129 replies to this topic

[myrantz]

treblid, on Dec 22 2010, 02:11 PM, said:

In the meantime, enjoy the loooooooong holiday...

Hello Renura ........ Looking at the thread you linked from your page about the Linux thingy.. Is this card stable on 64bit linux yet?

Do I still need to disable the first tuner?

[renura]

treblid, on Mar 10 2011, 12:33 PM, said:

Hello Renura ........ Looking at the thread you linked from your page about the Linux thingy.. Is this card stable on 64bit linux yet?

Do I still need to disable the first tuner?

As far as I know there is no need to disable anything. There is a problem with the BIOS of certain Gigabyte MB using AMD, but if you are using other MB or Intel based solution, you should have no problem at all.

[myrantz]

renura, on Mar 10 2011, 12:18 PM, said:

As has as I know there is no need to disable anything. There is a problem with the BIOS of certain Gigabyte MB using AMD, but if you are using other MB or Intel based solution, you should have no problem at all.

In other words gigabyte MB with Intel CPU will be fine?

That's good to know.. Need to replace one of my AF9015 based dual tuner as it seems to die intermittently... Don't really want to spend time fiddling anymore..

So chances are pretty high I'd be able to just plug this and it'd play nice?

I'm using a gigabyte MB, old Intel Q6600 CPU, runing Mandriva 2010.2, using stock vanilla 2.6.37 kernel. Will be good to go?

[renura]

treblid, on Mar 10 2011, 03:23 PM, said:

So chances are pretty high I'd be able to just plug this and it'd play nice?

Yes

[JimPuchai]

renura, on Mar 10 2011, 03:18 PM, said:

As far as I know there is no need to disable anything. There is a problem with the BIOS of certain Gigabyte MB using AMD, but if you are using other MB or Intel based solution, you should have no problem at all.

Good information and very timely as I have just started to plan for a newer HTPC based on the 4 tuner card. This will involve retiring the current DigitalNow! cards totalling 4 tuners

As something of an old fart I am still using TV Scheduler Pro Version 1 with IceTV and it has long since repaid the trifling sum I paid for it. It still does everything I need, but is clearly dated. My understanding is that the latest version is a fail on Win7 and it seems to be time to move on a bit.

I must confess to failing to really examine the DNTV software that came with the dual tuner a few years ago. I now see that you have an updated version of the branched TV Scheduler software and I am curious to find out if this is going to adequately replace my ancient Bluebit version.

Alternatively, perhaps others have different solutions that I should consider.

As an aside, I must say that from many comments read down the years, the DigitalNow! service level seems to have stayed in the stratosphere!

Nicely done - I know exactly how much work that level of service entails.

Edited by JimPuchai, 11 March 2011 - 12:22 PM.

[DrP]

The latest edition of TV Scheduler Pro works perfectly on Win 7 (32 and 64 bit), and its free.

[JimPuchai]

DrP, on Mar 11 2011, 12:19 PM, said:

The latest edition of TV Scheduler Pro works perfectly on Win 7 (32 and 64 bit), and its free.

Thank you for the prompt reply and my apologies for any incorrect impression I may have inadvertently propagated.

Truly excellent news. I am delighted to hear it.

I actually did a fair bit of searching for the latest scuttlebutt on this excellent software and only found some Win7 grumbles from a year or so back. Clearly my searching was inadequate or there is a dearth of users singing it's praises.

My regards to those who are maintaining this software and a promise to comment on it when I get this project fully sorted.

[renura]

JimPuchai, on Mar 11 2011, 12:16 PM, said:

I must confess to failing to really examine the DNTV software that came with the dual tuner a few years ago. I now see that you have an updated version of the branched TV Scheduler software and I am curious to find out if this is going to adequately replace my ancient Bluebit version.

Alternatively, perhaps others have different solutions that I should consider.

The main difference between TV Scheduler and DNTV Scheduler Pro is that DNTV Scheduler supports satellite TV, Analog TV/Video capture, DAB+, FM radio, etc. You can try both versions and then make up your own mind as which one to use with the Quad. Both of them will work with the Digital TV functionality and both can be obtained free for use with the Quad DVB-T card.

[myrantz]

Anybody else here with linux 64bit and working fine?

[JimPuchai]

renura, on Mar 11 2011, 01:39 PM, said:

The main difference between TV Scheduler and DNTV Scheduler Pro is that DNTV Scheduler supports satellite TV, Analog TV/Video capture, DAB+, FM radio, etc. You can try both versions and then make up your own mind as which one to use with the Quad. Both of them will work with the Digital TV functionality and both can be obtained free for use with the Quad DVB-T card.

