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[rjm]

My son used Windows Media Center as a PVR for a long time. He became very dissatisfied and tried several alternatives. I convinced him to try JRiver given your many recent improvements. He is now using JRiver and is very happy. Well done!

13.0.159 with Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150.

We are observing that changing channels while time shifting does not work as expected. The TV seems to pause and does not change channels until we press the stop button. Changing channels when not time shifting works perfectly.

Sorry if this has been discussed in the past but I have not been paying attention to TV threads until recently when my son switched to JRiver.

[JimH]

We are observing that changing channels while time shifting does not work as expected. The TV seems to pause and does not change channels until we press the stop button. Changing channels when not time shifting works perfectly.

Thanks for bringing your son along.  I don't see this problem at all.  It would be interesting to test another device. 

I hope that Yaobing may have more to say.

[Yaobing]

I currently have the same device on my computer.  It works fine.  There is a small delay when changing channel while time-shifting (up to 2 seconds).

This device works best with InterVideo decoders that comes with Hauppauge software, but other decoders should work too.

[rjm]

I currently have the same device on my computer.  It works fine.  There is a small delay when changing channel while time-shifting (up to 2 seconds).

This device works best with InterVideo decoders that comes with Hauppauge software, but other decoders should work too.

Thanks for the suggestion.

I downloaded and installed the latest Hauppauge drivers and software and they did not help. Let me explain in a little more detail what we are seeing because it does not feel like a decoder problem.

- In real-time channel changing is smooth and quick.

- Time shifting works well. We can pause and scroll back and forward smoothly. The time shifted image is clear.

- Here is the problem: We press pause to enter time shifting mode, wait a few seconds, then press play to watch a channel in time shifted mode. Now change the channel. We see the new channel # displayed in the title bar. But the image freezes at what appears to be the real-time point on the original channel. We wait a while, nothing changes. Now we press stop and the onscreen message says entering real-time mode and the new channel plays correctly.

It appears to us that MC is trying to stay in time-shifted mode when it switches to the new channel and gets confused because there is no time shifted data for the new channel. Then by pressing stop, time shifted mode gets cancelled and everything starts working ok again.

If after reading this you still think it is an decoder problem, please advise how we should set the J River TV video engine options. I fooled around changing the Other Filter to Hauuppauge but it had no effect and I do not know what I am doing here.

P.S. we are running Vista 32

[Yaobing]

Time-shifting settings and video engine settings are separate.  This is confusing, but we have not figured out a better way yet.

For analog devices, there is no setting to choose filters during time-shifting.  MC tries to pick filters that match the tuner device best (i.e. InterVideo NonCSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge WinTV devices.)

One thing to make sure:

Go to TV Options (while playing a channel), click Recording tab.  Make sure the Recording Profile selection is Hardware Encoding.

[rjm]

Thanks. Don't know if it affects anything but I forgot to disclose one other aspect of our configuration. We are running a dual monitor system and MC is normally displayed on the secondary monitor.

I confirmed that the Hardware Encoder was selected in the Recording Profile. As an experiment I switched to one of the JRiver software encoders. I observed that the image was a little jerky (especially bad during time-shifting startup) which suggests that the hardware encoder is more efficient. However changing channels while time shifting works correctly with the software encoder.

I also observed that time shifting remained enabled when switching to the new channel. I would have thought that time shifting should have been turned off by default when switching channels.

So it appears that the encoder does influence the problem we are seeing.

Any further suggestions?

[Yaobing]

We no longer stop time-shifting when switching channels.

When you switched channel, were you very close to the end of buffer (near live time)?  When switching channel, MC may do a jump-ahead operation so you can quickly see the channel change.  The jump is not done if you are already within a couple of seconds of live.  Please do some tests to see if this makes any difference.  You can use right-click menu, and choose TV Options > Go to latest time to seek to near live position before making a channel change.  Then you can use TV Options > Go to earliest time to seek to as far from live as possible before making a channel change.

Also, does doing a jump-forward (CTRL+SHIFT+RIGHT ARROW) right after channel change help?

[rjm]

I went to the latest time, changed channels, and observed problem. Then went to the earliest time, changed channels, and observed same problem.

While stuck after changing channels, I tried ctrl+shift+right arrow. The display played the last 2 seconds of the original channel then got stuck again.

In all cases, pressing stop cancels time shifting and the new channel plays ok.

[Yaobing]

I am stumped.

Right-click, DirectShow Filters, what do you see (copy and paste graph info here)?

If MC happens to load a different video decoder, try clicking the decoder name from the list and bring out its property pages.

Another area to look into:

The TV device has property pages, in particular property pages for the video capture filter.  You can access the pages from the DirectShow Fitlers list.  There are quite some settings on  the pages you can fiddle with.