3rob3:

I am "using" this on a DCT2500. Don't get too excited, it is pretty much a total disaster in Media Center currently. There are a few major problems outside of their buggy MCE driver also.

I asked NEXTCOM about the buggy drivers and got hthis email repsonse

"The MCE version reportedly does not work well with certain legacy receivers, namely the Dish/Bell 6000s. It will be made into an official release sometime in the next week or so without support for these older units"

Funny how I asked specifically about the dct's but got a response only about the dish/bell legacy recievers

3rob3:

1. Cable companies can deliver up two 12 streams on the same channel, ie when I tune to channnel 69 there are actually 12 programs in that stream. R5000hd's have a mapping option, but I can't get it to work at all.

Hummmm , SO that means the box itself is not used to tune the channel ? I though this was similiar to Firestb in that the box would still perform the channel changes and therefore the mapping... but if I understand you correctly the R5000 simply extracts the entire streams unmapped/tuned? (getting ahead a bit.... but wouldn't that mean that one box could facilitate multiple virtual tuners simutanously...that would be amazing! one thing at a time I guess)

3rob3:

2. As these are really just digital boxes, they generally have the HD tier blocked. I haven't tried yet, but I expect the cable company to give me a hard time when I ask them to add the HD tier to my box that isn't capable of displaying it.

I am a bit concerned about this as well and emailed my provider with this question..... I used a little white lie which may or may not work for you.... I told them I had gotten my hands on an external HD decoder... namley the Motorola HDD-200 which connects to the datat port on the DCT2500 and provides HD decoding and display. I havent heard back from them yet.

3rob3:

Also, I am not sure about Canada, but US cable companies generally refuse to activate customer owned cable boxes. The Nextcommwireless site even states this. Be sure to check on that first.

In eastern Canada (Rogers Cable) you must rent your box while in western Canada (Shaw Cable) you must purchase your box, there is no rental option. I live in Western Canada have already bought several used boxes and had the company activate them no problem.... but thanks for the heads up.

Well... I'm officially on the fence. I will wait to see what NEXTCOM comes out with next week in this so-called "offical release" of the MCE drivers.

While I was posting my last message I recieved this email from NEXTCOM. Might be of interest. regarding the HD teir issue.

"You should subscribe to an HD plan with at least one HD box on the account. What happens is every box in the household typically gets the same authorization hit. The SD boxes (when tuned to an HD channel) will put up a blank screen with audio. Recordings will be perfect. If they display an "unauthorized" message you won't be able to record the channel. Theoretically they can send a different authorization for the SD boxes and they won't get authorized for the HD channels. However, in all the time we've been modifying cable boxes (2 years) it hasn't happened yet."

Good tip... I guess you can test this by tuning the channel and waiting for the audio. Have you tried this 3Rob3? 

 

 

I plan to do the exact same thing (telling them I got a Motorola HDD-200). Hopefully they won't give me a problem. I am really just waiting for Nextcomm to release a usable driver before I do this.

soul_staker:

Good tip... I guess you can test this by tuning the channel and waiting for the audio. Have you tried this 3Rob3? 

Currently my box only gives me the unencrypted HD channels. If I tune to a channel considered in their HD tier, the nextcomm just shows a blank screen, no audio. If I look at a tv connect directly to the box it says I need to call them to activate this channel. So my box (the only cable box in my house) is blocked from receiving those channels.

Hey Slider:

Long time, no hear!

After trying the 1.0 and 1.1 1.2 beta mce drivers I got totally frustrated with multiple issues and went running back to FIREstb.

Are you having better luck with the newer beta's and do you have any idea when the final release is coming?

I don't dare to try to test these drivers again as I cannot afford to take my system down for testing (I need a test system just for this stuff).

If this ever works, it will definitely be the best solution for MCE so far - just seeing LIVE HD working (although choppy as heck) got me excited.

Funny story, we just sold our house (in a hot area) and everyone who came to the open house was drooling over my Media Center system and I ended up selling the whole damn thing with the house!

So now I have to get a new media center, get my Starchoice moved and I'm also looking at a Touchsmart.  How do you access your recorded content from your main pc?

Thanks!

