Anyone have HD PVR 2 working in a VM on unraid

[mechling-burgh]

I have an HD PVR 2 which works well in windows but I'm trying to get unraid running with sagetv docker. After a lot of trial and errors on my part I have the docker working great. I was finally able to get a vm of windows 8 running on unraid and I activated the proper usb pass through and got the HD PVR 2 installed in the VM last night. But when I try to use it as a network encoder it seems to studder. I'm thinking its the usb is not keeping up in the vm. Does this make sense? Does anyone else have it working on a vm and I'm just missing something, I'm new to unraid and vms.

[EnterNoEscape]

There is no V4L driver for it. There is source code on Hauppauge's website to access it using libusb, but I have found the solution to be less tolerant of my HDMI splitter than the Windows driver and after looking at the code for a few hours it was still very unclear how to get 5.1 audio which is the only reason I would even care to go through this kind of hassle.

[mechling-burgh]

I know about the driver for the linux issue that is why the windows vm. I'm trying to run the the hd pvr 2 in in a windows vm so I can share it as a network encoder. I'm able to see it and it installs, but there is studdering in the vm sagetv and the docker sagetv. That is what led me to think it was the usb ports not having enough through put to keep up with the amount of data being passed to from the hd pvr 2 unit. Just a guess wanted second opinions on this or if someone else had it working. I tried reading through the unraid forums but nothing I can find on this type of problem. Thought it made more sense to ask here.

[stuckless]

Depending on the how the network encoder works... it could be an IO issue... ie, if it's reading the USB and writing to a drive and then sagetv is reading from that drive, and then rewriting to the actual file, etc, then it could be an IO issue. Also depending on the how the network encoder is working it could be blocking there... ie, read data write data in a loop vs a thread to read and the thread to write so that one doesn't block the other.

[BobPhoenix]

Did you try passing through a WHOLE USB controller to the VM?

[mechling-burgh]

I tried finding what you said and did not see it so I switched on advanced view and I believe found the answer. At the very bottom is not a setting to pass through the whole usb bus but a setting to turn on usb 3 instead of 2 and that seemed to fix it. The version for usb 2 does not seen to allow enough band width for the HD PVR but usb 3 emulation seems to too. So all seems to be working as of right now a few days of testing before I try using it as a production machine. Thanks for the replies and help as always

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by mechling-burgh

I tried finding what you said and did not see it so I switched on advanced view and I believe found the answer. At the very bottom is not a setting to pass through the whole usb bus but a setting to turn on usb 3 instead of 2 and that seemed to fix it. The version for usb 2 does not seen to allow enough band width for the HD PVR but usb 3 emulation seems to too. So all seems to be working as of right now a few days of testing before I try using it as a production machine. Thanks for the replies and help as always

That's not entirely what BobPhoenix was asking about. You are passing through an individual USB device. This means that The USB drivers in the linux kernel is filtering out all traffic to and from that specific device and passing it to a virtual USB controller in the virtual machine. What BobPhoenix was discussing, was taking an entire USB controller in on your motherboard (or easier with an add-in card) and passing that to the VM at the PCI level. This requires virtualization capabilities in the CPU and motherboard to do (IOMMU), but performance will be much better, as the windows VM will have that USB controller to itself and talk to it just the same as if it was installed on bare metal.