Intermittent choppy video/sound in Vista x64 SP1

[archcommus]

Hello, I've just built a new system and installed Vista 64-bit with SP1 and all the latest updates. I have a PVR-150 with the 2.0.48.24227 drivers installed. Once I updated the drivers everything worked fine at first, and actually for quite awhile, but intermittently it will start to get choppy, then freeze up completely. Sometimes while it's being choppy distorted video will enter the picture, like large blocks of neon colors interspersed with the video. The problem often happens right when starting Sage. I'm not sure if the problem is associated with the 64-bit Hauppauge drivers or simply using Sage in a 64-bit environment. I don't suspect any video troubles as games on this new system work fine.

Anyone else experience similar issues in Vista x64? Thanks.

[Taddeusz]

To me that sounds like a signal problem. At my apartment I don't have the strongest cable TV signal. Whenever the signal starts to break up I get green boxes all over the screen. You might check your signal strength.

[GStiles]

I've had SageTV up and running on Vista64 for about six months now.

I just installed Vista SP1 and I'm seeing my recordings are messed up. A 90 minute movie plays to the end in about 5 seconds. If I play the .mpg file in another player (like media player), it is very choppy both the video and sound.

Not sure if this is an SP1 thing, or just a coincidence.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by GStiles

I've had SageTV up and running on Vista64 for about six months now.

I just installed Vista SP1 and I'm seeing my recordings are messed up. A 90 minute movie plays to the end in about 5 seconds. If I play the .mpg file in another player (like media player), it is very choppy both the video and sound.

Not sure if this is an SP1 thing, or just a coincidence.

What kind of tuner card?

[scat]

Originally Posted by archcommus

Hello, I've just built a new system and installed Vista 64-bit with SP1 and all the latest updates. I have a PVR-150 with the 2.0.48.24227 drivers installed. Once I updated the drivers everything worked fine at first, and actually for quite awhile, but intermittently it will start to get choppy, then freeze up completely. Sometimes while it's being choppy distorted video will enter the picture, like large blocks of neon colors interspersed with the video. The problem often happens right when starting Sage. I'm not sure if the problem is associated with the 64-bit Hauppauge drivers or simply using Sage in a 64-bit environment. I don't suspect any video troubles as games on this new system work fine.

Anyone else experience similar issues in Vista x64? Thanks.

I just installed the samething but with a PVR-500 tuner card, and the drive for video recording is SATA 500GB Seagate formated at 64k clusters, nothing else is stored on this drive.


Hardware

Mother board - GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard

CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache
with factory heatsink and fan

Memory - 4GB Total ,(2) -OCZ Platinum 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Micron D7 Chip Dual

Channel

Video card - SAPPHIRE 100218L Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB 128-bit GDDR3
PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

Windows Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM
Partitioned 120 gb for windows, 380 gb for pictures and mp3 music

Video Drive - Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3500320AS 500GB 7200 RPM

Power Supply - SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus SS-650HT ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply

DVD Drive - Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM HD DVD Drive, LG GGC-H20L

Case - SilverStone Lascala SST-LC17 HTPC Case, Black

***** update 05-03-2008 3:15 pm *******
I removed 1 gb of memory, down to 3 gb of memory and SageTV worked no problems.
So I have to decide if I want to down size my memory with Vista 64 or go back to Windows XP which will use 3.5 gb of my memory.
SageTV 6.3.10 Current version
************************************


Scat

[archcommus]

Thanks. I don't think it's a signal strength issue since I've never had problems with this line before. Also, Sage and this tuner worked fine for a long time with 32-bit SP1. However, now with 64-bit SP1, I have these issues. I played around more last night and it appears to work fine for the very first Sage session right after installing the driver. For example, I remove the device, Vista reinstalls it with its default drivers, I update the drivers to the latest, and then run Sage and it's fine. But then the next time I open the program I get immediate issues. My feelings tell me this is a combo 64-bit/SP1 issue, but I can't be sure. The garbage in the video does sound like a signal quality problem, but like I said this line in this room has never given me troubles in the past.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by archcommus

Thanks. I don't think it's a signal strength issue since I've never had problems with this line before. Also, Sage and this tuner worked fine for a long time with 32-bit SP1. However, now with 64-bit SP1, I have these issues. I played around more last night and it appears to work fine for the very first Sage session right after installing the driver. For example, I remove the device, Vista reinstalls it with its default drivers, I update the drivers to the latest, and then run Sage and it's fine. But then the next time I open the program I get immediate issues. My feelings tell me this is a combo 64-bit/SP1 issue, but I can't be sure. The garbage in the video does sound like a signal quality problem, but like I said this line in this room has never given me troubles in the past.

How much RAM do you have? It's my understanding that the Hauppauge drivers don't work correctly on 64-bit OS's that have 4GB or more of RAM. The last I'd heard Hauppauge had no plans to fix the problem. It may have been addressed but I haven't heard otherwise.

[archcommus]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

How much RAM do you have? It's my understanding that the Hauppauge drivers don't work correctly on 64-bit OS's that have 4GB or more of RAM. The last I'd heard Hauppauge had no plans to fix the problem. It may have been addressed but I haven't heard otherwise.

Well that would explain it if you are correct, I have 4 GB in this new system and only had 1 GB in the old one that had 32-bit SP1. That's pretty crappy if that's true as I definitely don't want to remove 2 GB of RAM (one stick) just for Hauppauge.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by archcommus

Well that would explain it if you are correct, I have 4 GB in this new system and only had 1 GB in the old one that had 32-bit SP1. That's pretty crappy if that's true as I definitely don't want to remove 2 GB of RAM (one stick) just for Hauppauge.

I quite understand. Creative had the same problem with their sound cards all the way up to the X-Fi. It's since been fixed for the X-Fi but is still a problem for older cards. The problem is that some older drivers don't like it when the memory space they are addressing is higher than 4GB. To have 4GB in a system the upper 512MB-1GB of RAM must be remapped to addresses above 4GB because that space is reserved for hardware. When this happens drivers that expect that they will always be accessing memory addresses below 4GB get wigged out and can cause all sorts of problems.

Since the PVR150 is an old product that is going to become obsolete come next year I can understand but it's also short sighted of them not to address the problem (no pun intended).

[archcommus]

Haha. When you say become obsolete, do you mean because of a new coming product or because of the digital transition in February? If you mean the latter, that doesn't really make the PVR-150 or any other analog tuners obsolete, since the digital transition is only for OTA broadcasts and I'm pretty sure Comcast and others will continue delivering analog signals over cable for quite awhile.

Anyway, thanks for that explanation of why the problem exists. I found this prerelease driver by doing some googling, but it doesn't help. Looks like another card will be necessary unless I want to limit my system to ~3.2 GB of memory via msconfig, which I don't.

[archcommus]

Okay, so on to another card. What to get? I want something for now and the near-term future. Does that mean a hybrid analog/digital card is the way to go? Looks like the only options would be one of the WinTV-HVR's or an ATI Theater 650.