Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Shahn Hogan — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 07:09:55 GMT

You are the man! Thanks for the insight into how MCE works and the great tips!

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Jan Tielens — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 09:06:09 GMT

Thanks for the tip! Do you have any idea if Vista will support more than 2 PAL tuners for example?

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Peter Rosser — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 09:48:52 GMT

Jan: MCE 2005 supports more than 2 by doing what I said above, and Vista has certainly not disabled any of that functionality. I'm afraid we don't have any announced plans to support more tuners in the conflict resolution UI than you can currently see in the Windows Vista CTP.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Jan — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 10:47:01 GMT

I haven't installed the CTP of Vista yet, so I don't know how many tuners will be available out-of-the-box. Is it also 2 (upgradable to 4 via this "hack")? Thanks!

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Mike Garcen (ShadyMG) — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 11:33:30 GMT

Hey peter, great writeup.

One thing i've noticed, that comes & goes, is that sometimes when there's a conflict, it doesn't take me to the resolve conflict window to select which tuner to use. Sometimes it works though.

I'm using 3 analog tuners (all Hauppauge PVR-150's)

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Alistair — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 15:05:36 GMT

Good read. Are there plans to improve the Guide and PVR engine to support different Tuning Spaces? I live in the UK and pay for satellite TV (SKY) and in order to support recording and watching simultaneously have to pay an extra monthly fee for an additional STB. I only really need 1 STB and if I could add a couple of "Freeview" DVB-T tuners in conjunction this would be perfect.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

psallo-repeto — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:45:01 GMT

Actually this line is not entirely correct:
PrefEncoder either points to another hardware ID (in the case of a tuner with hardware MPEG2 encoding) or a software encoder (e.g. ATI AIW cards). This is auto-magically populated by examining the tuner device and whether it has an associated MPEG2 encoder onboard.

PrefEncoder does point to a hardware or software encoder, but it is not "auto-magically populated". Instead it is populated only after we have actually successfully built the capture graph using that encoder. I wish we could fill it in "auto-magically", but our psychic powers are not that good (and there are not API’s for hardware and software encoder for association with a specific tuner)

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Peter Rosser — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:57:35 GMT

Thanks psallo-repeto, I'll correct the entry :) By "magic" I meant the standard geek definition: "it's either too complicated to describe or I'm too lazy to do so right now".

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Roger Wicks — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:46:13 GMT

Peter, lets say that two physical cards are placed in a MCE machine, those cards would reside in a different tuning spaces, right? If that is the case couldn't one of those card be configured for a composite or svideo connection?

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Peter Rosser — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 08:55:09 GMT

Roger: A tuning space corresponds to how you tune, not what you're tuning on, but you're still right about configuration--cards can be configured to a different tuning space depending on your setup. Most times they are NOT configured differently, though, since Media Center does not support truly heterogeneous tuning because of Guide (and to a lesser extent PVR) design limitations. With the exception of ATSC (see my prior posting on the details about that).

Media Center cannot use disparate inputs, though, so if you configure one tuner to be able to directly tune to cable channels, the other tuners must also be configured in the same way (as opposed to tuning via an IR blaster and getting their data through S-Video or composite). Media Center does not support AUX-In recording at all, at present.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Shane (scrytch at gmail dot com) — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 14:04:11 GMT

Peter,

Thanks for the step-by-step guide.

Just FYI, I tried Option 1 above, and whilst each of my three DVB-T tuners work fine when any combination of two are installed, when I follow your guide to get all three working together I always get one reporting that the tuner is not installed, restart the pc and try again.

I did notice that the default UserDefName for the tuners that are setup with MCE (when I have just two going) are "Digital TV Antenna A" and "Digital TV Antenna B". Also the RecordOrder and WatchOrder do not start/end (where applicable) with a "0", they are 1 & 2 only. Not sure if this makes a difference or not.

Any ideas?

Regards,
Shane.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Shane (scrytch at gmail dot com) — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 14:19:28 GMT

OK - just tried Method 2, and all is now working.

Strangely, the registry entries seem to clash, but all works fine.

I have sent you the relevant registry tree to your hotmail account just in case it helps.

Thanks,
Shane.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Peter Rosser — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:53:12 GMT

Thanks, Shane! I'll take a look at that and fix my lousy instructions. ^_^

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Shane (scrytch at gmail dot com) — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 03:50:37 GMT

Peter,

They're not lousy by any stretch of the imagination! In fact they are pretty simple to follow and are far better than any other instructions available elsewhere. Just make them work for me and they'll be perfect :)

I just wish there was a tool in Media Center that could test the specs/bandwidth of the machine and allow it to work with as many tuners as it in theory can support. Artificially limiting the machine to two DVB-T tuners seems silly if it can technically support more.

If MS "Powertoys division" can't do it, the fact that the keys are there and can be adjusted this easily begs for someone to create a tool that can do this.

Anyone?

Regards,
Shane.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Scuffs — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:29:09 GMT

"Media Center cannot use disparate inputs, though, so if you configure one tuner to be able to directly tune to cable channels, the other tuners must also be configured in the same way (as opposed to tuning via an IR blaster and getting their data through S-Video or composite)."

Actually this is incorrect. The post on how to do it is located here
http://www.thegreenbutton.com/community/shwmessage.aspx?ForumID=41&MessageID=82583

It does cause a couple of problems with the guide, but those could be fixed if you guys would add recording by tuner options.

History shows which tuner recorded which show so MCE can track which tuner is which.
If MCE tries to record a show on the first tuner but cant tune to channel 160 it will try the second tuner, then the third, then the fourth. If you have a STB hooked to the tuner via the svideo input on a dual card,(the other tuner uses coax) and set the tuner to be watch/record 2 (anything but 0 or 1 since MCE doesnt seem to keep track of them after that, it just uses them randomly) it will eventually find it and use it. One problem is that if another show starts right after that show finishes with a high priority, MCE will sometimes use the same tuner which can cause another show with a lower priorty to not record on a digital channel.

