PVR-250 and Streaming

[chumone]

Are there any plans to make the PVR-250 work with streaming LiveTV?

[V_D_O]

Please?






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[Julia]

It's easier said than done. Consider that the PVR-250 outputs a MPEG2 stream, you need to first decode that, then re-encode to WMV to stream. Quite a task. It has been shown that it is possible to get a non-MPEG2 stream from the card, similar to what the non-hardware encoding cards do, but it was unreliable, and I believe worked differently on differnt releases of the card.

Julia

[archie]

i don't understand why every time this question comes up, the issue of transcoding to wmv then streaming is the answer.

streaming the mpeg is done by the competition. if streaming is that important to ss's users, then i feel they should work on this. i personally don't stream, so i don't really care. but it appears from these boards that many people would love that feature.

there is a workaround here that has worked for some. but i don't stream, so i haven't tried it yet.

archie

[RobertH]

yes sage streams mpeg but that is only viable for streaming to other pc's over a wired or higher speed wireless network.

if you are streaming to a pocket pc or streaming over a wireless network or over the internet you cant have the kinds of bandwidth that wmv offers you (let alone you have to pay a hefty license fee with the competitor for each client you want to have because of mpeg license fees)

wmv is a nicer solution for streaming and Im sure that either this wont be a problem when dual tuner support is added or they will eventually get a way to capture raw/transcode on the fly for the hardware encoders.

Technically you can capture raw data with the pvr250s but hauppauge keeps changing the driver interface with each revision so it is hard to keep this stable if they were to implement it.

[Julia]

Streaming in MPEG2 is less 'standard' than something like WMV, there are less clients available for it, and it would take considerable more resources on the client machine and transit. The issue I see is, you would have to stream at the same bitrate you captured at, and if you are like me that is the higher bitrate, so being able to view on a handheld wouldn't work.

Julia

[mickwall]

For me I just want to use streaming to PC's on my local 100Mb LAN. It sort of saves passing video tapes around to different people. For now I achieve this with drive mapping but a proper streaming solution would be better.

[Julia]

Well, it is always an option to post transcode the recording and then have it available for streaming, which *I* think is easier than passing tapes around.

Julia

[mickwall]

Very true, just means they have to watch the shows the next day as the transcoding can take a while . Kids can be very unforgiving, they say video was better as they could watch it when they want, they don't understand I've spent loads of cash on a dedicated machine so it must be better..musn't it.

[Julia]

Each persons requirements are different, and you may just have a set of requirements that can't be met at this time. I am sorry for that.

[mickwall]

Very true. Don't get me wrong I'm really impressed with the product, for me this would just be the icing on the cake!

[aurigus0]

I agree, streaming PVR-250/350 streams should be possible. On SHSPvr there is a graphedit that will display live, non-delayed TV. SnapStream should be able to use this to transcode to WMV. Or at least allow streaming of the mpeg. Most home networks should allow streaming of the Mpeg files at the default qualities.

I can't even use SnapStream to read mpeg files off of a mapped drive on the network. I get major skippage that is not there when playing with ZoomPlayer or Windows Media Player.

[Julia]

As I recall the graphedit line you are talking about varied between releases of the PVR-250, and hence was unreliable as a generic solution.

[RobertH]

that is what i mentioned above, hauppauge has a way of changing the graphs available on the drivers with each release, one of the annoyances that will slow development in this and the closed captioning wants because hauppauge keeps changing them, and if using the directshow graphs are the only way snapstream has to interface then they are completely at the mercy of hauppuage.

it just wouldnt make sense for them to implement capturing the raw data from the pvr just so that 900 users will come back saying it wont work because I dont want to use driver version X, or for them to make it work with the current drivers just so the next batch will break it.

It will get in there eventually and hauppauge is kinda close with SS so maybe they can get it all working.