Kingbuzzo:

Hey Slider:

Long time, no hear!

After trying the 1.0 and 1.1 1.2 beta mce drivers I got totally frustrated with multiple issues and went running back to FIREstb.

Are you having better luck with the newer beta's and do you have any idea when the final release is coming?

No luck yet.

I can watch Live TV, but the audio stutters on HD channels.  Recording is essentially non-functional because the recordings fail to play if the STB needs to change from an SD to HD channel or vice-verse.  If it is already on a channel with the same format (720p, 1080i, 480i), the recording will work and be playable - but this is hardly functional.

The version Nextcom currently has on their website (3.0a) also really didn't work hardly at all with my Vista installation (and I suspect this is typical).  I did get a 3.0b sent to me and it had most, if not all, of the Vista specific bugs fixed.  Unfortunately it still has the issues mentioned above.

I find it interesting that it is inferred that other STBs work fine.  I have to say I find this difficult to understand since the failure to record through an SD/HD switch seems to be to be a fundamental issue with Media Center itself.  Essentially, Media Center (Vista at least) simply can't handle a format switch while recording with the way Nextcom's driver is written.  Media Center starts to record and only then does it send the MSAS channel information that the Nextcom MC driver uses to change the channel.  Based on this, I can't see how any STB would be able to change the channel before Media Center starts to record.

I'm sure there is a work around somewhere for this problem in the virtual driver, but the issue is pretty fundamental and needs to be addressed.

Also, (unfortunately) I have not heard of a single person yet who has managed to get the MCE driver to actually work properly.

I'm still hopeful they'll get things working eventually.

For now, at least there is FireSTB (and I strongly suspect FireSTB will not work with the next update to Vista Media Center - Fiji, unless Tim Moore decides to make a few updates).

The FireSTB solution, although a pain to set up, does work quite well.  Every now and then we'll end up with a truncated recording, but I have 100% of the time been able to manually convert the .ts file to a dvr-ms file using TSConverter2.5 when this happens (it seems to be a FireSTB issue).  Earlier on this "truncated recording issue" was more common, but these days it is probably something like 1 out of 100 recordings (and this is still very annoying when it happens so I really want a functional Nextcom MC driver...).  Although I can't explain why, the issue seemed to drastically improve when I added another 2GB of RAM (4GB total now).  For only something like $20 I couldn't resist the upgrade.  The improvement may have been related to some Windows Update also.

Do some of your recordings truncate (miss the ending) with FireSTB and the R5000HD?

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Kingbuzzo:

...just seeing LIVE HD working (although choppy as heck) got me excited.

I just noticed you also saw a "choppy" issue with live HD.

With mine the video doesn't look "too" bad, but I can see obvious errors within the image and the occaisonal stutter (compared to the raw .ts file and/or the FireSTB recordings).  The audio on the other hand constantly keeps blanking out for a fraction of a second here and there.  These issues are only with HD channels.

I suspect there is a bug in the virtual driver and it introduces errors into the transport stream if the bitrate is above a certain threshold.  This would explain both audio and video issues.

---

STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

That sucks - hopefully it will get a lot better than the way it works now - he seems to blame Vista for most of the issues which isn't a good sign...

One of the HD's in my RAID array died and I ended up re-installing from scratch.  It was a lot easier to setup FireSTB the 2nd time-around for me.  All I had to do was get MCE working with the hauppage (SD), then install FireSTB (minimal install), and then install HDTV Pump.  I faked my way thru the channel-changing mini-mce setup and it worked right-away.

The only issues I have is from time-to-time the channel changing misses, sometimes the R5000HD software Dr Watson's (req reboot), and occaisionally I get a truncated recording but it is a lot better since I threw another 2GB of RAM in the box.  It still pins my CPU during the coversion process (.ts to dvr-ms) at the end of each recording which sometimes craps-out whatever may be running at the time (for obvious reasons).

 

 

HT Slider:

Kingbuzzo:

Hey Slider:

Long time, no hear!

After trying the 1.0 and 1.1 1.2 beta mce drivers I got totally frustrated with multiple issues and went running back to FIREstb.

Are you having better luck with the newer beta's and do you have any idea when the final release is coming?

No luck yet.