Well that certainly gives me something to think about.

Perhaps it would be smarter to try both. As I don't intend to pull the older HTPC down until the new one is proven, that gives me a useful breathing space to do some comparisons.

Now that I am doubly assured of good software that supports IceTV, the build proceeds from today:)

Many thanks.

[murrayt]

JimPuchai, on Mar 11 2011, 02:55 PM, said:

Well that certainly gives me something to think about.

Perhaps it would be smarter to try both. As I don't intend to pull the older HTPC down until the new one is proven, that gives me a useful breathing space to do some comparisons.

Now that I am doubly assured of good software that supports IceTV, the build proceeds from today:)

Many thanks.

Jimpuchai

Yes TV Scheduler Pro (I think the latest rev is 184e) works perfectly well in Win 7 32 bit and 64 bit
I'm using Win7 64 ultimate, but just be sure to install the 32 bit jre. You can also load the 64bit jre if that is useful for other applications. I'm an IceTV fan as well

All works like clockwork. I just use Nebula DigiTV V4 for live viewing these days!

[JimPuchai]

murrayt, on Mar 11 2011, 06:57 PM, said:

Jimpuchai

Yes TV Scheduler Pro (I think the latest rev is 184e) works perfectly well in Win 7 32 bit and 64 bit
I'm using Win7 64 ultimate, but just be sure to install the 32 bit jre. You can also load the 64bit jre if that is useful for other applications. I'm an IceTV fan as well

All works like clockwork. I just use Nebula DigiTV V4 for live viewing these days!

Thanks for the jre info. Every little bit makes the job easier.

Quite apart from the plucky defence of their right to generate their own epg, I think that IceTV do an outstanding job - sometimes under trying circumstances.

I have always said that, with TV Scheduler Pro, a good set of tuners, IceTV and VLC, the average Joe can easily set up a more than adequate embryonic HTPC in an hour or two.

Cheers.

[murrayt]

JimPuchai, on Mar 11 2011, 09:50 PM, said:

Thanks for the jre info. Every little bit makes the job easier.

Quite apart from the plucky defence of their right to generate their own epg, I think that IceTV do an outstanding job - sometimes under trying circumstances.

I have always said that, with TV Scheduler Pro, a good set of tuners, IceTV and VLC, the average Joe can easily set up a more than adequate embryonic HTPC in an hour or two.

Cheers.

VideoRedo TV Suite is the only additional thing to add to your list. Worth every cent!

http://www.hyperreality.com.au/

[JimPuchai]

murrayt, on Mar 12 2011, 06:46 AM, said:

VideoRedo TV Suite is the only additional thing to add to your list. Worth every cent!

http://www.hyperreality.com.au/

Agreed. I have used this almost since the first day it was on offer. Just one of those programmes that look terrible but work perfectly.

If you then add TMPGenc Authoring Works and imgburn and you are on the way to a large collection of plastic disks -TY for preference

Regards,
JP

[DrP]

JimPuchai, on Mar 12 2011, 08:53 AM, said:

Agreed. I have used this almost since the first day it was on offer. Just one of those programmes that look terrible but work perfectly.

That's debatable.  VideoRedo (in all its incarnations) is pretty bug ridden and trying to get those bugs fixed is often an uphill battle but its still a pretty good ad chopper.

[murrayt]

DrP, on Mar 12 2011, 04:49 PM, said:

That's debatable.  VideoRedo (in all its incarnations) is pretty bug ridden and trying to get those bugs fixed is often an uphill battle but its still a pretty good ad chopper.

DrP

I'm a bit puzzled at your comment. There are  a couple of 'incarnations' as you put it;

but unless you are pushing the boundaries of the most recent beta feature set, I have to say that VRD (TVSuite in my case) is stable, and reliable.

The DRD Systems folks are most responsive in delivering, additions, improvements and new featues. They are way ahead of the competition I think.

[DrP]

Bug: The chapter list points at incorrect time / frame references when there are missing / bad packets in the source material.

The problem is that VRD marks the chapter points based upon the source MPEG2 timing (ie, it uses what it assumes is the number of frames in the selection being saved for the chaters) rather than the number of actual frames output.  VRD support's response to this is not to fix the underlying problem but to tell people that experience the problem to do a quick stream fix first.

