HD-PVR Setup Stories

[lamanmi]

IVB,

I ran into similar *user* problems, but now at the same stage as you. The blaster was working for a short period, but now seems to not be working. I have other ways to control that, the biggest issue is the "judder".....

Hope we can get that solved.

[Kimper]

Ok here is my story:

Rig:
vid card - ATI Radeon HD2600XT
mobo - ASUS P5K-VM
cpu - INTEL|C2D E6750 2.66G
mem - 1Gx2|CORSAIR TWIN2X2048
OS = Win XP pro

Tuners:
Hauppauge PVR-250
Hd Homerun

USBUIRT control of Time Warner cable box

What I did:
1. Upgraded to Sage Beta 6.4.4
2. Made sure everything worked still
3. Upgraded Video Drivers to latest Catalyst.. this broke playback in Sage in everything but Basic mode. So went back and..
4. Uninstalled all ATI drivers and software
5. Reinstalled latest drivers and software from ATI.. Now everything was working again.
5.5 Removed Hauppauge card from tuner lineup in SageTV
6. Powered down and removed the Hauppauge 250 card
7. Ran HWclear
8. Downloaded beta driver for HD-PVR and extracted file (Download here)
9. Made all connections for HD-PVR
10. Windows XP pops up with new device notice. I browse to beta driver folder and install driver. Windows says it installs but there is a problem with new device.
11. Run the .exe in the Beta folder to reinstall HD-PVR driver. Windows seems happy now.
11.5 Installed the Arcsoft software off the disc
12. Run SageTV goto setup to add new tuner.. Wonderfully the HD-PVR is there as a selection.
13. Selected and setup the HD-PVR and even had the preview video show-up in setup!
14. It all seems to be working!! I tune some HD channels and some SD channels and everything is smooth and looks great!


But.. you know it can't be that easy.....

If I fast forward or rewind the picture gets this horrible pixalation effect that would only go away if you tune a new channel which then would be perfect again.

I messed with alot of codec changes and the problem persisted.

Here I will quote another post by me on how I fixed it:

I opened up the Arcsoft player and noticed the same exact thing was happening with it as well (all smooth until ff or rw). I opend the config options inside of Arcsoft and turned off hardware acceleration. That fixed the problem in Arcsoft. Next I closed Arcsoft, opened Sage, tried it and the pixalation disappeared.

I have no idea why this worked inside of Sage and truly it seems like it shouldn't have.. but it did.
Arcsoft and the HD-PVR seem to have some sort of incestious link..

It all works great now and I am considering adding another HD-PVR!

-- Also don't forget to upgrade to Beta firmware for any Sage HD extenders --
-- Also I left channel changing via the USBUIRT and did not mess with Hauppauge's blaster at all --

[IVB]

Originally Posted by lamanmi

IVB,

I ran into similar *user* problems, but now at the same stage as you. The blaster was working for a short period, but now seems to not be working. I have other ways to control that, the biggest issue is the "judder".....

Hope we can get that solved.

Did you try anything yet? I haven't, wife's been dragging me/kids everywhere so I have yet to read through what the suggested solutions are.

One thing I neglected to mention is that so far, i've not had any pixelation issues. I was skipping ahead 10s/3min, backward 10s, pause, only thing I didn't do was a fast-forward as I never do that. So far so good, hopefully this post doesn't jinx me.

[paulbeers]

Just gotta say that the HD PVR is awesome....

I received mine on Wednesday night of last week, but due to the holiday weekend, I was finally able to sit down and install it tonight. Took a whole half hour.... (I had already previously upgraded to 6.4.4 and updated the firmware on my HD100's). The only annoying thing, is that after I installed the USB drivers, the HD PVR kept showing up as an "unrecognized USB device"....after a quick power cycle, all was well!

My only complaint is that I forgot to turn power saving off on my VIP211, so now I have to at some point run back and forth between one of my HD100's and my VIP211 to get that turned off (I am not going to go to the trouble to hook a tv up to it and my server is definately not powerful enough!). Obviously this was user oversight and not the HD PVR's fault...ooops!

I should mention that I am using a USB-UIRT to control it (Since I am using it already to control my two 311's).

[mattdcknsn]

I was able to get my HD-PVR hooked up and running this past weekend as well. Everything went smooth (mostly). I have 2 PVR150s and the HD-PVR, and I could never get the IRBlaster to work with everything enabled. As soon as I installed my PVR-150s the IRblaster died (saying no IR HW found). After banging my head against the wall for an hour I remembered I had an old FW card from when I tested capturing FW output. So I hooked that up and got it working in 30 minutes.

I am getting stuttering on my HD100 now for some reason. Sometimes it works fine and other times it stutters like crazy. I'll have to sit down one night and figure that out. I am running the latest beta FW and Sage.

[MichaelLAX]

FWIW: I have my HD-PVR set to a dedicated DirecTV HR20-100 HD receiver with a Mac Mini running Windows XP thru Boot Camp as a front end. The whole setup is in a guest bedroom where I have an extra DirecTV input and is also connected to my home ethernetwork.

I control the front end thru VNC from the other end of the house when it comes to programming a recording. I am just now setting up the IR Blaster and having a few issues that I hope to resolve tomorrow.

