HD-PVR2 support (please vote)

[jpoet]

I have sent Hauppauge several emails over the last several months asking for development information for the HD-PVR2. I explain that I am a MythTV developer and would like to add support for it. In each case their response has been just a terse "It is still in beta". They don't seem to have any interest in a MythTV developer adding support for the device.

Devin Heitmueller and I ended up talking about the HD-PVR2 recently, and he mentioned that Kernel Labs has had working Linux support for the HD-PVR2 for a couple of years now. Kernel Labs writes drivers and supports video capture devices for the Broadcast/Audio/Video industries:

http://www.kernellabs.com/blog/?page_id=2

They support all the different flavors of the HD-PVR2 (I was not previously aware that there was more than one), and their driver supports all of its various options and controls. Devin says that their HD-PVR2 driver is very robust, and it would have to be to keep their clients happy. He says that the HD-PVR2 is a significant improvement over the HD-PVR including much better audio/video sync.

Long story short, Kernel Labs is willing to consider making their HD-PVR2 driver available for MythTV users. It would not be free, but the price would be a fraction of what they normally charge. Devin would even be willing to write the MythTV code to make it all work.

As a bonus, Devin says that he would do a complete code-audit of MythTV's V4L2 'recorder', optimizing it and removing the cruft that has built up over the years. This should result in improved support for everything from the old PVR-150 to the HVR-2250, as well as the HD-PVR. It might even result in faster channel changing with the HD-PVR.

For Devin to commit to this work, he would need to see enough interest to make it worth while. How many of you would like to see robust support for the HD-PVR2 and improved support for other V4L2 devices?


John

[wesnewell]

I feel like if a manufacturer wants to support their products in Linux, they should provide the necessary drivers, etc. if they don't I'm ok with that too. I'll just buy from a company that does. FWIW, I have no idea what an HD-PVR is other than what the generic letters would stand for which is high definition personal video recorder and I've been extremely happy with the 3 pcie atsc dual tuner cards I've been using for years.

[jpoet]

I feel like if a manufacturer wants to support their products in Linux, they should provide the necessary drivers, etc. if they don't I'm ok with that too. I'll just buy from a company that does. FWIW, I have no idea what an HD-PVR is other than what the generic letters would stand for which is high definition personal video recorder and I've been extremely happy with the 3 pcie atsc dual tuner cards I've been using for years.

I generally agree with you. However, in this case Hauppauge is the only game in town -- unless you want to spend over $1000! The Hauppage HD-PVR2 can be had for $150, which makes it the only device in current production, with its capabilities, that a typical user will buy.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_hdpvr2.html

The HD-PVR2 has HDMI and component inputs allowing you to record from just about any STB (Set Top Box). This is the only (legal) way to get HD recorded from Directv or DISH. It is also the only way to record such content from cable providers such as Time/Warner.

[TinCanFury]

when you say "willing to pay", how much are we talking here? My current HDPVR setup works fairly well, so for the cost of upgrading the HDPVR to HDPVR2's plus the cost of Devin's work, I'd essentially have to be guaranteed perfection, but for a small donation on my part I'd be willing to donate to support the community and the project.

[jpoet]

when you say "willing to pay", how much are we talking here? My current HDPVR setup works fairly well, so for the cost of upgrading the HDPVR to HDPVR2's plus the cost of Devin's work, I'd essentially have to be guaranteed perfection, but for a small donation on my part I'd be willing to donate to support the community and the project.

That is a good question, and it has not been answered yet. It may partially depend on how many people show interest.

[kbocek]

I already posted to the mailing list but I'll post here too. Even though I don't need an HDPVR at this time in Comcast/HDHR Prime land and my old HDPVR-1 is sitting on a shelf, I'm willing to pay to keep the analog hole open. Who knows what Comcast will do in the future.

[pschriver]

I personally have switched to an HDHomeRun from the Hauggpauge products due to lack of Linux support. My HD PVR2 was supposed to be an upgrade from HD PVR. It turned out to be a "Colossal" piece of junk that has been sitting on the shelf unused for several years. I would love to have plug-n-play support in Mythtv and would be willing to pay if I delivered full content recording

[harpax]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but did anything come of this? I just put the latest build of 0.28-pre on and my HDPVR is now less reliable then ever. LiveTV playback runs for some random amount of time before freezing up. The backend spews encoder i/o errors into the log and the frontend spews decoding errors. I don't know which is the root of the problem here, but the HDPVR has never been 100% reliable.