I can watch Live TV, but the audio stutters on HD channels.  Recording is essentially non-functional because the recordings fail to play if the STB needs to change from an SD to HD channel or vice-verse.  If it is already on a channel with the same format (720p, 1080i, 480i), the recording will work and be playable - but this is hardly functional.

The version Nextcom currently has on their website (3.0a) also really didn't work hardly at all with my Vista installation (and I suspect this is typical).  I did get a 3.0b sent to me and it had most, if not all, of the Vista specific bugs fixed.  Unfortunately it still has the issues mentioned above.

I find it interesting that it is inferred that other STBs work fine.  I have to say I find this difficult to understand since the failure to record through an SD/HD switch seems to be to be a fundamental issue with Media Center itself.  Essentially, Media Center (Vista at least) simply can't handle a format switch while recording with the way Nextcom's driver is written.  Media Center starts to record and only then does it send the MSAS channel information that the Nextcom MC driver uses to change the channel.  Based on this, I can't see how any STB would be able to change the channel before Media Center starts to record.

I'm sure there is a work around somewhere for this problem in the virtual driver, but the issue is pretty fundamental and needs to be addressed.

Also, (unfortunately) I have not heard of a single person yet who has managed to get the MCE driver to actually work properly.

I'm still hopeful they'll get things working eventually.

For now, at least there is FireSTB (and I strongly suspect FireSTB will not work with the next update to Vista Media Center - Fiji, unless Tim Moore decides to make a few updates).

The FireSTB solution, although a pain to set up, does work quite well.  Every now and then we'll end up with a truncated recording, but I have 100% of the time been able to manually convert the .ts file to a dvr-ms file using TSConverter2.5 when this happens (it seems to be a FireSTB issue).  Earlier on this "truncated recording issue" was more common, but these days it is probably something like 1 out of 100 recordings (and this is still very annoying when it happens so I really want a functional Nextcom MC driver...).  Although I can't explain why, the issue seemed to drastically improve when I added another 2GB of RAM (4GB total now).  For only something like $20 I couldn't resist the upgrade.  The improvement may have been related to some Windows Update also.

Do some of your recordings truncate (miss the ending) with FireSTB and the R5000HD?

Since I'm in the market for a new box now anyway, maybe throwing more resources (and a fresh beta) will provide better results.

Stay tuned...

 

HT Slider:

Kingbuzzo:

...just seeing LIVE HD working (although choppy as heck) got me excited.

I just noticed you also saw a "choppy" issue with live HD.

With mine the video doesn't look "too" bad, but I can see obvious errors within the image and the occaisonal stutter (compared to the raw .ts file and/or the FireSTB recordings).  The audio on the other hand constantly keeps blanking out for a fraction of a second here and there.  These issues are only with HD channels.

I suspect there is a bug in the virtual driver and it introduces errors into the transport stream if the bitrate is above a certain threshold.  This would explain both audio and video issues.

Kingbuzzo:

It still pins my CPU during the coversion process (.ts to dvr-ms) at the end of each recording which sometimes craps-out whatever may be running at the time (for obvious reasons).

The quad core Q6600 in my HTPC runs at 25% while performing the conversion (I haven't checked recently, but this is what I recall - it definitely does not run at 100% with all 4 cores pegged like some other video conversion software does).

Combined with the ATI 3870 video card, our system is able to even play very demanding video games such as Crysis or Grid while simultaneously converting the .ts file and even processing another dvr-ms file for commercials.  It never seems to miss a beat ever.

Overall I am extremely impressed with the performance of the system as a whole.  My sig below contains additional details.  Note that the hard drives are also high speed (Seagate 7200.11), configured in a Raid 0 sets, and isolated for Recorded TV, videos and OS (5 drives in total, two pairs of Raid 0 stripes).  The measured disk I/0 performance of the Recorded TV Raid 0 averages well over 100 Mb/s when pushed and over 150 Mb/s if simply reading or writing.

Kingbuzzo:

Since I'm in the market for a new box now anyway, maybe throwing more resources (and a fresh beta) will provide better results.

Stay tuned...

