Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[michelkenny]

How about we keep this thread about the Colossus and stop arguing about who's right or wrong regarding daily restarts?

[jptheripper]

I am not arguing. Some of us have no problems, some require restarts. Simply stating that it is inappropriate to apply a particular experience universally to all users.

My resistance is (i believe) similiar to Pluckhd's . Restarting is like dealing with a car that overheats by turning it off for a few minutes and then continuing on your way. You are treating the symptom, not the problem. And while it may work as a temporary solution, it is my opinion time is better spent investigating the cause.

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

I am not arguing. Some of us have no problems, some require restarts. Simply stating that it is inappropriate to apply a particular experience universally to all users.

My resistance is (i believe) similiar to Pluckhd's . Restarting is like dealing with a car that overheats by turning it off for a few minutes and then continuing on your way. You are treating the symptom, not the problem. And while it may work as a temporary solution, it is my opinion time is better spent investigating the cause.

I have been restarting since 2009. My experience was once we reintroduced an HD100 into the mix of 2 x HD 200, and 2 x HD PVRs, as well as the slim player plugin (which is no longer installed by the way), I needed a daily restart. Now I can beat my head against the wall and find the problem, or 2 years later, just daily restart and not worry about the problem. Maybe it is a ticking time bomb, but I have no evidence of that. What I do know is a ticking time bomb is not doing the daily restart. At this point, I don't have the time anymore to tinker with this to find the problem. If someone else can, great. if not, I will be over here with my head in the sand watching tv and a daily restart.

[jptheripper]

Well to really strain it, I decided to record the third round of the nfl draft on Saturday (8 hours straight), immediate comskip, plus a few qam recordings at the same time. Watched most of it time shifted (while still recording), no glitches, no audio problems.

settop locked at 720p with dd5.1 over optical, latest drivers for colossus, 7.1.6

win vista! 32bit.

[michelkenny]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

I am not arguing. Some of us have no problems, some require restarts. Simply stating that it is inappropriate to apply a particular experience universally to all users.

My resistance is (i believe) similiar to Pluckhd's . Restarting is like dealing with a car that overheats by turning it off for a few minutes and then continuing on your way. You are treating the symptom, not the problem. And while it may work as a temporary solution, it is my opinion time is better spent investigating the cause.

Yes but your car is not made by Hauppauge . Restarting may be necessary for some and not others. There are so many different combinations of PC hardware and os. The drivers by Hauppauge are pretty buggy and might cause a problem on someone's PC but not another. While I agree that we shouldn't have to restart every day, if it makes the user's server work flawlessly then go for it. It is better than troubleshooting with Hauppauge (the mechanic in your analogy) and potentially wasting your time.

[SWKerr]

Where I work we want to be 24-7 365day a year. They only schedule 4 IPLs (reboots) a year.
I have one application that will run for about 2 months before it will stop responding and need to be recycled. I have spent countless hours with the vendor trying to resolve this issue because I am not supposed to recycle the reigns but every 3 months and I know sooner or later it will lock up. Now this 24-7 things makes sense if you are actually available 24-7 but we are down every week to do backups and\or normal maintenance. Quite simply it is stupid not to reset it during this period of time and not worry about it. But that is life and we can claim to have almost zero down time.

I have been working with a lot of software in Windows, UNIX\Linux, and Mainframes for close to 20 years now and I can't think of a single application that has not given me a problem from time to time. Some are certainly better than others but none seem to be perfect. What I have discovered is that most problems solve themselves with a simple reboot and that you can save yourself a lot of grief by doing it when you can.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by The Truth

HAHHA i got my ceton and now i have 4 tuners with all my channels!!!! good bye Colossus!!! i HATE YOU!!! lmao

good luck people.

Good bye old problems, hello new problems.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by The Truth

All 4 tuners work flawlessly, and the channels look waaaay better than hd-pvr and colossus... it eliminated motion blur...

Just saying. I've been following the SageDCT thread and it is not without its own problems.

[stanger89]

And definitely not guaranteed to be a long term solution.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by stanger89

And definitely not guaranteed to be a long term solution.

