So you are using the R5000 too???

I thought HT & I were the only ones...

So you are using FireSTB currently I presume?

Yikes, the portion of this referring to recording HD from DirecTV needs to be removed. This solution does not support the newer leased receivers from DirecTV that are needed to decode MPEG4 HD channels. Since the percentage of their HD lineup that is on MPEG4 is rapidly reaching 100%, and since DirecTV is replacing people's older STB's as quickly as possible, promoting this as a DirecTV solution is borderline fraudulent.  

But hey, anything for the $50.00 referral fee, right?

morphy:

Yikes, the portion of this referring to recording HD from DirecTV needs to be removed. This solution does not support the newer leased receivers from DirecTV that are needed to decode MPEG4 HD channels. Since the percentage of their HD lineup that is on MPEG4 is rapidly reaching 100%, and since DirecTV is replacing people's older STB's as quickly as possible, promoting this as a DirecTV solution is borderline fraudulent.  

But hey, anything for the $50.00 referral fee, right?

$50.00 referral fee??

Although my family is getting top quality HD recordings in Media Center through our R5000HD, I don't know if I'd really recommend the R5000HD to anyone running Media Center.  If you look through the posts in this thread you'll see there are more problems than solutions right now and mpeg-4 is not the biggest problem by far.

The #1 problem is the MCE R5000HD driver really does not work very well.  I don't consider it good enough to be put to use and wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  There are audio glitches, video glitches, recording glitches not to mention super slow Live TV channel changes. The best work around is to use FireSTB to record HD channels at the same time using a regular TV Tuner card to make SD recordings.  FireSTB can then replace the SD recordings with HD ones (selectively for HD channels).  Hopefully Nextcom will put in some more effort and find ways to work around all of Media Center's limitations (noting that Media Center doesn't really support 3rd party HD inputs and they need to be "hacked in" by the 3rd party to make them work - an example of a working solution is the HDHomerun).

The #2 problem is Media Center's lack of h.264/mpeg-4 support.  This problem isn't just with DirecTV, but with almost all satellite providers, including Dish Networks.  The best work around here is again to use FireSTB to record HD channels at the same time as SD records through the regular TV Tuner card and s-video.  Instead of playing these HD recordings through "Recorded TV", these need to be played through "Videos" (Vista) or "My Videos" (MCE2005) in Media Center.  As most of us are aware, the 2008 TV Pack (for Vista) can be hacked to provide h.264 support.  It would be interesting to see how well the R5000HD MCE driver works with the TV Pack (I doubt it does though).

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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

I can record Mpeg 4 on my dish network mpeg 4 receiver, just fine. Don't know why it wouldn't work just fine on a Direct TV reciever?

My problem has been FireSTB will record one show, then disappear. I have no idea why it disappears, it just does. So for it to work I have to run FireSTB after a recording or all my later recordings won't work. So I just disabled it and manually record when I want something in HD.

I am also recording the svideo output of the dish receiver through my TV card, so I haven't missed recordings, but it's been a mess to consistently try to get HD recordings.

wierd, mine would crash sometimes but not everytime...

LASooner:

My problem has been FireSTB will record one show, then disappear. I have no idea why it disappears, it just does. So for it to work I have to run FireSTB after a recording or all my later recordings won't work. So I just disabled it and manually record when I want something in HD.

Do you have UAC disabled?

I have read that if it isn't disabled that FireSTB is not able to start itself.

Personally I have now installed and configured FireSTB to work with our R5000HD Bell 6000 STB at least 5 times.  Although I had trouble with the first install where I had UAC on during the install, with the remaining installs I have had zero problems.  The last few installs has literally only taken a couple of minutes to install FireSTB and to get it fully configured and operational.

I think the key is to have UAC disabled prior to installing FireSTB (as well as making sure you are running the correct version for Vista or MCE2005).

Are you running Vista or MCE2005?

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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

LASooner:

My problem has been FireSTB will record one show, then disappear. I have no idea why it disappears, it just does. So for it to work I have to run FireSTB after a recording or all my later recordings won't work. So I just disabled it and manually record when I want something in HD.

This is very strange, but for the past week or so, FireSTB has been doing pretty much what you describe above.

Basically, VMC records a show, FireSTB does a perfect job recording an HD version of it, but then, when it is time to record the next show FireSTB is simply "gone".  Instead of an HD recording we end up with only an SD recording.  To record the next show in HD, I have to start FireSTB again.  FireSTB only quits after recording an HD show (I have it configured to not record from SD channels using the FireSTB "skip" registry settings).

I'm not seeing any error messages anywhere, not even in the FireSTB log files.

There were a few changes when the problem started for me:

1. The latest Vista Media Center rollup was released and auto-installed (automatic updates).
2. A bunch of other Vista patches were released and auto-installed.
3. I configured our primary Media Center to use S3 sleep after a 15 minute timeout (I used to leave the PC running 24/7).
4. I installed the MCE Standby Tool.

