Capture Error

[freewheeling]

I recently dedicated my Win7 (64-bit) box as the "server" for my extender, so that's the only work that computer is doing. (Not a regular "server," but just used with extender). This is on a Gateway computer with a 2.5Ghz Intel Pentium dual core processor. It seemed to be working ok until yesterday, when I started getting a series of "capture errors" using the Hauppauge PVR-HD. The blue light on the PVR would switch on and off and the recording would be interrupted while it switched back and forth. The message was something like "Capture Error (-4, 0x8007001f): There was a problem using the capture device. Please be sure you have the latest drivers installed for your capture device and that it is installed correctly."

So, I went to the Hauppauge site and down loaded the most recent driver, and also updated to the latest beta extender firmware and the latest SageTV7 software. That seemed to work for a while, but then it started doing the same thing switching the blue light off and on during a recording. When I went to the computer I noticed that it was vascillating between 100% usage and 6% usage, which seemed odd. Running CPU-Z I noticed that it was switching the CPU multiplier from 6 to 12.5 and back, so the CPU speed was switching from 1200Mhz to 2.5Ghz. I rebooted into the bios and disabled Intel Speedstep GV3, and booted back into the OS. It was still switching the multiplier in the same way.

I'm thinking that the capture errors may be caused by this multiplier switching, but I don't know whether this is normal behavior or something is wrong. The processor doesn't seem to be overheated, with temps between 37 and 44 degrees C. Is the processor going bad, do I need to reseat the heat sink? Has anyone seen this behavior before, and what was the cause? I've been thinking about buying a microATX board and installing my PhenomII chip in lieu of this Gateway/Intel device.. I'm currently running SageTV on my new AMD computer and seems to be running OK, so am pretty sure the problem is with my Intel computer, but do I need to just trash it or fix it? Do you think reseating the heatsink would help? I moved the board to another enclosure, but it was working there for quite awhihle before it started failing. But maybe I bumped the heatsink?

[Update: It's not the computer. I'm currently getting the same behavior even though I'm running the extender server from a different computer, so it's either the extender firmware or the HD-PVR is going bad. Seems to me there was a similar problem after one of the beta firmware updates, but I assumed that had been corrected. Maybe not?]

[freewheeling]

I'm thinking the HD-PVR is probably going bad. I don't really want to buy another one of these things. They're a pain in the bum.. Is there an alternative to this, that records at at least 720p?

I should mention that I'm getting a similar CPU usage fluctuation as on my other computer, and the mouse and keyboard are getting interfered with during this fluctuation, so it's something systemic. Herre I'll just cype what comes out of my keydbroard without corecting. See, it's dropping characters and changing the output periodically. The mouse is jerky too. Is there suddenly some sort of interrupt problem with the hardwaathat happening the se way on both computers. Wwwhy iss it affecting my keyboard and mouse???

[freewheeling]

Or...?

[dadof4]

Originally Posted by freewheeling

I'm thinking the HD-PVR is probably going bad. I don't really want to buy another one of these things. They're a pain in the bum.. Is there an alternative to this, that records at at least 720p?

I should mention that I'm getting a similar CPU usage fluctuation as on my other computer, and the mouse and keyboard are getting interfered with during this fluctuation, so it's something systemic. Herre I'll just cype what comes out of my keydbroard without corecting. See, it's dropping characters and changing the output periodically. The mouse is jerky too. Is there suddenly some sort of interrupt problem with the hardwaathat happening the se way on both computers. Wwwhy iss it affecting my keyboard and mouse???

Don't buy another one. Call Hauppauge customer service. They will send you a replacement, usually with no questions asked. If you want to give them your CC number, just to make sure you return the bad one,, they will let you keep the suspected bad one until the new one arrives. I've done this a couple of times.

[freewheeling]

Thanks, that's really good to know. I think this is fixed, though (fingers crossed). It looks like there was a bad display adapter. As I recall, this has happened before after I'd downloaded and installed a Windows 7 "updated" display driver. I reinstalled the latest NVIDIA driver, and I'm now no longer getting the fluctuations. Seems odd that a display driver could cause this sort of problem, but I noticed that the mouse and keyboard would "freeze" periodically. Then I checked the display driver in Driver Detective and it wasn't up to date.

However, now that I think about it the situation must've been an interaction between the display driver and the Hauppauge device, because it happened on both computers. I may contact Hauppauge just to document the situation while it's under warranty.

[freewheeling]

More capture errors and on/off switching. I called Hauppauge and they agreed to send me a replacement via cross-shipping, but to test further I've uninstalled SageTV and am running the Arcsoft capture software to see if that creates the same issues. So far Arcsoft seems to be running without a hitch, although to thoroughly test I'll run it for a couple of hours.

But what if this is a SageTV thing? Some sort of bug in the Version 7 Beta?

[freewheeling]

Just to keep up with this topic I did use Arcsoft Total Media Extreme to capture some video, and after about 30 minutes began to get the same behavior. As mentioned above it was accompanied by jerky mouse and keyboard behavior as well as a struggling video. I tried running a Youtube video on the same computer, in the internet browser, and experienced interruptions and stuttering there too. I began to think the problem might be with some other software on the hard disk, so I uninstalled ffdshow, and most other software that might have cause problems. One piece of software that causes me problems on other installations (even on my MacBook) is the HP All-In-One printer software, so I completely removed that as well. So far video capture with the HD-PVR seems to be working OK, and it has recorded several hours of programming.

I think both of the above programs are suspects, but I also removed Amazon Unbox, which I had only recently installed. If the problem goes away for good, then it was clearly one of these three that was the cause, and not the HD-PVR. No sticky mouse or keyboard problems either.

[I should add that although the HD-PVR seems to be recording/capturing without starts and stops neither the blue record "floodlight" nor the small red record LED next to the start button comes on. Yeah, I know... it's a feature not a bug, but it suggests that there's still some obscure problem with the HD-PVR even though it seems to record OK.]