HD Streaming with GB-PVR, WinTV-HVR-1250, TVersity, and PS3

[ttfitz]

I've been messing around with this for a while, thought I had a solution, but have still run into problems, so I thought I'd look for help. I'm posting this in a number of website support forums for the various parts of the equation in hope of finding a solution SOMEWHERE.

As the title says, I am using GB-PVR to capture (and convert) Clear-QAM HD broadcasts on a WinTV-HVR-1250 tuner card, streaming the results wirelessly using the TVersity media server software to my PS3. The problem is finding a reliable setup to do this.

I have tried the variety of capture options with GB-PVR (DVR-MS,TS-Mux, Full-TS, a couple Cyberlink muxes) in combination with a few conversion procedures (Xvid, MPG2, using ffmpeg, mencoder, other things I can't even remember now), and thought I had finally come up with a working model using TS-Mux converted to Xvid with ffmpeg, but I've had some gliches with that, so I'm looking for help.

The captures all seem to work okay, I think - some of them don't play well with Media Player 9 on my XP system, but they all seem to be there - the trouble seems to be a conversion that works streaming to the PS3. The plain capture files aren't good enough, as I need to at least convert down the bitrate in order to stream wirelessly, and I keep getting "corrupt data" messages when I try to use TVersity to stream the TS files, anyway.

So, is there anyone out there who has something similar working who can give me some clues as to what to try? With network premiere season upon us, I'm sure someone is going to program 3 shows I am interested in looking at opposite one another, so I'd like to have this working.

Thanks,

Tim

[RabidDog]

TWo problems spring out .. well one really.. wireless and HD ..they dont work as the bitrates are too high
Could be solved by using powerline or wired GBethernet.
PS3 ? a ds on steroids that plays Blu-ray .. POS.
Tversity? beta software

[FulciLives]

You can stream to the PS3 in file mode. In short the file is copied to the PS3 over the network. Just like when you copy a file on your computer from one HDD to another or from one folder location to another.

The file copy will happen much faster than real time and once the file is copied over to the PS3 it is on the HDD and you don't have to worry about what bitrate it is really since you play it off of the HDD and not by "streaming" it.

I don't do HD captures myself but if you can convert them to M2TS that seems to work well with the PS3. There is a program called tsMuxeR that can do this without re-encoding or if you want/need to re-encode I suggest using XviD4PSP which has a M2TS profile that works great with the PS3 (it is basically H.264 video with AC-3 audio). There is also a HD AVI option that uses XviD and this can be done with AC-3 and will work on the PS3 as well.

The PS3 is definitely not a POS and as for TVersity ... I don't use it and realize some have trouble with it but it does seem popular so I doubt that is your problem. I've also heard that the newest version now supports M2TS files whereas before you had to rename them to .mpg or .mpeg or .vob or some such nonsense. Now TVersity handles M2TS without having to rename them which is good as this format is native to the PS3 (you can also burn to a DVD disc as a "data disc" and play M2TS natively on the PS3 that way).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I use a program called MediaTomb for my PS3 streaming needs but this is a Linux program. I use Linux natively and WinXP inside of VirtualBox.