Has my tuner card bit the dust?

[knarfishness]

I set my HTPC box up about a year ago from now, and it's been running smoothly (for the most part) ever since. Last summer, I had it connected to my DirecTV STB through S-Video, and after that I had it hooked successfully to my apartment-provided cable at my college.

But it's summer again, and my DirecTV setup I had running last summer...well...isn't. Here's a rundown of what I've got set up, hopefully I'm doing something tragically stupid and there's an easy fix, but my gut is telling me that the tuner card has stopped working:

HTPC Box running WinXP Pro, 512 (soon to be 1gb again) RAM, Seagate 7200rpm Barracuda (x2)

SageTV 6.3, with a Hauppauge PVR 150 (coax, S-Video, Audio in/IR blaster port)

Sapphire ATI PCI Graphics card (256mb)

...

All is set up as it was last summer, but now during the Setup Menu for SageTV the S-Video input shows no video preview (neither does the listings for other ports, including TV-Tuner, S-Video_2 and Composite, which the card doesn't even have). The S-Video cable transmits the DirecTV directly to the TV fine, but when it's put in the Tuner card and out the Video card, something is hanging it up.

Any help is appreciated.

-knarfishness

EDIT: The problem here was not my tuner card at all, but in fact a combination of an old version of Java, and an overloaded system running too many processes.

I hope this saves someone like me who thought it was the tuner card when it was the system's fault all along. A full reinstall of Windows XP, SageTV and drivers solved this instantly.

[flavius]

Have you tried the hauppauge software? Do those programs work? I think it used to be Win-TV ..

[knarfishness]

Yeah, I ran it through WinTV 2000, reinstalled all drivers, codecs and the like, which is an accomplishment over dial-up.

Also, just for scientific purposes, picked up a Pinnacle PCTV card, and that transmits video (and audio presumably, haven't gotten that far) to it's own software, but not SageTV (I don't think it's supported). So at least I know the S-Video out on my DirecTV STB is working.

I thought maybe it was the encoder settings, but any time I change those, even to the original settings, I get a playback error (on the WinTV card, Error code 10).

The fact that the Pinnacle card (though it's getting returned with it's horrible software) works means that there is nothing inherently wrong with my STB, the cables I'm using, or anything but the WinTV card.

I'm about ready to hit this thing with a hammer. Cable was SO EASY, and now DirecTV is well on it's way to making me rip my hair out over this.

Thanks for any and all help in advance, guys.

-knarfishness

[gilded07]

It doesn't appear that my problem is exactly like yours but I stumbled across a fix for mine. See the last post on this thread:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32449

[knarfishness]

Alrighty. Updates, for those interested.

Put the 1gb back in the TV box. Exchanged the Pinnacle POS for a Hauppauge 1600 HD card. ATSC/NTSC, it's nice.

During setup, I got video. I danced, for a good while. But after setup, when I tried to tune to live TV, the video showed up, froze, and then went black.

This almost seems like a performance issue at this point. Gonna do a fresh XP nuke 'n pave tonight, and see if that makes any kind of difference. All while downloading drivers/software/forum posts on dial-up.

Hope this helps someone who thinks their card may be dead, when in fact it's mixed up drivers, java versions, spyware or video drivers that's causing the card to not play nice.

-knarfishness

[jerryb33]

New with SAGETV - Vanilla setup, as of 5/25

Having a s-video/composite video in problem here with HR1600. Sound OK. I know output from my Panny DVR OK, as it plays thru my Sony VAIO card on same computer. ATSC & NTSC inputs OK. as I can watch thru my extender.
Tried thru WINTV, also no video - sound OK.

I have not loaded any new drivers as on install I had the latest. Java was harping to get latest update so I did install this.

Appreciate any help