What's the secret to the HD PVR?

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by JimmyBalboa

Thanks, I will try that today. FYI... the mpeg2 stream from my HD-OTA capture card plays fine on the HD 200, it's just the HDPVR stream that gets choppy after a few minutes of play.

Also, when I woke up this morning I tried to tune to an HD PVR channel and got the "No Signal" error again. E1 is working better, but still unreliable at this point, so my quest continues.

It sucks being on the bleading edge of technolgie. Someday this type of Media setup will be as common as MP3 players are today.

I think the latest sage beta might fix the studdering playback after a few minutes. I just upgraded from 6.5.2 -> 6.5.4 and I have not seen any studdering yet.

[JimmyBalboa]

6.5.4 did not help, but I decided to start trying other things and switched the audio from SPFID to just stereo and I have been watching NFL Network for the past two hours with absolutely no hangs ups and the picture quality is excellent.

Looks like the current HDPVR driver still has issues with the 5.1 audio.

I am going to see if audio is the reason for the lockups as well because the HDPVR E1 has still been locking up every few hours .

I will post back results...

[JimmyBalboa]

No lockups after changing the audio from SPFID to stereo.

[jvl711]

Originally Posted by JimmyBalboa

No lockups after changing the audio from SPFID to stereo.

Sorry, I was premature in stating that the newest beta fixed my issue. I am still having issues as well. So you are not getting lockups or messed up video with analog audio only. Interesting... I guess I will need to look into that.

[JimmyBalboa]

Originally Posted by jvl711

Sorry, I was premature in stating that the newest beta fixed my issue. I am still having issues as well. So you are not getting lockups or messed up video with analog audio only. Interesting... I guess I will need to look into that.

Video quality is great at 1080i - I am very happy if this stays... I plan to contact Hauppauge & SageTV support about the 5.1 audio issue.

Still no lockups since I made the audio change... this is the longest that the HD PVR has gone without freaking out!!!

[stanger89]

Try setting the delay_to_wait_after_tuning property in the HD PVR section of the properties file to 4000. That fixed a couple bothersome channels for me.

[JimmyBalboa]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Try setting the delay_to_wait_after_tuning property in the HD PVR section of the properties file to 4000. That fixed a couple bothersome channels for me.

Thanks for the info... I did have one lockup over the weekend, but all in all it's much better than ever before.

[JimmyBalboa]

Just want to update that although things are much improved, the best results I can get is about two days before the HD-PVR locks up.

Still searching for the reason.

[Skirge01]

Any other word on this? I have a Rev.C2 that locks up every day, sometimes multiple times. Power cycling the HD-PVR fixes it until the next lockup. Due to having a headless server, I can't easily test the HD-PVR using TMT alone, so I'm searching for other things to try. That's the first thing Hauppauge asked me to do, so I guess I'm on my own unless I hook up a monitor, kb, and mouse to the server.

I'm also noticing that the output from DirecTV's H20 box to the HD-PVR looks poor compared to their HD DVR receiver (HR21). The 720p has very noticeable horizontal scanlines and the 1080i picture is so bad it looks like the signal is being sent over a crappy SVHS cable.

[TallMomof2]

Have you tried a different component cable from your STB to the HDPVR? I recall reading that some people had bad cables.

[Skirge01]

Thankfully, I still have my old HR21 DVR and am using the exact same cables to compare the two receivers. All I'm doing is unplugging the component cable, the S/PDIF cable and the satellite cable from one receiver and plugging them into the other one. I even tried each of the B-band converters with the same results. The HR21 gives an absolutely perfect picture at all times. The H20 gives "scan lines" at 720p that look EXACTLY like the image on this Wiki page. At 1080i, it looks like the image is being projected onto a set of mini-blinds, since each "row" of scanlines are nearly an inch tall and are not static. They have more of a slow "wave" effect.

I have a DirecTV technician scheduled to come out and take a look next week.

