HD PVR jerky/stuttering but maybe my hardware?

[Brent94Z]

Hey Guys!

Just got my HD PVR and a HDHomeRun setup. Both are working and both are functioning but watching live TV on them isn't working out so great.

I'm using V7 .20 and have noticed that with both tuners, when trying to tune a channel where the HD PVR or HDHomeRun will be used, it nearly locks up Sage. It takes a LONG time for the "tuning channel" progress bar to go away and the menu where I click "Watch now". Then, when it finally does tune to the channel, sometimes I can see part of the green on the status bar like Sage knows it got behind in the recording. Also, sometimes it gets "hung" to where the status bars on the top and bottom of the screens won't go away until I hit like the fast forward button on the remote then after it times out from that button press, the status bars go off the screen. This stuttering is much less (and sometimes not there) if I watch a previously recorded HD program from either the HD PVR or HDHR. Seems like the problem is primarily related to trying to watch live TV. This is all happening on my HTPC where I have the Sage server.

I also just recently got a couple HD300s. I have one setup in a different room and the playback on this for live TV is just fine for both the HD PVR and HDHR. It is working great.

I have done a number of things I've found in the forums like registering the ArcSoft codec and making sure Sage was using this for H.264.

For my hardware I have an NVIDIA GeForce GT 230 which has 1.5gig onboard (results are the same whether I use the HDMI or DVI outputs). The computer is an AMD Athlon™ X2. Model, 4400+ with 4 gigs of ram.

Prior to Sage tuning into the channel I have the CPU meter plugin installed and do see the meter turning yellow and red. Everything I'm seeing leads me to believe it is killing my dated hardware (High CPU usage, Sage takes forever to do anything, HD300 works fine) but it seems like what I have should be good enough... or am I mistaken on this?

I'm basically just wondering if my hardware is what my problem is or if I should continue tweaking things. If the hardware is the problem well, it is what is and I'll have to figure something else out but if you guys think I should be fine with what I got then I'll continue to fiddle with it trying to get it to work

Thanks for any advice!

[Brent94Z]

I've done a bit of troubleshooting

I overlaid Task Manager (Windows XP Pro) on top of a live video being played via the HD PVR. I was seeing 100% CPU usage. This would explain the stuttering. I was using the Arcsoft codec and made sure that in Total Media Extreme that hardware acceleration was checked (I understand that also is supposed to carry over into Sage?) but it sure didn't seem to be working. I then thought I'd do the Hauppauge exe file that wipes out all drivers. I did this but did not do the option to search all .inf files. I then reinstalled all the newest Hauppauge drivers... HD PVR first and then the PVR250. No change.

I have a Blu-ray player that I hadn't installed yet but noticed Power DVD 8 came with it (Power DVD 7 already installed) so I just installed the Blu-ray player. After this I didn't get any additional options in the setup for h.264 but I said "show all" and there was one right above the h.264 cyberlink V7 that didn't have a V8 label on it but I thought I'd try it. This one works better than the cyberlink V7 or the Arcsoft... but still not good. So, I then thought I'd try to play a Blu-ray using PowerDVD and when I did it told me I needed to update. I did this and when I did this, it wiped out my PowerDVD 7 stuff and who knows what else... I just read how at some point in PowerDVD 8 they disabled the allowance of using their codecs in other apps. ARGH!

At any rate, now, with the Arcsoft decoder selected, when I select a show from the Program Guide it sits there for about a minute with the "Tuning xxx". Then when that goes away, The original screen with the "Watch Now" on it stays for about another minute then finally the show starts but is VERY choppy. With the Cyberlink V8 decoder (I'm assuming that's what it is because the one labeled V7 went away and this one showed up) it sits for only about 5 to 10 seconds on each of the above screens before I can see the show. The show is still a little jerky but not nearly as bad. Plus, my CPU usage is now only about 20%.

So, if you read this far (LOL) I have a couple more questions...

1) Do you know of anything I can do to FORCE Sage to use hardware acceleration with the Arcsoft codec? It seems obvious that this is not happening with my CPU at 100%.

2) It looks like the Cyberlink codec is using hardware acceleration since I'm at 20% but the video is still stuttering. Any tweaks for PowerDVD 8 that I might be able to do to fix this?

