Hauppauge Drivers...Any of them work?

[Boxster_T]

I continue to have video playback that freezes for a fraction of a second quite frequently with infrequent very small green blocks ramdomly popping up. My wife's about to toss me out.

After scanning the forum, I'm focusing on the Hauppauge drivers. I was running the released set (with video and audio issues) and recently updated to 1.7.21177 based on forum feedback. The SHS board implied many issues with 188 and 199 so I stayed with 177.

My question to the Sage community is what version driver works? Might the MPEG settings of A, B, C or D have any effect on these video issues? Is Overlay the correct mode to be in and would that have any impact (I am using Ovelay).

I don't might trying different settings/drivers but I feel like I'm in the forest without a compass :confused:

Any guidance or experiences appreciated.

tom

[robogeek]

I am using 2 PVR-250's with v1.7.21143 drivers without any problems. Based on your description of the problem, it kinda sounds like a defective tuner card. If you have the same problems with various driver versions, try moving the card into a different PCI slot. If it still has problems, it's probably a bad card...see if you can exchange it or send it back for a new one.

[Narflex]

Just a thought....Are you sure it's not a problem with your cable?

I get that on my cable system quite often for the digital channels. And of course it shows up in SageTV....but the problem is with the cable, and it's EXACTLY what you're describing.

[salsbst]

narflex has a good point.... but 21143 might be worth a try.... I went quickly through 21177, 21188 and 21199 after departing 21143 as I was chasing image quality. after some problems, it seems I may be ok with 21199 after a hint from narflex: http://www.freytechnologies.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1339 (note this seems unrelated to your issue).

It's hard to know which of the problems reported at shspvr's forum will actually affect SageTV users... but it seems like we generally have only a few bugs in common with WinTV.exe users.

21143 were stable even without any hints from narflex so if you're stumbling blindly in the dark give them a shot.

Good luck: I have shared your frustration.

Lastly, if you're worried about whether to use VMR or overlay, I'd recommend to use the tried and true overlay which shouldn't put as much strain on your CPU/GPU.

Regards,
Stuart

[Boxster_T]

I'll give 21143 a shot tonight. The problem pops up very quickly so a night of TV should reveal any problems.

Narflex, when the wife-frustration-level reaches critical mass, I move to a direct-connect setup bypassing my HTPC. All those issues go away.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Tom

[salsbst]

One thing to consider is the video decoder.... do you have any other video decoders on your HTPC other than the one that comes with the Hauppauge drivers (a tweaked version of the windvd decoder)? I seem to have gotten around an issue or two by moving away from the default decoders.... I'm using the non-Hauppauge WinDVD decoder for audio and the Sonic decoder for video, and I switched to overlay from vmr. Where I did have pops in the audio and a persistent black vertical line in video, I now have no trouble. I think a reboot after changing these settings may be in order.

You should be able to verify whether the problem crops up in encoding or decoding by trying to view sagetv-recorded MPG files outside of sagetv.