end up re-alphabetizing it anyways after next run/stop cycle. I usually at leat put it before the zzz=true property at the end... not sure if that's there just for the alphabetizing routing, but I like to leave it at the end to be sure.

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by sleonard

I may have spoke too soon. I'm not sure if the built-in setting is vbr or cbr. I think it is cbr.

I also changed:

mmc/python2_encoding/HDPVRMax=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

to

mmc/python2_encoding/Colossus=videobitrate\=20000000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

and used that instead of what SHS posted for the Colossus and it shows up in the UI and records successfully. I haven't yet analyzed the resulting file to see what/how it changed.

S

BTW, it shouldn't matter where in the .properties file you put it but I usually put it in alpha order to match the rest of the lines.

As mentioned a couple of posts back, the built-in Best H.264 is 12Mbps CBR. 13.5 vs 12Mbps is obviously close, so I doubt that you see a difference. But the VBR recording should be quite a bit smaller.

[GKusnick]

Installed mine yesterday and have made half a dozen recordings so far without a hitch. Never had an HD-PVR on this system so no interaction issues to worry about there. Took me a couple of tries to get the audio set up right (plugged the cable into the wrong port, forgot to enable optical out on the STB) but once I did it just worked. Have not messed with any property settings or changed the quality from the default "Great H.264".

I am seeing some weird aspect ratios like 15:11 on 480i content that's apparently being pillarboxed by the STB, but I haven't put much effort into troubleshooting that yet.

This is replacing an ancient DirecTV R5000 unit that has been slowly dying over the past couple of months, so the timing worked out well.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Installed mine yesterday and have made half a dozen recordings so far without a hitch. Never had an HD-PVR on this system so no interaction issues to worry about there. Took me a couple of tries to get the audio set up right (plugged the cable into the wrong port, forgot to enable optical out on the STB) but once I did it just worked. Have not messed with any property settings or changed the quality from the default "Great H.264".

I am seeing some weird aspect ratios like 15:11 on 480i content that's apparently being pillarboxed by the STB, but I haven't put much effort into troubleshooting that yet.

This is replacing an ancient DirecTV R5000 unit that has been slowly dying over the past couple of months, so the timing worked out well.

Greg have you tried hdmi I know some have it working with directv boxes as well.

[SWKerr]

I've been playing with the Colossus again today after having some trouble with the first try earlier this week.
AMD x4 running Win7-64
DirecTV H20 - 1080i with optical SPDIF and channel change with DirecTV USB to Serial cables.

Truthfully my two HD-PVR have been really stable for the last year or so. I may retire a HD-PVR or add another STB if the Colossus works out.

Right now I am running it from the pass-thru on the HD-PVR. This way I can switch quickly between the HD-PVR and the Colossus. I just disable one or the other.

First thing I discovered is that at some point I accidentally hit the resolution button on the H20 DirecTV receiver and it was set on 720p. At that resolution it did not record anything that was playable and kept crashing. After setting it on 1080i things settled down.

Things I have noticed so far:
1. Picture quality is noticeably better than the HD-PVR but still not as good as the HDHR (OTA).
2. I was surprised to discover that the audio was AAC.
3. Does not play well with the HD-PVRs. If I try to record with the Colossus and the HD-PVR at the same time Sage becomes very unstable. (Reboot Unstable)

Another issue is that the new version of SageTV is suddenly not playing some imported HD video files. (compressed m2ts videos) Not all just some.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by sleonard

I may have spoke too soon. I'm not sure if the built-in setting is vbr or cbr. I think it is cbr.

I also changed:

mmc/python2_encoding/HDPVRMax=videobitrate\=13500000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

to

mmc/python2_encoding/Colossus=videobitrate\=20000000|vbr\=0|outputstreamtype\=1

and used that instead of what SHS posted for the Colossus and it shows up in the UI and records successfully. I haven't yet analyzed the resulting file to see what/how it changed.

S

BTW, it shouldn't matter where in the .properties file you put it but I usually put it in alpha order to match the rest of the lines.

That kind of odd I see it just fine

[Clift]

Originally Posted by bits

I received my Colosuss about a week ago and I am planning on installing it tomorrow. I have been following this thread and I was wondering if anyone has completely switched over to the Colosuss and are using iit on an everyday basis?

I will be replacing my PVR150 with it and hooking it via component to my cable TV Motorola STB using USB-URIT for channel changing. Initially I would like to be able to record the shows that my PVR150 does, which means that my initial expectations for video and audio are very basic. Ultimately though I am hoping to record more channels in HD.

I have already upgraded to the latest STV beta and so far that seems to be working properly. My PC has recently been imaged and I have a full backup copy of the SageTV folder. I will be sure to use the zip file provided in this thread for the Colosuss drivers. Am I forgetting anything?

I use the Colossus HD PVR exclusively and I haven't had a crash. My SageTV does seems to be a bit slower, but I think that may be due to resources (i.e. the PCIe card uses more resources than the USB). Maybe the drivers are less mature, who knows.

[TechBill]

Today is Day 4 using Colossus

Our sounds went choppy today so I had to restart my server to get the sound back to normal.

We only using analog stereo set up


We're suprised that the sound went bad today and don't know why. Perhaps drivers is not ready and need to be tweaked some more.


Bill

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by SHS

That kind of odd I see it just fine

wait that screenshot says mpeg?

[AlphaCrew]

Originally Posted by Rico66

As mentioned a couple of posts back, the built-in Best H.264 is 12Mbps CBR. 13.5 vs 12Mbps is obviously close, so I doubt that you see a difference. But the VBR recording should be quite a bit smaller.

MediaInfo always returns VBR, is this a defect in MediaInfo?