Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Offending or not, this IS the reason i purchased 3 R-5000HD mods for my ViP-211's. That said, i did purchase two of the colossus cards, because one of the R-5000's has completely died, the other is flaking out. I can't justify the high price to replace the bad R-5000, when the Colossus will work almost as well, and cost a LOT less.

Agreed I am glad at this point I sold my r5000's last year. With a hdmi connection and saving the digital-analog-digital it should be near as good if my as good. Just hope we get mpeg2 support sometime. I do miss the file sizes of the r5000's though.

Question are you tuning with a usbuirt? I have heared you can tune with USB on dish boxes but haven't researched it yet to me that is one missing link from the r5000 one cord did it all. The usbuirt has been solid but I would take direct tuning via USB any day.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by djg

I have two Colossus working with H21-100 and HR21-200 Directv boxes. Both receivers work over HDMI but when they are set to output Dobly Digital 5.1 the picture is good but I just get a buzzing on the audio. Reset to stereo output they work on HDMI but I want the DD so am back to component.

I see the same thing in my dish have to set it to PCM but I am okay with that as i don't watch many sound programs on tv the good ones are reserved for blu ray I definately see a picture difference with hdmi as well so I will stay put. I had more old hd pvr hooked up analog sound anyhow.

[msgohan]

Originally Posted by patja

Here is a comparison of HD-PVR vs. Colossus. The text is from the 1080i HDNet test pattern. Same cables, source, etc. Colossus looks better to me.

Hmm, what did you use to take the screenshots? Weird artifacting on your HD-PVR shot and both are less sharp than stanger89's screenshot posted two years ago (though perhaps his is oversharp). His is wider, not sure which is correct.

attached

[PLUCKYHD]

So much can factor into that. Screen settings for one. That looks like allot of contrast and sharpness differences.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Question are you tuning with a usbuirt? I have heared you can tune with USB on dish boxes but haven't researched it yet to me that is one missing link from the r5000 one cord did it all. The usbuirt has been solid but I would take direct tuning via USB any day.

I used a USB-UIRT with my 3 ViP-211's for a year or so before modding them (feeding into a PVR-500 and a PVR-150), and it was flawless. No zoning or external emitters or anything, just a single USB-UIRT on the shelf in front of the stack of receivers. Each box set to a different IR Address (1, 2, and 3).

And, technically, you could still hardwire the IR signal from the USB-UIRT (probably through an optoisolator) to the IR receiver on the box, the way the R-5000 does, but I had 100% success with the USB-UIRT, so I don't feel it's really all that necessary.

[spacecadet]

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.

Added my Colossus back in as a tuner this morning with hdpvr_magic=false. So far so good... made a few recordings this morning with both the Colossus and HD PVR with no troubles... but the last time I tried the Colossus it also worked fine at first and took a full day for the problems to show up. I'll report back on the results later this week.

[jptheripper]

Well all is well Component/SPDIF from a Comcast/Cisco RNG150.

Channel changing is slow via usb-uirt but fully functional. Picture is beautiful. Tempting to try hdmi, but i just got it all working

Time to update the signature. Officially have 4 different hauppauge products for a total of 5 tuners. Have one more in a box but the video card takes up two slots (grrrr). Anyone got a single slot card wanna trade?
Its a palit 9600gt 1gb.

[bits]

Originally Posted by Clift

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.

Thank you for posting back.

I have the Colosuss installed and working but the naming of the recorded file is something like; HauppaugeColossusCapture0Component-0 instead of the name of the show. Also the file extension is something that makes no sense. Did I miss something?

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by bits

Thank you for posting back.

I have the Colosuss installed and working but the naming of the recorded file is something like; HauppaugeColossusCapture0Component-0 instead of the name of the show. Also the file extension is something that makes no sense. Did I miss something?

That just sounds like you are watching from the source setup screen, which doesn't associate it with a program (as during a normal setup process, there is no EPG yet at that point) - So it just names it for the encoder and input.

[spacecadet]

Originally Posted by spacecadet

Added my Colossus back in as a tuner this morning with hdpvr_magic=false. So far so good... made a few recordings this morning with both the Colossus and HD PVR with no troubles... but the last time I tried the Colossus it also worked fine at first and took a full day for the problems to show up. I'll report back on the results later this week.