Yup if you cable company turns on copy protection say bye bye

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by The Truth

I have read that copy protection is being turned off by law, so people can use tivos and such devices.

I get all channels that I have with my boxes...on 4 Tuners, all with 1 card. much better solution.

You read a bad article. Copy protection is placed by the will of the content provider but ultimately your cable company can protect all content wether or not the content provider does or not they have control (and many have started doing this). Tivo can watch the copy protected content fine as can WMC but sagetv will not be able to.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by The Truth

SageDCT and MCTuner use media center to tune the channels...That is how Sage is tuning with a cablecard....

That is not entirely true. SageMCTuner uses Windows Media Center to tune and record the programming. SageDCT interfaces with the virtual network interface of the Ceton card and has nothing to do with Windows Media Center.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by The Truth

I have read that copy protection is being turned off by law, so people can use tivos and such devices.

I get all channels that I have with my boxes...on 4 Tuners, all with 1 card. much better solution.

That wrong there is no law
You really need read the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
As for SageMCTuner in a way it dose use MCE but I think it only a small part of MCE but it best to ask andy about that.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by The Truth

SageDCT and MCTuner use media center to tune the channels...That is how Sage is tuning with a cablecard....

And with this you have the Ability to record at 720i/p/1080i/p

All true (with the above SageDCT correction), that's not the issue, the issue is the content provider or cable provider can "turn on" copy protection at a whim, and SageDCT, SageMCTuner, and the HDHR Prime (if it works with Sage natively) will all become useless at that moment because Sage does not support the DRM that must be wrapped around copy protected recordings.

This issue already exists for many users with most channels, and for (AFAIK) essentially everyone on the premium movie channels.

Originally Posted by The Truth

And for some awesome reason, im using the free version of comskip and it handles these files awesomely...?

Because you're lucky and your recordings aren't DRM'd.

While I applaud/respect/commend the ingenuity and skill that's gone into SageDCT and SageMCTuner, I "fear" people are falling into a false sense of security and not really understanding the situation with respect to CC in Sage.

[The Truth]

Originally Posted by stanger89

All true (with the above SageDCT correction), that's not the issue, the issue is the content provider or cable provider can "turn on" copy protection at a whim, and SageDCT, SageMCTuner, and the HDHR Prime (if it works with Sage natively) will all become useless at that moment because Sage does not support the DRM that must be wrapped around copy protected recordings.

This issue already exists for many users with most channels, and for (AFAIK) essentially everyone on the premium movie channels.



Because you're lucky and your recordings aren't DRM'd.

While I applaud/respect/commend the ingenuity and skill that's gone into SageDCT and SageMCTuner, I "fear" people are falling into a false sense of security and not really understanding the situation with respect to CC in Sage.

So Then you think that soon this is going to stop working? because of CC laws?

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by The Truth

So Then you think that soon this is going to stop working? because of CC laws?

It could at any time. It did for these people.

[stanger89]

I think it could stop working at any time, there's no way to predict what the cable or content companies will decide. It's not about any laws, it's at their whim.

[The Truth]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

It could at any time. It did for these people.

Well Looks like I've caused a disturbance in this thread. Right now I have 2 Servers setup. 1 with my 3 Colossus cards, which are still having problems, and my new one, which has been working great since friday. I am probably going to use the Colossus cards for a server I'm building for the parents, but I might get another card like my new server since I had such great success.

Lets leave it at that. If it doesnt work I guess I will have to take the loss or move to WMC.

[wayner]

You could still use the component outputs of your STBs and connect them to the Colossus cards.

[sleonard]

Back when Firewire recording first came out I looked up the codes to open the service menus on my cable boxes and found that none of the channels including HBO and SHO had the copy protection flags set. I got excited and planned on setting up FW tuning. Well, life got in the way and when I came back to it a few months later I found that Cox had wisened up and set all the flags.

I ended up buy 3 HD_PVR's and struggling with those for years. I am now hoping that Hauppauge will do a better job of fixing the Colossus drivers so I can migrate to those.

S