I actually own two 1212 units, as I had one fail years ago, bought a 2nd and got the original repaired. I tried both units, different cables, power supplies etc, no difference. On an older build of 0.28 pre I has having this issue but it was much less less frequent. On 0.27 I didn't have this problem at all. Now, I get 5 - 10 min max of LiveTV before playback freezes or I just get a black screen. I then need to exit the frontend, stop the backend, power off the HD-PVR (because as far as its concerned it is still encoding), then restart the backend. That buys another 5-10 min before we start the process over.

Here in Canada our only option really is the HD-PVR. There's no cable cards, nor DVB-S/S2 satellite that we can just lock onto, get a CAM and decode. Satellite or Cable, you must use a STB and then get the output of that into MythTV - I know of no alternatives for HD recording. You can use the HDHomeRun if you're OK with just OTA broadcasts (unfortunately) I need more then that.

I've been a MythTV user for many years (even contributed the odd minor patch from time to time), but at this point I'm thinking of retiring it all and just running XBMC or something similar for videos/streaming and using the rogers STB/PVR as anyone else would. Without support for something more reliable MythTV is rapidly losing any value/usefulness here in Canada. Makes me sad because I truly enjoyed my time tinkering with it.

If there is any interest i'd be happy to create a bug or post the logs from my system when playback freezes and fails. I don't entirely blame the HDPVR in this case as the same HDPVR on the same computer was working on 0.27 and Fedora 21 just one month ago. 0.28pre + Fedora 23 has been unreliable at best.

[dowens81625]

I would be grateful to see /dev/videoX > MPEG analog capture for the Hauppage HVR-2250 card in the latest version of MythTV

[Marshall]

Just wondering if anyone had found out the cost of the Kernel Labs work? I've been a MythTv user for a long time and would be happy to make a donation to help this move forward.

Thanks,

James

[dennisg]

I'm wanting to see this happen

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[wyild1]

Registered just so i could vote would love to upgrade to an hd-pvr2

Cheers!

[rahvin]

I'd vote but I'm more curious if anyone has used the Linux driver Hauppauge released for the HD-PVR2, they are ubuntu specific in some way, I don't have an HD-PVR2 but also appear to work on Raspian and OpenELEC.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/l ... ml?#tabs-3

Anyway, anyone tried them?

[zeek81]

I'd vote but I'm more curious if anyone has used the Linux driver Hauppauge released for the HD-PVR2, they are ubuntu specific in some way, I don't have an HD-PVR2 but also appear to work on Raspian and OpenELEC.

http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/l ... ml?#tabs-3

Anyway, anyone tried them?

I've gotten the HD-PVR2 to work on Ubuntu. However, there doesn't seem to be any hooks to connect it to mythtv. So, I've been using it with windows for the time being. Hopefully someone's working on adding it to mythtv now that there are official drivers for linux.

I haven't tried it on a Pi at all. I do have one but I haven't done anything with it in a long time. I guess I could reinstall for mythtv.

[dbrummund]

I have a PVR2 model 157321. I built the appropriate Hauppauge driver on 64bit Ubuntu 16.04LTS. Recording on component video input produces .ts files with no audio (VLC and SMPlayer and handbrake). Sound is functioning for other media on my PC. Audio is present at the RCA plugs. I've looked everywhere and installed all the ffmpeg libraries I could find but no luck. Error messages in handbrake show the AAC bit rate can't be detected so audio is ignored. Not sure if this is because no audio data is in the .ts file or if there is some formatting incompatibility. I reached out for support at Hauppauge, but they outsource linux support to the linux community in some way. I figured I'd reach out to see if anyone else is having issues. I browsed the driver source code briefly but I don't have time to debug too deeply on this. Another note is the video and audio passthrough is not working on my PVR2. This may be a known linux driver issue? I don't have a windows PC to check if the passthrough works with the supported windows driver. I am happy to assist though and can offer debug log outputs and sample .ts files if there is someone who can offer their support.

-Doug