Thanks for any help. I know I've been asking a lot of questions lately but I really want to get this darn HD PVR and HDHR live playback working

[ccsmoke]

Hello,

I have a similiar system that I just wiped and selling to a bud. I did have it set up as a client at one point in time. Specs 4800+, 9800gts, 2gigs ram running xp pro with sage MC 6.6. It ran as a client pretty good with arcsoft decoder...didn't have it set up as a server though.

A few things that hopefully help you out.

1) Even though you enabled hardware acceleration in TME...I still enabled it in sage under detailed settings...I haven't upgraded to sage 7 yet..I will soon though.

2) You may want to search on AMD website for cpu optimization as there is a utility that you can download as they had some issues with there core optimization and timing. Basically had trouble with single core processes that didn't support mulithreading.

3) In my system, I had a issues with crucial ballistic ram. Another bud Builder also experience the same issues with this ram. We had 20 gig fail over 4 systems 100% of the time ranging from immediate to 1 year even though they passed prime 95 running 48 hrs. Messing with voltage and timing didn't seem to help our solution was to use Mushkin ram been stable ever since. This won't cure your issue, just a warning if you use this ram then start blue screening that I would run prime 95. I never like to fully populate the boards with ram personally as some boards will auto overclock to run ram at the listed speeds...unless setting up a ramdrive.

4) Not too familiar with your card...I have a 260 in my gaming rig which is a decent card...I know the 220 was pretty slow...in any event I would make sure have the latest drivers.

Hopefully 1 and 2 will do the trick..keep an eye on your temps though as mine seem to always run on the warm side...actually hole sawed the side of the case and put a fan there which helped tremendously.

[Brent94Z]

Thanks for the reply ccsmoke!

1) Yes, I have hardware acceleration enabled within Sage as well.

2) First thing I did when I built the HTPC was to install that patch.

3) I was running 4 sticks of 512 ram until a few days ago and I changed it out to 4 sticks of 1gig ram. So, I've changed the ram and no improvement in live playback.

4) Installed latest drivers a few days ago as well. No change. I don't game with it but it is supposed to be an OK card. With 1.5gig on the card, you'd think it would be new/good enough to handle this but maybe the card is the problem? Everything else works and looks great though.

5) Temps are OK... I don't even have the cover on the PC right now. LOL

Thanks for trying It looks like I've done all that you've suggested thus far. My HD300 extenders are playing live streams from the HD PVR and HDHR flawlessly... I have the news on in the background most of the time when I'm home and even the news ticker is smooth as silk. Even the HTPC server can play back a previously recorded show from the HD PVR or HDHR without problems. The only issue right now is stuttering with live playback. I know this is affected by the h.264 codec I have selected in the setup. I've tried Arcsoft, PowerDVD7, and Power DVD8.

Anybody else have good luck with a system similar to mine and using a different codec that you can recommend? I don't mind spending a few bucks if it'll fix my problems. Thanks!!!

[SWKerr]

What OS are you using?

Back when I ran on XP I had trouble getting good playback with anything other than DirectShow and Overlay. Also: Latest drivers from nVidia

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

What OS are you using?

Back when I ran on XP I had trouble getting good playback with anything other than DirectShow and Overlay. Also: Latest drivers from nVidia

I am using XP Pro. Could you elaborate a little? I do have the latest NVIDIA drivers and am using DirectShow. For "Overlay" do you mean you were using "Video Overlay Renderer" instead of something like VMR9?

Thanks!

[HelenWeathers]

SWKerr: Back when I ran on XP I had trouble getting good playback with anything other than DirectShow and Overlay. Also: Latest drivers from nVidia

+1

Originally Posted by Brent94Z

I am using XP Pro. Could you elaborate a little? I do have the latest NVIDIA drivers and am using DirectShow. For "Overlay" do you mean you were using "Video Overlay Renderer" instead of something like VMR9?

For XP Pro PC/nVidia rendering, Overlay was only thing that worked for me as well. I use only HD2/300s now.

[Brent94Z]

Well, all be damned. LOL! I'll give that a shot here later. Man how things change... it seems like VMR9 was the "superior" way when I was setting this all up initially and reading. I hadn't even tried the video overlay setting because I thought it was supposed to be worse. LOL

There is one thing for sure... setting up an HD PVR and HDHR gives one quite the education on all this stuff.

[Brent94Z]

I tried Video Overlay instead of VMR9 and no joy... my system doesn't like that. I get a playback exception error so bad that it crashes Sage to the point I need to reboot. Tried it a couple times. Also tried, for the heck of it, Video Overlay for DVDs and I have the same results.