I've manually tested HD recordings for the past few hours and they have all recorded perfectly (without letting the system sleep).  FireSTB has not closed either.

The most recent VMC rollup has fixed a number of significant bugs for us so I'm hoping that isn't the issue.

S3 wasn't really working for us so I've just now uninstalled the MCE Standby Tool and configured the system to run 24/7 again.  Hopefully this is the problem.

Do you have your system configured to sleep?

(BTW the issues with sleep I have include:  system going to sleep in the middle of serving Recorded TV to our client Media Center PCs, power state getting out of sync with our Harmony remote control (turning off when we want it on, etc.), client PCs loosing Recorded TV sync with the server, system not reliably waking using WOL, etc.)

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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

I was wondering if you had installed that rollup and what may have happened - your suffering is helping this community...

I'll definitely watch-out for this one...

Thanks Slider!

 

Is anyone here successfully using the R5000-HD Media Center drivers with a Bell ExpressVu system in Canada to view & record HD?

I have been reading through this thread for 2 days now trying to pin down whether the R5000-HD will actually accomplish what I am trying to do with Media Center. We have purchased a Media Center extender which is great for watching movies from our server on our big screen TV. The next step is that we would like to be able to watch live tv, record & timeshift all through the Media Center Extender, but that requires getting the HD satellite signal into a Vista Media Center PC. It sounds from the Nextcom website like this solution will be perfect, but from some of the chatter in this forum I am concerned that this will be more complicated than it first sounds. Especially if Bell is planning to move to h.264 soon which I have heard rumor of.

So I just wanted to ask if anyone is currently doing this with ExpressVu and whether there are any problems with getting the HD (& SD for that matter) content into Media Center. If Bell does move to h.264, will I still be able to use my Media Center Extender to watch & record?

Thanks so much.

HT Slider:

Basically, VMC records a show, FireSTB does a perfect job recording an HD version of it, but then, when it is time to record the next show FireSTB is simply "gone".  Instead of an HD recording we end up with only an SD recording.  To record the next show in HD, I have to start FireSTB again.  FireSTB only quits after recording an HD show

Yes, that is the exact problem I had. I haven't really tried again since. I record stuff manually when I really want it.

HT Slider:

(I have it configured to not record from SD channels using the FireSTB "skip" registry settings).

Could you explain this one? There's a registry setting to have it ONLY record HD channels? And let the SD tuner handle SD recordings? That would be very handy, what's the setting?

HT Slider:

There were a few changes when the problem started for me:

1. The latest Vista Media Center rollup was released and auto-installed (automatic updates).
2. A bunch of other Vista patches were released and auto-installed.
3. I configured our primary Media Center to use S3 sleep after a 15 minute timeout (I used to leave the PC running 24/7).
4. I installed the MCE Standby Tool.

It never worked for me, but then I may have had the rollup installed before I even tried FireSTB, I haven't been doing this as long as you.

HT Slider:

Do you have your system configured to sleep?

Negative, it runs 24/7.

It also doesn't seem to matter if it's Mpeg2 or Mpeg 4 I'm recording, it just disappears after it finishes. Did you ever resolve this?

 

Roble Canuck:

So I just wanted to ask if anyone is currently doing this with ExpressVu and whether there are any problems with getting the HD (& SD for that matter) content into Media Center. If Bell does move to h.264, will I still be able to use my Media Center Extender to watch & record?

Thanks so much.

 

In it's current condition, no, Media Center doesn't recognize an Mpeg 4 video stream, but Windows 7 is supposed to. I will be waiting until both Microsoft releases it and Nextcom makes a working driver for it.

 

 

I don't know about Bell but it is barely a working solution with Starchoice and the Live TV thru the extender doesn't work AT ALL for me.

I have been able to get by with time-shifting EVERYTHING and watching live tv on my PC instead.

Their driver is also buggy and crashes frequently.

Unfortunately, there is still no solid solution for us CanIndians...

Thanks for your response, kingbuzzo. I feel like it's better to hear from people who are actually trying to make the solution work, than the company who is trying to sell you stuff. They say it should work just fine, but it sounds like it is more complicated than that. I'm glad to have heard this before spending $800 to buy & modify a receiver.

Thanks

no problem at all...

I was working with their support for weeks trying to iron-out some of the issues but they seemed to think it was my problem even though I tried it two completely different hardware setups/reinstalling/etc...

I like to complain about it a lot but on the other hand, I HAVE HD IN VMC FROM SATELLITE IN CANADA!!!

even though it only works half the time it is a heck of a lot better than nothing - especially if there is absolutely no other way to get HD...

& yesh, it was stoopid expensive but after I hocked my ghetto cableco HD PVR it turned out to be a wash...(i used to use the famous Timm Moore FireSTB hack but it stopped working with my PVR so I gave up)

I still wouldn't recommend it unless you absolutely have to have VMC - my whole life revolves around it (pathetic I know) so it was a route I had to take...