Second/Third PVR-250

[ToonGal]

Bought two PVR-250's from CompUSA to add the the one I bought from them in Feb. Have some issues / questions as a result, and any appreciated. Read most (all?) other multi-card threads, so trying not to repeat anything, but no guarantees.

Base hardware of SageTV machine (pre PVR #2) is located at: http://toongal.superherokicks.com/HTPC

1) How do I control which PVR-250 uses the IR? After adding the 2nd one, it seemed to choose that one for the IR reception. Is it "install last, install best" or can I switch this? I'd prefer the original, in case I want to build a client unit.

2) How do I rename my encoders? It has the full "Haup PVR II PCI card" and #2 on the second one. I'd rather have the string "PVR #1", "PVR #2", etc, to maximize screen info. Configurable?

3) How do I prioritize my inputs? It seems to currently use the 2nd/new one as the primary post-install. I'd prefer it to use the other one. Configurable?

4) There's another thread that mentions "encoder_merit". My properties file doesn't mention it in the mmc/encoder section. Problem? What does it do? Hopefully, this is the answer to #3.

5) I have 14 days from Sunday to return the one unopened PVR-250. I bought it figuring that during football season I'll have a lot more conflicts, and need it. Do most find 2 encoders enough, or should I keep the 3rd? Thinking for $110, it might be good if/when I can expand my HTPC outside the office house-wide. Advice appreciated.

6) The 2nd PVR-250 caused a conflict with my Promise Ultra100 TX2 controller. While the TX2 was free from Western Digital (w/ some HD's), removing it freed up the onboard LAN again. Now I can eventually remove the SMC ethernet card I stuck in as a short term solution. As a result, I've powered down / disconnected 2 of my IDE HD's. Anyone have a recommendation for a controller card replacement which won't cause any additional conflicts?

Thanks as always for your help with this stuff gang. Any other advice appreciated too.

[ErsatzTom]

2) I don't think you can do this yet. I requested it some time back. If it isn't already available it will be high on my list for studio mods when studio finally finds its way into my hands.
3) Try mmc/encoders/<encoder#>/encoder_merit=<merit> I believe higher merit is chosen first.
4) okay, I just read 4. It should be there. If it isn't, you could try adding it. Check again.
5) I just picked up a 4th. It depends on what you watch and how often you pad. Things can get pretty jammed up at prime time.
6) HW conflicts are tough. I eventually had to turn off all the APCI (is that the right acronym?) and manually set resources to get rid of my conflicts. Since it is just a server I don't really mind loosing advanced power settings. Also, as is said a lot here, just keep trying to move the cards around. I just left my case open and on the desk for a day or two while I kept fiddling with it. It's going to be fun trying to get one more working in there....

[Opus4]

Originally posted by ToonGal
1) How do I control which PVR-250 uses the IR? After adding the 2nd one, it seemed to choose that one for the IR reception. Is it "install last, install best" or can I switch this?

Good question. I don't know if there is a way yet to specify which card's IR receiver is to be used, especially when they are the same models. I may have to look into that one out of curiosity.

- Andy

[mls]

Originally posted by ToonGal

1) How do I control which PVR-250 uses the IR? After adding the 2nd one, it seemed to choose that one for the IR reception. Is it "install last, install best" or can I switch this? I'd prefer the original, in case I want to build a client unit.

I believe it will use the remote from the last card installed. Not sure why it would matter to you which card it works from though. It's not like you'd ever have a need to mess with it again once everything is together.

2) How do I rename my encoders? It has the full "Haup PVR II PCI card" and #2 on the second one. I'd rather have the string "PVR #1", "PVR #2", etc, to maximize screen info. Configurable?

I haven't seen anything to do that (yet), but may be something they can do with Studio.

3) How do I prioritize my inputs? It seems to currently use the 2nd/new one as the primary post-install. I'd prefer it to use the other one. Configurable?

It tends to prefer the last one installed, but you can change the merit setting to make it use the other one more often.

4) There's another thread that mentions "encoder_merit". My properties file doesn't mention it in the mmc/encoder section. Problem? What does it do? Hopefully, this is the answer to #3.

In the properties file there should be an "encoder_merit" line a few lines above the one that has the tuner name. The higher number you give a tuner, the more priority it has. However, that doesn't mean it will always use that tuner first. It just means it would tend to use that one more than another if it can. Depends what other things are lined already for recording.

The lines in the properties file will look something like this:

mmc/encoders/1642691032/encoder_merit=0
mmc/encoders/1642691032/encoding_host=
mmc/encoders/1642691032/encoding_host_login_md5=
mmc/encoders/1642691032/last_cross_index=0
mmc/encoders/1642691032/last_cross_type=1
mmc/encoders/1642691032/never_stop_encoding=false
mmc/encoders/1642691032/video_capture_device_name=Hauppauge WinTV PVR PCI II Capture

As you can see, the merit line is just a few lines above the tuner name. You can also tell which lines match up by the numbers.

5) I have 14 days from Sunday to return the one unopened PVR-250. I bought it figuring that during football season I'll have a lot more conflicts, and need it. Do most find 2 encoders enough, or should I keep the 3rd? Thinking for $110, it might be good if/when I can expand my HTPC outside the office house-wide. Advice appreciated.

I've got 4 tuners, but for the most part I think 3 would be enough for me normally. However, there have been times when it has used all 4... so ya never know

6) The 2nd PVR-250 caused a conflict with my Promise Ultra100 TX2 controller. While the TX2 was free from Western Digital (w/ some HD's), removing it freed up the onboard LAN again. Now I can eventually remove the SMC ethernet card I stuck in as a short term solution. As a result, I've powered down / disconnected 2 of my IDE HD's. Anyone have a recommendation for a controller card replacement which won't cause any additional conflicts?