If it isn't one thing it's another it seems

[dcardellini]

Originally Posted by ccsmoke

3) In my system, I had a issues with crucial ballistic ram. Another bud Builder also experience the same issues with this ram. We had 20 gig fail over 4 systems 100% of the time ranging from immediate to 1 year even though they passed prime 95 running 48 hrs. Messing with voltage and timing didn't seem to help our solution was to use Mushkin ram been stable ever since. This won't cure your issue, just a warning if you use this ram then start blue screening that I would run prime 95. I never like to fully populate the boards with ram personally as some boards will auto overclock to run ram at the listed speeds...unless setting up a ramdrive.

I just started to see weird problems on two of three machines, all identical MB's (Biostar 785g) with Crucial Ballistix DDR2-1066. Changing the RAM out to fix problems....anymore detail on what you have found there.

RAM problems are the most insidious, time consuming, confusing of all PC problems. Not always confident that the MB mfgrs and RAM mfgrs really have the timing thing worked out perfectly.

[Yooper]

What about the sound? Are you running the optical sound? Did you set AC3Filter to "Pass through"?

I found that most of the problems I had in the past were sound related. Not obvious.

[ccsmoke]

Hello,

At work atm...so incognito

I researched your card a bit...seems like an odd duck. It is an dx 10 card but nvidia doesn't list it as supported under their release notes and hard to tell if it has cuda support. What I gather is it is a rebranded 9600GSO perhaps, OEM?

If you installed dx10 with the card and did the critical windows updates as I assume you did..would like you to install this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...displaylang=en

Even though dx 10 is installed, it doesn't have dx9 fully...this will make sure you do.

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by ccsmoke

Hello,

At work atm...so incognito

I researched your card a bit...seems like an odd duck. It is an dx 10 card but nvidia doesn't list it as supported under their release notes and hard to tell if it has cuda support. What I gather is it is a rebranded 9600GSO perhaps, OEM?

If you installed dx10 with the card and did the critical windows updates as I assume you did..would like you to install this:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...displaylang=en

Even though dx 10 is installed, it doesn't have dx9 fully...this will make sure you do.

Wow, thank you for going to the trouble! It is a OEM card out of an Acer computer. I bought the Acer computer and then took the graphics card out to use in my HTPC. It came out of this computer...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...Sku=S445-10050

I will try that link you provided and let you know what happens. Thank you!

[Brent94Z]

I gave that a shot ccsmoke and didn't really see any changes The Arcsoft codec I can't use it is so bad. The Cyberlink is "OK" but still not that great. However, I have seen this mentioned by somebody else, I can actually get it to be "watchable" if I go back 10 or 20 seconds from "live" TV. On live TV it stutters pretty bad but it seems if I hit the back button just once (10 seconds for me) that it greatly helps out. I still see micro jittering sometimes on scrolling news tickers but it is pretty good.

Anything that is odd that I'll bring up is when using the Arcsoft codec, I can't tune to a different channel by inputting the channel number because it takes so long (circle of death pops up when just trying to put in the channel number!) that it might get a couple of the four digit channel number. However, with the Cyberlink codec, I can input a channel number just fine.

If I get some time I'm going to try the Overlay method again and write down the error code and do a bit of research on that... if that's all that you guys got to work I guess I shouldn't think I can get it to work without using that. LOL

[ccsmoke]

It's kind of tricky with oem cards made for specific manufactors. In my experience, sometimes features are disabled or non existant. Had a creative 5.1 live card from dell that was like that and also ati9800 pro back in the day.

To me, you not getting any acceleration or limited. Even though the card looks good on paper...kinda still question it or the driver running it.

Couple of things to check..

1) Right click on desktop>properties>settings>advanced>troubleshooting
make sure the hardware acceleration is full

2) I always have grab the full version of ac filter rather than one the comes with sage and config sound as suggested

3) Under Nvidia control panel, does it list your card under cuda support?

4) MB drivers up to date?

5) Increase java heap size to 768 or better if you haven't already as you have enough ram for it.

Other than emailing nvidia to see whats up with the card and maybe they have a beta driver...would consider running headless server with extender in its place. Or borrow another card to see if that cures it.

[ccsmoke]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

I just started to see weird problems on two of three machines, all identical MB's (Biostar 785g) with Crucial Ballistix DDR2-1066. Changing the RAM out to fix problems....anymore detail on what you have found there.

