Lockups/Black-Screen with 1.4.7

[mcevers]

I moved from 1.3.8 directly to 1.4.7 as soon as I noticed there was finally some in-build support for controlling set-top boxes via serial cable. Unfortunately, after several reinstalls of XP and spending the entire weekend trying to verify exactly where the problem is coming from, I have to report that 1.4.7 has some serious problems.

Anywhere from five to fifteen minutes after I start viewing live TV, regardless of the chosen recording quality, the screen will jerk a few times, freeze, and then turn completely black. When it turns black, the audio goes away too. I can't get back to my Windows desktop and have to reset the PC.

I uninstalled 1.4.7, deleted the remains of the Frey folder, then installed 1.4.5, then 1.4.3, then 1.3.8 following the exact same procedure. In all three cases, I no longer had a problem with freezing video and PC lockup, but I have this weird shimmering set of artifacts on the lower quarter-inch of the screen. I never saw this before with 1.3.8. Does anyone know how to get rid of this?

[fidget]

What is your system configuration and could you post a picture?

[insomniac]

Had the same problem. The new install enables the windows screen saver by default. Find the line in the property file and make sure it says as below:


ui/disable_screen_saver_and_pm=true

I.

Originally posted by mcevers
I moved from 1.3.8 directly to 1.4.7 as soon as I noticed there was finally some in-build support for controlling set-top boxes via serial cable. Unfortunately, after several reinstalls of XP and spending the entire weekend trying to verify exactly where the problem is coming from, I have to report that 1.4.7 has some serious problems.

Anywhere from five to fifteen minutes after I start viewing live TV, regardless of the chosen recording quality, the screen will jerk a few times, freeze, and then turn completely black. When it turns black, the audio goes away too. I can't get back to my Windows desktop and have to reset the PC.

I uninstalled 1.4.7, deleted the remains of the Frey folder, then installed 1.4.5, then 1.4.3, then 1.3.8 following the exact same procedure. In all three cases, I no longer had a problem with freezing video and PC lockup, but I have this weird shimmering set of artifacts on the lower quarter-inch of the screen. I never saw this before with 1.3.8. Does anyone know how to get rid of this?

[mcevers]

So you think the lockup/black screen and loss of audio is the screen saver kicking on? That's a possibility that I hadn't thought of. Let me know if that was the symptom you were talking about.

I am down at 1.3.8 now, and I figured out how to get rid of the shimmering video. Somehow the problem with freezing video at 1.4.7 and the lockups that resulted corrupted my Hauppauge software. I updated to the newest beta driver from Hauppauge and updated to the newest MPEG decoder and the shimmer went away. I also noticed I could make it go away by changing from the overlay option to VMR, but with the new drivers and decoder it isn't there in the overlay option either.

Unfortunately, while my video quality is way up again, and I have a stable Sage system, my cpu utilization is back up to 30% (new decoder doesn't install the reg keys you can hack to lower it).

Don't know if I'm ready to go back to 1.4.7 after all this. Think I'll wait on the next beta build before I go down this road again.

[mcevers]

See my profile for sys config. Couldn't take screen capture as I couldn't get back to the desktop or to alternate programs. System was locked. Didn't think to take a capture of the shimmering video. If I see it again, I'll post it here.

[insomniac]

Im pretty sure you ran into 2 problems. One of which was the lockup/black screen thing. The other might have been the O' so recent corrption thing. If you run into the corruption thing, what worked for me (many times) was to clear out the all the recorded shows and restart sage....sigh, now that was annoying.

I would try the next version. Ive read that there will be a lot of bug fixes.


I.

[fidget]

Originally posted by mcevers
See my profile for sys config. Couldn't take screen capture as I couldn't get back to the desktop or to alternate programs. System was locked. Didn't think to take a capture of the shimmering video. If I see it again, I'll post it here. If your picture looked something line this:

http://homepage.mac.com/eq_fidget/bad_pic.jpg

then I have had the same problem, but only when I tried to add a PVR-350 to my box that contained two PVR-250s. When I had the PVR-350 in the computer by itself, I didn't have a problem. I have had a locking problem when I add a third PVR to the mix, regardless if it was a PVR-350 or another 250. Unfortunately, I don't think any of this information helps:(

[mcevers]

Mine wasn't quite as severe, but you can clearly see several bands of corruption in your picture. Mine looked exactly the same with only the bottom most band, maybe 1/2 inch of the screen at the bottom. Same kind of effect, though.

[Narflex]

Intersting...I've never seen that before.

SHS, have you seen this before?