Being able to set a channel by tuner priority would solve this, even being able to set a record with tuner would work. I know this would take a little work, but from everything I have seen it should be possible. That is it should be possible for someone at Microsoft who has access to the code.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Scuffs — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 23:56:31 GMT

Perhaps you can answer this.

Why are recordings in progress locked to viewing outside MCE until the recording is complete?

It cant be a DRM issue since DRM content is checked througout the playback, so I ssume its placed in during recording.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Peter Rosser — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 00:16:29 GMT

The reason recordings are locked outside MCE is because of the way that the Stream Buffer Engine (SBE, see sbe.dll and sbeio.dll) writes to the recordings. SBE throws an exclusive lock on the file, since we resize by chunk instead of by byte. If we did not lock the file, programs that tried to read the file while we are writing it would probably choke, since at some point they would encounter a) garbage data (random from whatever was on the disk previously at that point) or b) all zeroes. We cannot guarantee one or the other, though on FAT drives it's likely to be (a) and on NTFS drives it's likely to be (b).

We increase the file size by chunks to decrease fragmentation and increase performance.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Scuffs — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 01:49:50 GMT

Wholly shit. Thank you I think you answered everything I have been trying to figure out.

Dude this is so fucking hot.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

db23 — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:24:57 GMT

Your instructions seem to be for a non STB configuration. How would one go about configuring the IR control for the N STBs? Say I wanted 4 total, I can configure the first two with the MCE wizard, how do I configure the second two? If it helps they are all the same model so should all use the same IR code set.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Scuffs — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 00:32:23 GMT

Accident went over this on TGB. Right now you cant use more than 2 STBs because MCE will only support 1 USB IR reciever (whatever its really called) The reciever only has 2 IR outputs. He used an IR blaster cable from another device that had 2 outputs on 1 cable to control 2 different devices.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Warren — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 16:28:23 GMT

Ok, maybe this is a dumb question, I don't have an ATSC tuner for testing how this shows up, so bear with me.

If you're not using an ATSC tuner, is it possible to hack MCE into using the EPG for a STB, thus allowing disparate program guides?

I did a test and set up my HD-DVR to be tuned through the Svideo input on my NVTV card controlled via the IR blaster. This seemed to work fine, but I obviously had the issue that the coax tuner on the board didn't have the full range of channels available to it.

It seems that the code already exists to do this via the ATSC setup, or do i not understand how the ATSC tuners work with the program guide?

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Peter Rosser — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 09:08:56 GMT

db23: I bet you can use more than 2 STBs, but you would almost have to use timmmoore's Firewire tuning hack to get them all going, what with that IR blaster limitation and all.

warren: first off, you can hack anything to do anything, given sufficient motivation, skill and time... but in this case the cost would be pretty high. The problem is that the EPG had to be "one-off" modified to support ATSC guide data as it is, and so it's strongly tied to the ATSC tuning space and ATSC-specific tuning characteristics like minor channel, etc. So, without large modifications to the EPG, it is just not in the cards to enable heterogeneous EPG scenarios. We have no announced plans to include that for Media Center 2005. >_<

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

sanderton — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 15:12:38 GMT

Shame you can't get the multiple sources sorted. My TiVo dates from the last century and it can handle having DVB-T and satellite connected to it at the same time with a merged EPG. Six years on and MS can't manage it? I suspect it's because it's not a big issue in the US and it is way over here in Europe...

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Scuffs — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 19:09:48 GMT

Actually it is a big issue. First there are a lot of people with both cable and satallite. There are complaints about 3 times a week on TGB about it. But there are a lot more people who have a 2, 3, or 4 tuner setup with a single cable box. These people are stuck not using the cable box, or hacking MCE to allow it, and direct cable connections.

The UK has it worse, although I dont really understand how yours works. But its still a huge pain in the ass over here.

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Bryan Zouiden — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 20:01:55 GMT

Any suggestions on a particular mix of ATSC cards. I currently have 2 avermedia HDTV cards. Can I add another follow these great instructions and get 3 ATSC tuners to work inside MCE? I only ask because I know when I went from 1 to 2 I had to get a different driver from avermedia.

thanks for the guide this is going to be great.

Bryan

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

Nick — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 07:46:37 GMT

Well, I have had two tuners up and running for the past 10 months and they were working well. My raid 0 config with 2 300gb drives failed,DOH! So I upgraded a bit and went to 4 300gb drives in a raid 5, NICE! Here's the issue, I originally had used the import export method to install the 6 tuners I have and they worked GREAT! On the rare occasion I would get a 0 (zero) minute recording no big deal about rwice a month I was OK with that. Now with the same method and the regisrtry edit to # the tuners I get 0 (zero) minute recordings everyday!? I have also noticed I am also not getting all the recordings I have scheduled!? And yes there are no confilicts I should be getting all the recordings.

Any ideas???

Thanks,
Nick

re: Media Center Technical Discussion 1: Tuners and TuningSpaces

mosquito — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 22:04:55 GMT

I successfully used method #1 to get a Fusion 5, Avermedia, and ATI HD all working together without any issues for the past 2 days. I have 1 more Fusion 3 that I might try to include just for fun, although I don't think I've ever run into a case where I needed 4 OTA tuners at once. Anyway, thanks for the detailed instructions....It made it very easy!

Adding n tuners in MCE

Jeff Papiez — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 18:50:12 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/peterrosser/archive/2006/04/03/MCE_TechTalk_1.aspx