Bug: Editing a clean stream, even those declared 'good' by a quick stream fix, can result in dropped video / audio frames in the output to 'maintain AV synchronisation' even though other editors do not seem to need to drop video / audio to maintain perfect sync.  VRD support's answer is 'do another QSF', even though QSF considers there to be nothing wrong with the input already.  Naturally this invokes the above bug more or less rendering the chapter marks feature useless for lots of sources.

Bug: AV sync is sloppy when outputting a different audio format.  Take a good clean source, edit it, output it and then examine the audio positioning compared to the video positioning.  The audio can be up to 1 frame out of position.

Bug: When converting audio formats VRD ignores input audio stream CRCs decoding bad audio resulting in squeals etc in the output file.

Bug: More recent (the whole ver 3 train springs to mind) VRD builds randomly slow to a crawl for no apparent reason.  VRD support has suggested that this is due to low available RAM in the computer.  The problem affects even computers with large amounts of available RAM.  I've had it happen in a PC with 12Gb RAM with > 8Gb availble for use.

... and there's more bugs where they came from.

As for being responsive to feature requests, chapter marks are still not output from the joiner list and there still isn't a save segmented option* even though at one stage both these features were requested by quite a few people, repeatedly.



*this can be manually achieved either by saving each segment as you go or by adding them to the batch manager - in either case it involves a lot of key presses!

Edited by DrP, 13 March 2011 - 06:09 AM.

[Paulo]

DrP,

Do you have a suggestion for a different program?

I currently use VideoReDo but I like to try other programs out there.

[JimPuchai]

DrP, on Mar 12 2011, 04:49 PM, said:

That's debatable.  VideoRedo (in all its incarnations) is pretty bug ridden and trying to get those bugs fixed is often an uphill battle but its still a pretty good ad chopper.

I was specifically referring to my own usage of the software. In truth, it does everything that I need it to do. For tasks that I know that need some more grunt, I tend to use TMPGenc software in some of its incarnations.

This is just a pastime for me so the occasional dropped frame is unlikely to cause me to pull my hair out. Besides, with not much left to lose, it might take a while to find some 'pullable' hair

Edited by JimPuchai, 13 March 2011 - 12:05 PM.

[JimPuchai]

Oops!

Edited by JimPuchai, 13 March 2011 - 12:41 PM.

[DrP]

Paulo, on Mar 13 2011, 09:39 AM, said:

DrP,

Do you have a suggestion for a different program?

I currently use VideoReDo but I like to try other programs out there.

VRD is probably the best option for what most people with TV cards want to do - chop out the ads.

[IanD]

VRD is the most convenient one-stop-shop, but for very basic usage a combination of the following freeware also works: ProjectX (to demux), mpeg2schnitt (to remove adverts), ifoedit (to mux to DVD structure) and DVDshrink (to combine separate titles into a simple DVD structure).

The downside is that ProjectX doesn't handle every strange mux, mpeg2schnitt only trims on I and P frames (doesn't re-encode frames) and dvdshrink can't make menus.

[user1829]

just ordered one of these - looking forwards to getting it all set up on my new AMD Llano HTPC build

[user1829]

peterept, on Oct 7 2010, 08:23 AM, said:

Received my Quad card yesterday and I have to congratulate you - it works brilliantly, and the install process was one of the easiest I've ever seen.

Great card!

Thanks,

Peter

what setup? Windows?

did you use teh install CD?

[user1829]

renura, on Oct 8 2010, 09:06 AM, said:

Hi Guys,

Firstly let me say that there is no doubt that you need a good quality signal for this card, the desirable signal level should be around 55dbuv.

In general I do not recommend amplifiers with any cards, let alone this one. Just remember you are feeding 4 tuners with one antenna.

Having said that, we have not observed the behavior reported by aussierob and DJOS in any of our tests and neither have the many beta testers , to the best of my knowledge, over the last several months

Please remember also that this sort of issue might be related to the PCIe bus or other component on your system, not just the received signal level.

Trying different PCIe slots, if possible, is a good first step, flashing the MB with the latest BIOS is also a good idea. If you are using such systems as Windows 7, using High performace power profile is imperative for good performance.

Also ensure that you install only and exclusively the drivers provide on the CD, not other generic Realtek drivers that might be installed by Windows

If having done that the issue persists, please email support and we might get you to run some tests to try and determine what the issue might be. We have not had one "dud" card yet, but I am sure some will crop up, in which case, of course, we will replace them under warranty.

Cheers

Renura

damn, should have paid more attention to this post before shelling out the 200 bucks....