HDPVR No Workithe, Help!!!

[tledford]

Originally Posted by Fluffdaddy

Once I got past my madding installation problems, my HDPVR has been glitch free. I'm using stock drivers.

Do an fc /b and you'll see there is only one driver available. The drivers on the CD, the Hauppauge website and shspvr are all the same drivers. The set on the Hauupauge website have different timestamps, but precisely one hour later (a time zone thing, presumably).

[dvsing]

So-- I just plugged my "bad" HD-PVR into my laptop after freshly installing the stock software and drivers (Arcsoft software).

I tried to record some video and it worked fine for a few seconds and then the video froze. The device seemed to be responsive to start/stop encoding commands (the red light went on and off as it should) but the software said the encoding failed and the picture was black and no sound.

Some of you have said that Hauppauge has been unable to reproduce this.. I find that hard to believe. I've now reproduced the problem on two separate systems (Sage server and my laptop) with the exact same results. I've got an RMA # and I plan to send this unit in for repair with a note that contains very explicit instructions on how to reproduce the problem.

By the way... for the people with the failing boxes, are you trying to record 1080i content or something else? I'm exclusively trying to record 1080i content since the comcast Motorola 6200 box I have upscales everything to 1080i.

Has anyone been able to produce this crashing with a video source other than 1080i? I think I read somewhere that someone was able to record SD ok but had trouble recording HD....?

-Dan

[dvsing]

..... So I'm encoding SD material from the front composite/sound inputs. Using my "bad" box. No crash after many many minutes of encoding.. interesting.

I wonder if Hauppauge is testing these boxes with 1080i sources? You would think.. =)

-Dan

[sleonard]

I just got home and reread Hauppages email. I have to correct my statement about them being unable to reproduce the issue. A cut and paste from the email:

we are currently working on this problem, we do not know if this is a Hardware or Driver issue, because we have tested some of the HD PVRs & seems to work fine without any problems.

So, he did not say that they were unable to reproduce the issue on all of the returned units just some of them. This could mean that they are unable to reproduce the issue so far but still have units to test OR it could mean that they are unable to reproduce the issue on some but can on others.

S

[mchias13]

dvsing,
i tried 1080i, 720p, and 480i (on the front) and on two different computers, 1 a desktop w/ XP and 1 a laptop with vista. neither could record. in the thread on the general discussion, 1 of the latest posts says 1 guy got a RMA back and it worked fine. hopefully it was just a bad batch that got past QA at the factory.

[Fluffdaddy]

Originally Posted by tledford

Do an fc /b and you'll see there is only one driver available. The drivers on the CD, the Hauppauge website and shspvr are all the same drivers. The set on the Hauupauge website have different timestamps, but precisely one hour later (a time zone thing, presumably).

So they are the same huh?..................well aint that a kick in the head

[Opus4]

BTW: I moved the discussion about recording quality settings to: HD PVR recording quality settings.

- Andy

[jphipps]

Since I have placed a fan on the unit, for about 3-4 days, I have been able to capture at 1080i and 720p without any issues....

[spaceghost]

jphipps, try it without the fan. I unknowingly let mine run overnight with just the top off (fan not running) and it worked beautifully all night long. I used it for the next 2 days without a fan just fine.

[jphipps]

I tried it for about 30 minutes without the fan, and it did not lock up, but the to large IC's got really hot... I put the fan back on, and they became cool in a few minutes....

[dvsing]

I haven't opened this box up.... yet. Do the IC's have any heatsinks on them? If not, it may be as simple as putting some heatsinks on them to help radiate the heat away from the IC faster. A fan may not be entirely necessary.

For those of you that have avoided or "fixed" this heat problem... are your setups stable now? I'm noticing that my "working" HD-PVR doesn't always work properly.. sometimes it doesn't record when it's told to record and other times it just stops in the middle of a recording for no reason although it doesn't appear to be frozen or locked up like my other unit was doing (that I RMA'd today).

-Dan

[jphipps]

There is no heat sinks on anything in the unit. I was thinking of trying some on the 2 larger chips, but I think there may be an issue because there is no ventilation in the case, it is all sealed.

Since I had put the fan on, I have not had a single instance that the unit either froze or did not function properly...

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by jphipps

There is no heat sinks on anything in the unit. I was thinking of trying some on the 2 larger chips, but I think there may be an issue because there is no ventilation in the case, it is all sealed.

Since I had put the fan on, I have not had a single instance that the unit either froze or did not function properly...

I was thinking about putting heat sinks on my working one but I was planing on adding slots for ventilation too. Basically you could create your own case for it which makes the wait earlier for cases a waist of time.

[canadaneedsmusi]

Ok, so my problems have not changed over the last week of trying almost everything I can think of or find online. Basically in the Arcsoft program TV viewing works well, no stutter, etc, but CPU usage up between 35% and 45%. In SageTV with Arcsoft decoder video stutters and is not as good quality in HD. Tried the Cyberlink decoders, sometimes less stuttering but quality not good in HD especially. Still running at 35% to 45%.

