Audio, but no Video

[alfi33]

I recorded 24 on Monday night over-the-air on my HVR-1600 and I tried to watch it last night. The audio played but I got no picture....just a black screen. All my other recordings seem to work just fine including Live TV.

I've been using Overlay (lots of tearing for me with VMR9) and the InterVideo Non CSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge. It's worked very well until now.

Switching to VMR9 made no difference but when I switched to the SageTV decoder, I got both audio and video with the recording of 24.

I've made no changes to my system (I've been out of town) so I'm confused why I would suddenly have problems with this one recording. Could it just be a bad recording?

[alfi33]

I guess I'll just chalk this one up to a random bad recording. I haven't seen this issue again on any other recording since....including last nights episode of 24.

[alfi33]

OK....I don't think this is a bad recording. It happened again. This time I saw it happen live with tonight's episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which is another FOX show). This time I switched to Cyberlink PowerDVD7 decoder and the picture returned. When I switch back to Non CSS Video Decoder for Hauppauge, I lose video but the audio remains.

All other channels seem to work fine. I tried my HVR-1800 and had the same problem. My source is OTA. It's happened twice now in the last couple weeks and both times have been with FOX shows.

Anybody else having this problem with the Hauppauge decoder or have any idea what could be going on?

[razrsharpe]

Well I'm not using the Hauppage decoder or the HVR but I do have occassionally recording problems with FOX OTA.

My setup:
2x HDHR for OTA
1x HD-PVR for cable
HD-100 for main viewing

Occasionally my FOX shows will record with 2 audio tracks. The video is fine. The main audio track is always the second one so I need to pick the secondary audio track. I think the problem is the stream from fox. I am hoping that setting the delay_to_wait_after_tuning property to something other than 0 will allow the HDHR to start the stream and not screw up the recording. I changed it earlier this week and (fingers crossed) so far so good.

[alfi33]

Interesting...

I think you're right. It's gotta have something to do with the stream from FOX. But I think it's a little odd that I have only had the problem on a couple FOX recordings....not all FOX recordings seem to be affected. Also, I only seem to have the issue when using the Hauppauge decoder.

I don't think I'm using the latest drivers for my Hauppauge tuner cards. Maybe I'll try updating.

[razrsharpe]

Yes i too think it is very strange. The fact that it is random and only appears occasionally (even within a show... some episodes of 24, or terminator, or bones record fine...others not so much). I am hoping that it is a combination of the way FOX broadcasts its stream and the computer (sage or HDHR or HVR) initializes the recording. That's why I am hoping that setting the recording delay to something like 1000 ms will give everything in the loop enough time to do all the proper handshaking and initializing. I REALLY hate intermittent problems though... they are the hardest to find and diagnose.

Background info...
My problems started when I added a second HDHR (before I added the HDPVR). The problems are not isolated to the second HDHR. It seems random to what tuner is doing the recording and what else being recorded at the same time. I initially blamed it on the 6.4 final release that I upgraded to at the same time and the new (at the time) HDHR drivers... so I downgraded and it went away for a couple weeks and then came back. Then I upgraded to sage 6.5 and the new HDHR drivers and it seemed to be better but still there.