RAM problems are the most insidious, time consuming, confusing of all PC problems. Not always confident that the MB mfgrs and RAM mfgrs really have the timing thing worked out perfectly.

The board I had was Asus A8N32-sli deluxe running 4800+ 939 chip. The ram in question was DDR-400 Dual Channel non-ecc. Since switching to Mushkin it has been rock solid for 3ish years now. I orginally thought it was MB/Ram compatability issue but after bud had 2 different rigs with different MB's exhibit the same behavior, kinda concluded that the ram was garbage. These were all DDR-400 so not sure if they corrected the issue or not. I could get them stable but they would all seem to start blue screen after 3-9 months later. Got kind of tired of exchanging them to Newegg (who were great with RMA's) I have been sticking to Corsair or Mushkin for all latest builds. All have been Intel/Gigabyte MB-Nivida GPU based combos with no issues.

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by ccsmoke

It's kind of tricky with oem cards made for specific manufactors. In my experience, sometimes features are disabled or non existant. Had a creative 5.1 live card from dell that was like that and also ati9800 pro back in the day.

To me, you not getting any acceleration or limited. Even though the card looks good on paper...kinda still question it or the driver running it.

Couple of things to check..

1) Right click on desktop>properties>settings>advanced>troubleshooting
make sure the hardware acceleration is full

2) I always have grab the full version of ac filter rather than one the comes with sage and config sound as suggested

3) Under Nvidia control panel, does it list your card under cuda support?

4) MB drivers up to date?

5) Increase java heap size to 768 or better if you haven't already as you have enough ram for it.

Other than emailing nvidia to see whats up with the card and maybe they have a beta driver...would consider running headless server with extender in its place. Or borrow another card to see if that cures it.

Thanks for the suggestions!

1) Already on FULL
2) Yep, installed the newest AC3 filter a while ago
3) For CUDA it mentions "CUDA - GPUs -- ALL" and in the system information Cuda cores 96.
4) Yes, newest MB drivers (A8N32-SLI Deluxe)
5) Had this set to 700 but just upped it to 1024. Maybe this will do it... fingers crossed. Thanks!


EDIT: 1024 wouldn't work for me for the java heap size. It wouldn't load? I reduced this in increments of 50 and Sage finally loaded when I got to 800. So, I'm a bit higher than I was. I'm getting "fairly" steady playback now without having to hit pause for a bit or rewind. Stuttering every once in a while but I think better than it was. This is with the Cyberlink codec and VMR9. Still need to do some research and figure out why I can't use Overlay though... seems like that would likely fix me right up if I got Overlay working Thanks!

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by Yooper

What about the sound? Are you running the optical sound? Did you set AC3Filter to "Pass through"?

I found that most of the problems I had in the past were sound related. Not obvious.

Hey Yooper! The sound isn't bad. I am running optical sound out of the HTPC and the HD PVR is SPDIF... but seeing similar issues with the HDHR.

Yes, set to pass through.

Thanks!

[SWKerr]

Just to be certain, Recording playback fine it is just the Live feed that is a problem. Correct?

Have you tried to watch live TV in the Arcsoft TME software?

Looked back at some old XP build notes. (Win7 is worth the investment)
Download and install latest DirectX
Cyberlink8 or CLVDPack(Clean install of Cyberlink Codecs without the Player)
Latest FFDShow
Haali Media Splitter

[Brent94Z]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

Just to be certain, Recording playback fine it is just the Live feed that is a problem. Correct?

Have you tried to watch live TV in the Arcsoft TME software?

Looked back at some old XP build notes. (Win7 is worth the investment)
Download and install latest DirectX
Cyberlink8 or CLVDPack(Clean install of Cyberlink Codecs without the Player)
Latest FFDShow
Haali Media Splitter

Correct, SWKerr. Live playback on the server only... live playback on my HD300 is fine. Also, it is much better and actually not terrible if I just delay "live" TV by about 10 or 20 seconds.

I have the latest DirectX.

I am using Cyberlink8 (this one doesn't have the version where as version 7 did, right?) right now with the best results. Arcsoft is still unusable. But, keep in mind I'm not able to use Overlay and am using VMR9. I'll have to try CLVDPack... not sure what that is but will do some looking!

Latest FFDShow... will look into that too.

Haali Media Splitter... I have read about a little about this in the forums but not sure exactly what it does. I'll read up on it as well.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm working long hours right now but will report back when I have a chance to try this. Thanks!