There are more powerful systems available, but I don't think more (than what I currently have) will improve the HD video performance of the R5000HD MC driver.  The issue could be related to the Bell 6000 STB, but since absolutely all .ts files play back perfectly, all of the FireSTB dvr-ms files play back perfectly, and only the R5000HD MC driver created HD recordings (or Live TV) have these stuttering issues, I very much suspect there is a bug in the way the R5000HD DVR streams the HD video to the MC virtual tuner driver.

I've also checked all of the system performance parameters while recording HD using the R5000HD MC driver and the system is essentially idling with tons of CPU power and hard drive I/O available.

EDIT:  Also note that I have a dual boot setup.  One is the main, operational VMC install and the second one is where I fresh installed Vista, installed all of the latest drivers and then installed the R5000HD MC driver.  I've also done this twice (using Intel drivers instead of Gigabyte) and had the same stuttering issue with HD audio both times.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Yes, I have a lowly Pentium D with only one RAID 0 set so maybe the new box will take care of that issue - seems to work for you.

I will probably go for another HP that they blow-out the door at Bestbuy all of the time and just stuff another drive in the removable media bay for RAID 0.  They are dirt cheap and come with every possible option.

I never thought of dual-booting my "production" system - that is a good idea...then I won't get the WAF on my case everytime I try to make this thing work "better".

What do you think of those Touchsmarts?  How would I enable it to see my Recorded TV (from my main unit) with all the metadata and everything other than using a file-share?

I have also been reading-up on WHS - I made a homemade one out of an old Dell server but I'm considering taking the plunge with one of those fancy HP's - what are you using to serve up your files currently?

Thanks!

HT Slider:

Great news!!

I finally got the MCE beta driver working for the R5000HD. ...

HT Slider,

How did you resolve the blank screen issue you mentioned in your earlier post? I've been trying to set-up the virtual tuner following the Nextcom instructions and just get the blank screen in the TV setup process.

Bobhaze 

come back HTSlider - how come you keep disappearing all-the-time when we need your mad alpha-testing skills the most!

Kingbuzzo:

come back HTSlider - how come you keep disappearing all-the-time when we need your mad alpha-testing skills the most!

The reality is I've been ill for the past 2 years and about 2 months ago went downhill big time.  I'm now out of the hospital and on my feet again, but I'm stuck at home on IV treatment and will be for some time.

Most likely I will feel up to fiddling with HTPCs to pass my time in the near future.

I haven't touched the HTPC since trying the last beta R5000HD driver (on the secondary boot partition) and unfortunately it looks like some of the recent automatic windows or PDVD updates (or ??) have reduced the primary boot partition to an unstable, constantly crashing MC, system with a corrupt DirectShow filter set (crashes with almost all HD content, won't play or transcode mpeg-2 .ts files, and won't play DivX, mpeg-4, or quicktime files at all).  I know it isn't a hardware issue since the secondary boot still works fine (except for the bugs in the R5000HD driver that is installed there).

It looks like my first task will be to rebuild the main boot partition and get the main system working properly before I consider fiddling with any new R5000HD drivers.  Note that I have just checked my e-mail (268 unread e-mails...) and there is nothing from Nextcom.

One other thing to note is based on what I've been reading over the past 2 days I have to admit my hope for VMC to meet our needs is significantly diminished.  Sage TV is more and more looking like a more practical solution (h.264 support, R5000HD support, Hauppauge HD-PVR support, Live TV at client PCs, streaming video_ts/vobs to extenders, etc).

---

STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Whoa - that sucks...I had no idea...

I hope you are feeling better soon...

Yikes, did you try a system re-whore?  Did you do a new catalyst install or something?

Maybe it was stupid Quicktime! 

 

I haven't heard anything from them either but I noticed that they are lurking on here now.  Maybe there is hope yet.

Why are you giving up so soon?  Especially with your investment in the R5000HD?

We are so close to Live TV support with this driver (with client support) and they already support h.264 or so is my understanding.  We can already stream anything to the extenders already so I don't understand why that is even an issue.

Don't strand me as the only guy using R5000HD with VMC! 

Side note:  are you selling your modified receiver? 

HTSlider,
Hope you get well soon.

I have given up and made the switch to SageTV. I couldn't be happier, things are really working great.