Support for more recent cards

[sylva]

All:

I understand that plugins and submodules for GB are developed by volunteers (correct me if I'm wrong, please). However, cards like the Avermedia Duet A188 are not exactly new. It's supposed to be very good. This is why I'm adding it to the wish list. Then I could donate. Now I cannot, since I'll have to buy some commercial software for it. What a pity that support is mainly afforded for Hauppauge cards. I agree, they are, presumably, the most major manufacturer, but Avermedia is on the market with many products as well. I am NOT an Avermedia fan, since the Duet A188 is my first card ever and I was very disappointed that I couldn't put it to work right out of the box.

In my correspondence with the Duet's product manager (a very helpful gentleman), here's what his answer to my problem was:

"Sylva,
1. Will it work with GB-PVR? (deal braker)
Felix: Ideally it should work, AVerTVHD Duet drivers are based on standard Microsoft driver architerture and if GB-PVR based on this, it will work, personally I have not try it (yet). If not, ball on GB-PVR side, I can provide them with sample/support. In pass all of our cards support by GB-PVR."

Thanks for your attention.S.

[sub]

It basically comes down to Hauppauge being developer friendly, and proactively supplying me sample devices, and answering questions if I need help. This means I have good knowledge of their products, and GB-PVR supports even their newest cards. Other companies like Avermedia do not supply cards, and I have no contact with them, so I know very little about their devices (and I've never tested any of them with GB-PVR).

Hauppauge also have a set of products better suited to GB-PVR, with many devices having hardware MPEG2 encoders on their analog side. I dont think Avermedia have MPEG2 encoder hardware on their cards.

As Avermedia said in their reply though, if their drivers follow the BDA standard, they will usually work with GB-PVR, but some info like filternames etc may need to be collected to create a new entry in bda.ini so that card is recognised by GB-PVR. Those Avermedia cards that are listed, are those that users have created the bda.ini entries for their cards, found they worked, and have posted the entry on the forums.

[whurlston]

The Duet A188 is an digital only card (ATSC/QAM) so the hardware encoder is a non issue. We just need someone to post the filter names and we can get ATSC working for sure. QAM may or may not work but we won't know until someone tries it.

[sylva]

Much thanks go to both of you, gentlemen!

The Duet is a digital only card, so analog encoding is a non-issue indeed. Could you please let me know (jtsylvanis@juno.com) how to approach Felix Kolotinsky, Duet's product manager, as to Avermedia's providing what's needed for Duet's recognition?

As to QAM, Avermedia has a plugin that will render the card that capability. Too, as I understand, the card does detect unencripted cable channels quite well in Win7.

Thanks again.

Meanwhile, I remain sincerely yours, Sylva.

[sub]

Run filtercheck.exe in the gbpvr directory, then post the filtercheck.log that gets created and we'll take a look.

[sylva]

Sub,

Data for the Duet appear to be at the bottom of the file.

Thanks again, John.

[sub]

Try adding this to your bda.ini file:

[AverMedia Duet A188]
TUNING_TYPE=ATSC
FILTER_TUNER=AVerMedia 716x BDA ATSC Tuner
FILTER_CAPTURE=AVerMedia 716x BDA Digital Capture ATSC
PIN_TUNER_IN=Input0
PIN_TUNER_OUT=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_IN=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_OUT=MPEG2 Transport

[AverMedia Duet A188 (QAM)]
TUNING_TYPE=ATSC
TUNING_SPECIAL=2
FILTER_TUNER=AVerMedia 716x BDA ATSC Tuner
FILTER_CAPTURE=AVerMedia 716x BDA Digital Capture ATSC
PIN_TUNER_IN=Input0
PIN_TUNER_OUT=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_IN=MPEG2 Transport
PIN_CAPTURE_OUT=MPEG2 Transport

It should be fine for ATSC. I have no way to know if it'll work for QAM digital cable or not - you'd have to try it and see.

[sylva]

Thank you Sub.

Unfortunately neither worked. The card still can't be seen in Tuning Settings' pull-down list. I select US as the country and proceed to select the card. Can't be seen. When I press OK the "Failed to find Crossbar filter. Wrong device type?"

I also took a look at Direct.ini where one can see SETUPs for some of AverMedia's cards. Does Duet also need to be present in this file?

S.

[sub]

This is because you incorrectly creating an analog capture source. You need to set the recording plugin to the 'Digital Recording Plugin' when you create your capture source.

[sylva]

OK, let me try it and I'll get back to you. What time is it in NZ now? Here it's 20:16.

S.