[JimmyBalboa]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

Any other word on this? I have a Rev.C2 that locks up every day, sometimes multiple times. Power cycling the HD-PVR fixes it until the next lockup. Due to having a headless server, I can't easily test the HD-PVR using TMT alone, so I'm searching for other things to try. That's the first thing Hauppauge asked me to do, so I guess I'm on my own unless I hook up a monitor, kb, and mouse to the server.

I'm also noticing that the output from DirecTV's H20 box to the HD-PVR looks poor compared to their HD DVR receiver (HR21). The 720p has very noticeable horizontal scanlines and the 1080i picture is so bad it looks like the signal is being sent over a crappy SVHS cable.

My HD-PVR still locks ups a few times a week now (much less), but it's still not perfect. I am about to try putting it on a timer so that it reboots every morning at 4:00 AM.

As far as the picture quality. My PC never displayed the PVRs H.264 stream very well, but if you purchase one of the SageTV HD-Extenders the quality is just about as good as the DirectTV receiver itself. Enough at least that I don't notice the difference.

If you have a Rev C2 then I recommend upgrading to the Rev E or later because it made a big difference for me.

Also using the Stereo input rather than SPFID helps right now as well.

[sleonard]

I have replaced a C1 and a C2 for E1's and still have one C2 to replace. The E1's have made a world of difference but still stop responding occasionally and have to be powered off/on. The remaining C2 is the biggest offender, followed by one of the E1's. The 2nd E1 locked up for the first time yesterday. It had worked reliably for a month.

I will replace the remaining C2 in the next few weeks so I'm hoping that will get me to the five 9's I had with my previous encoders (Hauppauge PVR250's).

Some other possible steps on the table are to replace the USB-UIRT with firewire tuning and a new motherboard. I could also go back to using the stereo inputs since I don't have any systems that can take advantage of 5.1.

S

[SWKerr]

I have a C2 that has always worked perfectly and added a D2 recently that has required occasional reboots. I have been using the (1.1/1.0.5.1) driver since the newest driver seems to make the problem worse on the D2. This setup was Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Sage 6.4.8. One machine is setup as a network encoder. (These hook up to DirecTV H20 with Optical sound)

I have been trying to move the main Sage server to a new machine and use the old Sage server a the network encoder and client. I decided to try Vista and the latest Sage beta and ended up going back to Windows XP. It was a challenge to get it all setup on Vista but I had it generally working except for the HD-PVR D2 kept locking up worse than ever. I tried three different drivers all with poor results. I decided to try the C2 that was running perfectly on it and ended up having the same problem. In fact I put the D2 on the original server and it never locked up while I had it there. The original Sage server is an Intel Core 2 1.8 GHz while the problem machines have all been AMD X2.

I have ditched Vista for the time being. I found the GUI sluggish compared to XP within Sage and with the HD-PVR problem it was just not worth it. Play back was great in vista but I was looking at the spinning circle for long periods of time before it would respond some times.

I am to new on the new AMD XP build to know how it is working but I am interested if anyone else had tried both with different results.

I am just wondering if there might be a correlation between Intel and AMD as well as XP vs Vista.
Does anyone think a poll would be useful on success with XP and Vista and AMD vs Intel.

[JimmyBalboa]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

I am just wondering if there might be a correlation between Intel and AMD as well as XP vs Vista.
Does anyone think a poll would be useful on success with XP and Vista and AMD vs Intel.

I'm using Vista x64... I tried XP Pro SP3 with the same poor results and went back to Vista because Vista has better network and disk performance than XP if you tweak it correctly.

I am running my Sage Server on a Quad Core 3.3Ghz Intel Xeon based System with Hyperthreading... Yeah thats 8 CPU's

[ryttingm]

I think I've solved my HDPVR issues. I was in the same boat as many others. My HDPVR would lock up at least daily if not more. I've RMA'd the unit to get a C3 replacement but it still didn't work reliably. I've spent countless hours tweaking settings, re-installing, trying everything to get it to work.