Once I create the .TS files (I have the DirecTV receiver set to always output at 720p), I use another Mac Mini on the network to run VisualHub to transcode the file to H.264 1280x720 8Mbps that is compatible (no CABAC) with my AppleTVs, which are also networked.

I like it so far...

[Opus4]

I might as well add to the list here...

Install of my 2 HD-PVRs was pretty easy; the hardest part was rewiring behind the TV.

I essentially connected both HD-PVRs to the STBs & the TV via passthrough, configured the STBs to output HD, noted which HD-PVR was connected to which STB, connected them to the PC & pointed Windows to the folder with the drivers, rebooted since I hadn't rebooted in weeks, then set up the new sources in SageTV while removing the PVR-USB2 tuners connected to the STB via svideo.

All pre-existing tuners continued to work & the same PVR-USB2 as before still acts as my IR receiver for the PC. So, now I'm up to 1 HDHR (OTA + QAM), 2 HD-PVRs (component), 2 PVR-USB2s (analog cable), and 1 PVR-250 (analog cable).

HD recordings seem fine on my HD100 so far (I don't play them on the PC), but as with any new hardware, I'll set up several recordings tonight to make sure everything continues to work.

- Andy

[IVB]

any odd setup thingeys due to 2 HD-PVRs?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by IVB

any odd setup thingeys due to 2 HD-PVRs?

Nothing that I noticed being different from setting up 2 of any other type of tuner, or at least 2 connected to STBs.

- Andy

[sleonard]

I didn't have any problems setting up 2 HD-PVR's but when I added the third one Sage changed the numbering of all of them. HD-PVR #1 connected to STB 1 and using Zone 1 on the USB-UIRT became HD-PVR #2. HD-PVR #2 connected to STB #2 and using Zone 2 became HD-PVR #3. The third one added became HD-PVR #1.

This really made it difficult since now all three HD-PVR's were connected to the wrong STB's and using the wrong zones.

Scott

[mayamaniac]

I had channel changing problems but that was solved after a full uninstallation and full clean reinstallation of SageTV.

Its working 100% right now. No problems whatsoever. It takes about 5 seconds to complete a channel change thanks to the firewire method. And SageTV records all shows and no problems exist so far. Playback is also flawless on the HD-Extender. I don't use the SageTV Client much anymore, but it seems to work fine with the HD-PVR also, using the arsoft codec. If you need to use other codecs, then it might be a problem.

Overall, I'm very happy with the HD-PVR.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Nothing that I noticed being different from setting up 2 of any other type of tuner, or at least 2 connected to STBs.

- Andy

Bad to, wait, Good to know. Nope, that's a bad thing for me to know, with my poor impulse control...

[direwolf08]

It takes 5 seconds to change channels? That sounds like it might be annoying.

[IVB]

only if you watch live TV, which i haven't in 5 years after installing Sage...

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by direwolf08

It takes 5 seconds to change channels? That sounds like it might be annoying.

Very annoying.

B

[cslatt]

After hours of fighting trying to get my HD-PVR working - re-installing drivers, re-starting Sage, removing my old PVR150s, etc, guess what the problem turned out to be...

The component cables it came with were bad.

*furious cursing*

Once I switched out the cables, everything worked beautifully.

I'm using an old USB-UIRT I had laying around for channel changing and the HD Extender to watch the video.

[viperdiablo]

cslatt, how long is it taking you to change channels with the uirt?

[Opus4]

It looks like at least one of my HD-PVR units has an intermittent overheating problem, even though it has been modified with a fan added to it. It worked since being installed on Saturday, stopped working late this morning, and has been working all evening.

How many of you have a Rev C2 unit that locks & have taken the cover off? Has that helped?

- Andy

[sleonard]

I have returned one C1 and got back a C2 that was modded in house (the little rubber pads were missing from the feet) and later had to return another two C2 units that were modded at the factory (no indication that they had been opened) and got back two more factory C2 units. I haven't had any lockups since. I wasn't going to void my warranties by opening up the cases but I did buy a table fan and have that blowing on all three. I would get an RMA and return it for a replacement and make sure they understand it is a C2 unit that is locking up.

I am still having problems but different from the lockups. One example is a recording of 'The Closer' recently. It plays perfectly in TotalMedia Theatre but I get audio only in Sage client. If I use the transport controls to skip forward or back I can sometime get a frozen video frame but usually just a black screen. On my HD extender I got no audio at first as well as some strange fast forward effects but skipping around eventually got it playing properly. I also noticed that the detailed info in Sage said it was 480i but it is actually 1080i.

I haven't done enough troubleshooting but it appears that there is some problems with the way Sage is recording with these device and/or playback of the recorded video.

S

[Opus4]

I'm still debating what to do because I thought that at one point this afternoon, both HD-PVRs had locked up. I power cycled one & it worked, then the other stopped & I ended up power cycling them both just to be sure. Anyway...

Originally Posted by sleonard

I also noticed that the detailed info in Sage said it was 480i but it is actually 1080i.

You have your STB configured to output multiple resolutions, right? See my post in the output resolution topic that I moved out of the general HD-PVR topic. When the resolution switch is recorded, it can affect the resolution detection & it sounds like it also affects playback, which is not what I thought would occur. You could try the new property I mentioned in that post to start recording after the res switch has happened.

- Andy