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tria · 2013-04-24, 20:55

Hello,

I have a Technisat SkyStar HD2 card, which is a DVB-S/S2 tuner, and I am finding it slow when switching between channels (7+ seconds) under XBMC. I understand that such cards cannot compete with dedicated devices, but such delay is annoying. I have tried both MediaPortal TV server and NextPVR as servers without being able to improve the switching time. When I try the card with DVB Dream software (obviously not through XBMC), I can get better switching, but still not as fast as I wished for.

Is there is any other card or a dedicated device (network streaming) that could be used with XBMC with a faster switching time, maybe 1-2 seconds or less?

Thanks

sub3 · (This post was last modified: 2013-04-24, 22:04 by sub3.)

It's an XBMC bug. Backends like NextPVR were supplying the data stream to XBMC about a second after the channel change, but XBMC was taking 5 or so seconds to analyse the stream before it'd start playback.

Changes have been submitted to address the XBMC problem, but they haven't been merged yet. A prebuilt binary for Window including this patch was posted in the MediaPortal subforum, and it reduced the NextPVR channels changes to about 1-2 seconds.

tria · 2013-04-24, 21:43

Mind to share the link? Is it the margro fork? The one in this link (2.1 with channel switching speed improvement)
http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~marcelg...build.html

sub3 · (This post was last modified: 2013-04-24, 22:03 by sub3.)

He posted that build here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/7249985/xbmc/xb...margro.exe

tria · 2013-04-25, 15:09

Thank you. It is indeed Margro's fork. I tried it, and while it did improve the time greatly, I had other several problems. With MediaPortal, I get "No PMT" frequently. While with NextPVR, when I start a channel it shows fine, but when I switch to another it either get stucked or show an audio without video. If I stop the channel, then start the other channel, sometimes it work (but not always).

Maybe I should try DVBViewer Pro, as it is the only program switching channels in one second. I just wish there was a way to trail the Recording Service before having to buy a license, as I don't want to buy just to find that I have the same problem with it. Anyone tried DVBViewer Pro/Recording Service with XBMC and can recommend it?

sub3 · (This post was last modified: 2013-04-25, 18:58 by sub3.)

(2013-04-25, 15:09)tria Wrote: Thank you. It is indeed Margro's fork. I tried it, and while it did improve the time greatly, I had other several problems. With MediaPortal, I get "No PMT" frequently. While with NextPVR, when I start a channel it shows fine, but when I switch to another it either get stucked or show an audio without video.

I had better luck than that with the build, but from reading this and other comments, it sounds like they haven't got those XBMC quick channel changes fixes quite right yet. I'm sure they're working on it though.

tria · 2013-04-25, 23:13

I purchased a license of DVBViewer Pro earlier, and using it along with Recording Service, I am having fast switching (1-3 seconds). Everything is working as expected (Channels/EPG/Timers/Recordings), except that Recording Service and the PVR addon don't support time-shifting (yet). I've seen a modified PVR addon that support time-shifting, but it was slow in the channel switching department (5+ seconds). There is also another version with improved channel switching. The earlier will be merged with the later one as stated by the man behind one of them, so lets hope that will happen soon. In the mean time, I am still happy about the current state. BTW, I am using Margro's build, but I believe even the official build will be the same (though didn't try).
Thanks