Recently I upgraded my computer in my office. I had an extra 2 gigs of memory and this last week I decided to upgrade the memory in my HTPC from 1gig to 3gig. Immediately I noticed things running more quickly and smoothly, I hadn't realized that I was spending time swapping due to only have 1gig of memory. I had windowsxp and always thought 1gig would be enough. After other things seemed to be working better I dusted off my HDPVR (I had put it away because I was so frustrated with missing recordings) Since adding the additional memory I haven't had a single lockup for 3 days. This is by far the longest I've ever gone without a lockup. Perhaps the HDPVR is sensitive to lockups when the computer is swapping.

[stanger89]

Yeah the HD PVR seems to be really sensitive to CPU/disk usage. On my Athlon XP 1800+, 1GB ram machine, I noticed that I had "rather" regular glitches in the HD PVRs recordings. I did some investigation with perfmeter to measure CPU usage, and I noticed that when I left a browser connected to my servers cacti web page (which refreshes every minute IIRC), the CPU hit for rendering all the graphs would peg out the CPU and would often (though not always) create a break in the HD PVR recording.

It seems as though this may well be due to the USB and that bus being more CPU dependant, the last bit is just a theory though.

[Xiphoid]

For what it's worth, I think that hardware configurations alone don't account for the problems with the HD-PVR. I have 4 gigs of RAM and lots of speed in my CPU and I still have regular lock-ups.

What has improved things for me is the upgrade of both the drivers for the HD-PVR (1.051) as well as upgrading Sage to 6.5.3. However, these two upgrades have NOT completely eliminated the lock-ups. Before these two upgrades, the screen wouldn't properly be centered on my TV (often shifted to the right or left or down).

I only bought my unit in late November, so I would hope that I have the latest model, but how would I know? Lots are talking about E1's, C1's, etc. How would I know how to check?

I run Vista, and I sometimes wonder if it's Vista that is causing me problems, but it doesn't sound like it based on other people's comments. I too would love to hear solutions on how to make it work reliably...my wife is getting fed up with the lock-ups (which happen maybe once per day or so).

I also get the Error caused during playback from Sage. What causes that?

Also, how would I know if heat is causing me the problems?

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by ryttingm

I think I've solved my HDPVR issues. I was in the same boat as many others. My HDPVR would lock up at least daily if not more. I've RMA'd the unit to get a C3 replacement but it still didn't work reliably. I've spent countless hours tweaking settings, re-installing, trying everything to get it to work.

Recently I upgraded my computer in my office. I had an extra 2 gigs of memory and this last week I decided to upgrade the memory in my HTPC from 1gig to 3gig. Immediately I noticed things running more quickly and smoothly, I hadn't realized that I was spending time swapping due to only have 1gig of memory. I had windowsxp and always thought 1gig would be enough. After other things seemed to be working better I dusted off my HDPVR (I had put it away because I was so frustrated with missing recordings) Since adding the additional memory I haven't had a single lockup for 3 days. This is by far the longest I've ever gone without a lockup. Perhaps the HDPVR is sensitive to lockups when the computer is swapping.

Interesting, my server is in the same boat. 1 Gig of ram. My HD-PVR (one of the first batch shipped) is being replaced by Hauppauge now, mine got to them on Friday so hopefully the replacement has already been shipped to me.

I'll have to keep an eye on memory usage after it returns and see if it correlates to any future problems (hopefully NONE) with the HD-PVR.
I guess it may be time to build a new server and retire my old P4 machine.

[JimmyBalboa]

Originally Posted by Xiphoid

For what it's worth, I think that hardware configurations alone don't account for the problems with the HD-PVR. I have 4 gigs of RAM and lots of speed in my CPU and I still have regular lock-ups.

I also get the Error caused during playback from Sage. What causes that?

Agreed, I don't think it's hardware either at least not memory. I too have 4 Gigs of Memory. I think that there are still issues (bugs) in the the HDPVR driver.

What's the error message? You might try changing your Mpeg4 rendering options from SageTV to Direct Show or Visa-Versa in the Multimedia Settings.