IRQ conflicts can be a problem (more so with Win98 than with XP). Sometimes moving the cards to different slots may help. Other times you may have to disable something or manually configure. I was lucky and did not have any problems with my setup, but I know some others have.

[Opus4]

An update:

Originally posted by Opus4
I don't know if there is a way yet to specify which card's IR receiver is to be used

There is no way to specify which one to use. But, as long as the hardware doesn't change, the IR decoder in use shouldn't change when you reboot. It may be the last card to get installed, but I'm not certain that will always be the case either. Mine always uses my pvr-usb2 instead of my 250, but then I don't need to worry about both tuners being the same, so either I installed that one last, or it has an affiniity for the pvr-usb2.

You mentioned wanting to use the original tuner in case you wanted to switch the 2nd one out & put it in a client. Switching which card is used as the IR decoder won't really matter later on, as the same irremote.ini file will get used regardless.... so don't worry about that.

- Andy

[carlgar]

Originally posted by mls
I believe it will use the remote from the last card installed. Not sure why it would matter to you which card it works from though. It's not like you'd ever have a need to mess with it again once everything is together.

I believe it will use the first tuner that it finds. The best way will probably just have all of the IR ports plugged in and then test each one. Once you know which one is being used, you disconnect the others.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by carlgar
I believe it will use the first tuner that it finds.

Yes, but is the first one it finds the last one that was installed?

Come to think of it, Hauppauge didn't say it won't use the first/last/whatever... I was just told that you can't specify which one to use, but that it should remain stable from boot to boot, provided the hardware configuration doesn't change.

The best way will probably just have all of the IR ports plugged in and then test each one. Once you know which one is being used, you disconnect the others.

You know... I almost wrote something along those lines.

- Andy

[carlgar]

Originally posted by Opus4
Yes, but is the first one it finds the last one that was installed?

I don't think so, I think it is more dependant upon the slot number and board type. It has been several months since I played with my cards but I believe the Hauppauge software always found the 250 cards before it found the 350. I recall being very surprised when the WinTV2000 software recorded using a 250 card but was outputing using the 350 TVout.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by carlgar
I think it is more dependant upon the slot number and board type. It has been several months since I played with my cards but I believe the Hauppauge software always found the 250 cards before it found the 350.

That's what I meant, above, when I mentioned that it _always_ uses my pvr-usb2 instead of the 250: it seems to have an affinity/preference for certain product types over others. There is a registry setting that was mentioned somewhere around here to tell which _type_ to prefer, I believe... but I don't have all the details on that setting nor does it help when all the cards are the same.

Anyway, the big question was for the situation where every tuner is the exact same model, which is ToonGal's situation. Short answer: some trial & error testing may be needed.

What a strange conversation... all those questions & this one gets bounced around. I guess the other ones were easier to deal with (and were) -- 2: Can't; 3 & 4: covered; 5: covered/depends on how many shows you really want to record at once; 6: covered?/try moving cards around/more trial & error.

- Andy

[ToonGal]

Update:

Short version is "all's well that ends well". Happy me. Here's the post-game wrap-up:

1) Which PVR-250 controls the IR:
On my system, it seems to be the one on the 'highest priority slot' as opposed to 'last installed'. (Good call, carlgar.) The last one I installed was in slot 4, between the old (slot 5) and new (slot 3), and the new one on slot 3 took priority. Ironically, this was the desired PVR-250, as it is the physically highest off the floor, giving me the most slack for the cable.

2) Name assigned to PVR cards in SageTV:
Unfortunate that it is not configurable. Now that the 3rd card is up and running, the title no longer even reflects the "#2" that appeared on the second card. I was hoping it was a left/right slider/arrow to see the extra info, but nope, just crammed together. Hard to tell which card is doing what, but doesn't affect the usability of the system. Just annoys my anal-retentive need to know everything about everything.

3-4) Input priority / encoder_merit:
As I suspected, encoder_merit allows some control over prioritization. I did double check my .prop file for this item and it was NOT there. After my install of card #3, it was. Set to 0, if memory serves, and irrelevant for now until I see how it chooses what to use. A balanced load most desirable.

5) Third tuner redux:
Second tuner was the effort to remove the conflict (next item). Once I solved that, I decided the $100 + tax was unbeatable, so I went for the third. By this point, it was basically plug and play, with no issues. Yay!

6) Conflicts galore:
It all started when I first bought the computer. When the gigabit onboard LAN was enabled, all hell broke loose on the other parts. Short version was an install of my old SMC ethernet card, and a 'todo' item that I never spent the time to resolve. Since the one card worked, I didn't care about gigabit, given no other computers in the house have it (yet). Once the 2nd card caused the same conflicts with that damned TX2 IDE card, it was a necessary evil to solve. With about two hours of testing / rebooting I was able to resolve ALL conflicts. Basically, made sure the TX2 had highest slot priority (slot 1), assigned it a high priority unique IRQ, and moved all the Hauppauge cards to the lowest slots. A couple of BIOS settings / tweaks and various win2k configurations later, and all is 100%. I was even able to get my SMC ethernet card working with the rest of that mess, but that's for another post (starting after I finish this one). Glad I didn't have to turn off APCI, reopened the last PCI slot after removing the SMC ethernet, so have everything working AND expansion for the next new thing.

Now I just have to hope after all this effort / money to build this thing that analog tuners have some lifespan to them for me to benefit from it.

Thanks, as always, for all your help / comments / ideas. It was invaluable to the resolution of my issues.