HD-PVR No Output

[SkierHiker]

After a month of working fine, my new HD-PVR no longer outputs any video or audio. For the last week or so, I was getting lots of Failure messages. I also noticed that my videos had a green cast to them. I checked the cables and found the Red video cable from the STB loose and maybe disconnected. I plugged it in, went to check it out with TME and nothing. Brought up Sage and it said No Video (or something like that). I tried composite video and nothing. I connected the STB to a TV and got video just fine. I installed/reinstalled both 1.5.6.1 and 1.5.7 drivers and no luck. I then installed TME and the HD-PVR drivers on a laptop and also no video. So I hate to admit it but it sure looks like the HD-PVR is broken. Anybody else got any ideas? If I need to RMA it, can I contact Hauppauge even though I didn't buy it from them?

Edit 10/31 - I was wrong about the HD-PVR being faulty. See my post below.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by SkierHiker

If I need to RMA it, can I contact Hauppauge even though I didn't buy it from them?

Yes.

[darcilicious]

Last thing to double-check -- make sure the audio is connected correctly; if using spdif, make sure cable is connected to spdif in and not out. The HDPVR won't record if it doesn't detect a valid audio signal. (also double check that the stb is outputting the correct audio signal for how you have it connected to the HDPVR).

[SkierHiker]

I was totally wrong about my HD-PVR being faulty. I went out to Frys and bought another one and hooked it up to my server. Same thing, no output. I then hooked it up to my Win7 laptop and it worked just fine. Switched the Frys box with my own and it also worked. So there is something wrong with my server. It's a Windows 2008 Server. What I don't understand is that it was working fine last week but I started to get lots of failures, then nothing. I have done everything I can think of to debug it. I uninstalled all Hauppauge drivers, uninstalled SageTV, reinstalled the HD-PVR drivers (1.0.5.301, 1.5.6.0, 1.5.6.1, and 1.5.7) and rebooted a million times. Nothing helped. I think its getting hung on the audio. When TME starts the HD-PVR flashes blue and the TME info shows the Input Resolution and Current Encoding Bit Rate correctly but the Audio shows nothing. Also with 1.5.7 drivers the TME mouse response time is extremely slow. Any ideas?

[Spectrum]

Have you tried running hwclear to remove all vestiges of the Hauppauge drivers? If not, and it will run on Server 2k8, it would be worth a shot.

[SkierHiker]

Originally Posted by Spectrum

Have you tried running hwclear to remove all vestiges of the Hauppauge drivers? If not, and it will run on Server 2k8, it would be worth a shot.

Yep, ran hwclear and it got rid of everything (HD-PVR, PVR-350, IR remote). Uninstalled SageTV too. Then just installed HD-PVR drivers and reinstalled TME. Same thing, no output on TME

[paulbeers]

Faulty USB ports on your server maybe?

[SkierHiker]

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Faulty USB ports on your server maybe?

I thought about that but if the port was faulty would it still recognize the device and let me add drivers? Just the same, I'm going to switch it and check the cable too. The USB ports I have are on an external board and are 2.0. The internal ports are USB 1.1. Does anybody know if the HD-PVR will work on a USB 1.1 port?

The other option I have is to blow away W2K8 and re-install it. Drastic but would probably take less time than I've already wasted trying to debug this. But it would be a bummer if I did all this and it was a hardware issue.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by SkierHiker

I thought about that but if the port was faulty would it still recognize the device and let me add drivers? Just the same, I'm going to switch it and check the cable too. The USB ports I have are on an external board and are 2.0. The internal ports are USB 1.1. Does anybody know if the HD-PVR will work on a USB 1.1 port?

The other option I have is to blow away W2K8 and re-install it. Drastic but would probably take less time than I've already wasted trying to debug this. But it would be a bummer if I did all this and it was a hardware issue.

USB 1.1 is only rated for 12Mbps so I doubt the HDPVR would work on a 1.1 interface. Only way to know for sure is to try though. You could also try booting the system to a live Linux distro or an Ubuntu install disk and see if you can get it working in Linux. I'd rather try that rather than blow an OS

[SkierHiker]

I finally got around to checking the USB ports and the card was pushed out of the PCI slot. I reinserted it and everything is working fine. The reason it took so long to check this is that the server is large and difficult to get to. Plus, I fired up another smaller server, installed Windows 7 on it and got it working with the HD-PVR. Now I just have to decide whether to leave it running on the Windows 7 small server or take it back to my larger W2K8 server.