Still no Colossus love. Sage locked up and I had to remove the Colossus (from Sage) and restart. Setting hdpvr_magic to false did not change the behavior for me.

[bits]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

That just sounds like you are watching from the source setup screen, which doesn't associate it with a program (as during a normal setup process, there is no EPG yet at that point) - So it just names it for the encoder and input.

If I schedule the recording and it records then all is good.

No luck with HDMI + CableTV + Motorola DCH6416 but component works. We will see how things go over the next few days. Comskip seems to work as well, but is much slower for h264 than MPEG!

[panteragstk]

HDMI with ethernet channel changing over directv souds awesome. I'm glad I waited for this to come out instead of getting an external hd-pvr. I'm excited to try one.

Anyone using the directv h24 receivers?

[jptheripper]

You using the pay version of comskip? b/c i got the "donator version required for h264" in the log. So i donated. Its a good program, and worth it.

Originally Posted by bits

If I schedule the recording and it records then all is good.

No luck with HDMI + CableTV + Motorola DCH6416 but component works. We will see how things go over the next few days. Comskip seems to work as well, but is much slower for h264 than MPEG!

[Wrx4me]

Originally Posted by spacecadet

Still no Colossus love. Sage locked up and I had to remove the Colossus (from Sage) and restart. Setting hdpvr_magic to false did not change the behavior for me.

Same here, I tried the same settings you tried above and all seemed fine at first and then I started recording 2 different shows on each of my 2 hdpvrs while watching 1 show on the colossus. When I changed channels the colossus which was handling live tv started stuttering and I started getting the buzzing sound. That was fixed by changing channels again. But after a while the stuttering started again when I changed channels. I also notice that the channels that have the most issues display audio as 'AAC stereo'. I think the colossus will work well for people with no hdpvrs to contend with, but together they do not play nice yet. By the way I am using http tuning on a directv H23-600 receiver on the colossus and it is fine.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

You using the pay version of comskip? b/c i got the "donator version required for h264" in the log. So i donated. Its a good program, and worth it.

It's so slow compared to Show Analyzer though. I've thought about going back to comskip but being able to do realtime ad detection of HDPVR recordings with SA v1 is just too difficult to lose.

[bits]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

You using the pay version of comskip? b/c i got the "donator version required for h264" in the log. So i donated. Its a good program, and worth it.

I am using the donator version and I agree that it is worth it.

I have been using comskip for mpeg for many years. I also have ShowAnalyzer and used it for a few years. IMHO comskip is better which is why I am using it.

I knew and expected commercial finding to take longer for h264 but for some recordings it takes 6-8 x's longer. Not really an issue though, just an observation.

[bits]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

It's so slow compared to Show Analyzer though. I've thought about going back to comskip but being able to do realtime ad detection of HDPVR recordings with SA v1 is just too difficult to lose.

I have not tried SA on h264 but I have compared it to comskip on mpeg and yes SA can be set to run faster than comskip but my experience was that was at the cost of accuracy. Even when running SA in it slowest mode it was significantly less accurate over a wide range of recordings, stations and networks.

I may give SA V1 a try for h264 but if it is still as poor on mpeg as it used to be then comskip it is. We rarely watch a recorded show right away so slow is ok.

[patja]

Originally Posted by msgohan

Hmm, what did you use to take the screenshots? Weird artifacting on your HD-PVR shot and both are less sharp than stanger89's screenshot posted two years ago (though perhaps his is oversharp). His is wider, not sure which is correct.

I loaded the .ts files into VLC and took the screenshots using the "snapshot" menu item. Maybe the differences are attributable to component cable differences? Or receiver differences?

[metzz71]

Got my tracking #, delivery scheduled for Tuesday. Excited to try the HDMI out on my U-Verse boxes!!!!

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by metzz71

Got my tracking #, delivery scheduled for Tuesday. Excited to try the HDMI out on my U-Verse boxes!!!!

The uverse boxes here were a no go tried tonight as is the cable boxes. It seems sattelite is the only way to get hdmi.