I have a Gigabyte 780G board, with Radeon 3200. I have made sure that the hardware acceleration is activated in PowerDVD 7 (came with Blu-Ray player). No change. I have a Phenom CPU, 4GB Ram, so CPU usage seems high, because there is no hardware acceleration going on.

I've tried everything but one thing. On Brent Evans blog it mentions adding a line to the sage.properties file about the decoder for H.264 files. I tried to do that last night, opened up the file in notepad, added the line, but it wouldnt let me save it.

I'm using Vista home premium, and the file is called a "default file". Has anyone had this kind of problem? Could it be UAC? Am I opening the file in the wrong program? Am I opening the wrong file? There's a sage.properties, but also a clientproperties file.

Also, is there a way to "turn on" hardware acceleration for Avivo in the Catalyst program? I havent found anything saying yes, but maybe it's that?

Basically after trying the file in the sage.properties file I'm out of ideas and have tried everything I've found online. This has been a very frustrating experience.

Dave.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by canadaneedsmusi

Ok, so my problems have not changed over the last week of trying almost everything I can think of or find online. Basically in the Arcsoft program TV viewing works well, no stutter, etc, but CPU usage up between 35% and 45%. In SageTV with Arcsoft decoder video stutters and is not as good quality in HD. Tried the Cyberlink decoders, sometimes less stuttering but quality not good in HD especially. Still running at 35% to 45%.

I have a Gigabyte 780G board, with Radeon 3200. I have made sure that the hardware acceleration is activated in PowerDVD 7 (came with Blu-Ray player). No change. I have a Phenom CPU, 4GB Ram, so CPU usage seems high, because there is no hardware acceleration going on.

I've tried everything but one thing. On Brent Evans blog it mentions adding a line to the sage.properties file about the decoder for H.264 files. I tried to do that last night, opened up the file in notepad, added the line, but it wouldnt let me save it.

I'm using Vista home premium, and the file is called a "default file". Has anyone had this kind of problem? Could it be UAC? Am I opening the file in the wrong program? Am I opening the wrong file? There's a sage.properties, but also a clientproperties file.

Also, is there a way to "turn on" hardware acceleration for Avivo in the Catalyst program? I havent found anything saying yes, but maybe it's that?

Basically after trying the file in the sage.properties file I'm out of ideas and have tried everything I've found online. This has been a very frustrating experience.

Dave.

I have answered what I think was the problem in a reply to your post in another thread here.

[canadaneedsmusi]

Sorry about that, I didnt really "ask" the question in my other thread, I wanted to post it in this thread as I thought it might get more exposure. But thanks for answering it in my other thread, and sorry for posting in two areas with a similar post.

Thanks again for your.

Dave.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by canadaneedsmusi

Sorry about that, I didnt really "ask" the question in my other thread, I wanted to post it in this thread as I thought it might get more exposure. But thanks for answering it in my other thread, and sorry for posting in two areas with a similar post.

Thanks again for your.

Dave.

I was posting mostly so that someone else didn't suggest the same thing without looking at the other thread and I'm the one that started it since I would have responded here had I seen it first.

[dvsing]

Originally Posted by jphipps

There is no heat sinks on anything in the unit. I was thinking of trying some on the 2 larger chips, but I think there may be an issue because there is no ventilation in the case, it is all sealed.

Since I had put the fan on, I have not had a single instance that the unit either froze or did not function properly...

Even though the case is sealed, adding a heatsink would still increase the surface area that the chips have to transfer heat to the surrounding air. It depends whether the problem is due to the chip's ability to dissipate heat to the air around it, or the ability for the air inside the case to dissipate it's heat through the case. Sure, a totally sealed case means you can't take in cooler air from the environment and vent off warmer air and if you've got a device that consumes a lot of power it really should be at least passively vented.

As far as I'm concerned, regarding this whole entire issue with the HD-PVR boxes... the responsibility to provide a working box is on Hauppauge's shoulders. No matter what the problems are with the current design (heat, drivers, etc).. we shouldn't have to modify the existing design to arrive at a working unit.

It's certainly interesting that some of you have managed to make you unstable HD-PVR's stable by removing the case and pointing a fan at the board, but honestly is that really a long term solution? I would hope that even if you ended up doing just that, that you are still putting pressure on Hauppauge to fix the problem -- either by a driver fix (unlikely) or total RMA replacement with a better-designed unit (probably what's going to happen to all of these boxes, unfortunately for Hauppauge).

-Dan

[MeInMaui]

FYI, I got my replacement HD PVR yesterday and installed it last night. It seems to be working fine so far.

Aloha,
Mike

[bcjenkins]

Care to open it up and see what they did to it?