Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[Wakecrash]

SHS, that is pretty much what I would start seeing, however since I began restarting my server every morning I have not had the issue in a week. Seemed like I was getting the stutter issue about every 28 - 30 hours.

[korben_dallas]

Before disabling my Colossus altogether, I did try a morning restart every morning. Problems were the same.

IMO, the Colossus drivers are unstable, and with an HD PVR also active, they are that much worse. Might be a memory leak, since some Colossus recordings were perfect. Or might be stream differences between channels, though I have both my STBs set to 1080i + Dolby.

[The Truth]

can some1 send me a restart bat? this fixes my issues just need to restart it. i have xp pro.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

Before disabling my Colossus altogether, I did try a morning restart every morning. Problems were the same.

IMO, the Colossus drivers are unstable, and with an HD PVR also active, they are that much worse. Might be a memory leak, since some Colossus recordings were perfect. Or might be stream differences between channels, though I have both my STBs set to 1080i + Dolby.

I agree, the combo of a HD PVR and a Colossus seem to be unstable, and Java heap numbers increase steadily until crashing

[toricred]

For anybody having any level of success with the combination of Colossus and HD-PVR, which driver are you using for the HD-PVR?

[The Truth]

Originally Posted by toricred

For anybody having any level of success with the combination of Colossus and HD-PVR, which driver are you using for the HD-PVR?

1.0.5.301

[michelkenny]

I'm going to have to read this entire thread over, but I just wanted to post my issues/experiences. I have one Colossus (latest driver), one HD-PVR (both 1.5.7.0 and 1.0.5.301 drivers) and two HVR-2250 and my Colossus has been very problematic. My two STBs are set to 720p, and are connected via component for video and audio (no optical).

My problems range from audio dropouts, SageTV recording errors at the end of a recording, SageTV recording errors during a recording...

I'm going to have to try the daily automatic restart to see if it improved anything.

[Wakecrash]

Michel, I could never get my Colossus and HD-PVR to coexist. Sagetv suppport believes it is a Hauppauge driver issue.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Clift

I use the Colossus HD PVR exclusively and I haven't had a crash. My SageTV does seems to be a bit slower, but I think that may be due to resources (i.e. the PCIe card uses more resources than the USB). Maybe the drivers are less mature, who knows.

how is your luck with Colossus and HD PVR? Have you had any long-term audio recording problems with either unit?
What setting do you use: M2TS, TS or MP4, and why?
thanks

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Wakecrash

Michel, I could never get my Colossus and HD-PVR to coexist. Sagetv suppport believes it is a Hauppauge driver issue.

what problems did you have? I was told the same thing by Sage - it's Hauppauge drivers.
When a HD PVR recording begins, it cancels all audio that was currently active on the Colossus.
So that's not good

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

what problems did you have? I was told the same thing by Sage - it's Hauppauge drivers.
When a HD PVR recording begins, it cancels all audio that was currently active on the Colossus.
So that's not good

Are you using optical audio? Have you tried RCA audio on both devices? I've been running the Colossus/HDPVR combo with no issues since I got my Colossus. I use RCA audio on both devices.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Are you using optical audio? Have you tried RCA audio on both devices? I've been running the Colossus/HDPVR combo with no issues since I got my Colossus. I use RCA audio on both devices.

that's the problem: if I run optical on both, Colossus suffers. I have no intention of watching HD1080 recordings with analog stereo, otherwise, I'd just get Netflix LOL
It's obvious there is a problem with SPDIF. What's not obvious is what anyone is doing to fix it.
thanks

[KeithAbbott]

Hauppauge might be able to double the reliability of the Colossus if they offered a "mono" audio mode...

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

that's the problem: if I run optical on both, Colossus suffers. I have no intention of watching HD1080 recordings with analog stereo, otherwise, I'd just get Netflix LOL
It's obvious there is a problem with SPDIF. What's not obvious is what anyone is doing to fix it.
thanks

True, but dual HD inputs w/analog sound is way better to me than a single input with optical sound. That's just me though. Optical sound has never worked for me even when I just had the HDPVR, but I've never really investigated too much because I really don't care that much about it. I'm pretty sure in my case it's the crappy optical cables I bought off ebay, but didn't care enough to investigate. HD picture + stereo sound, for tv recordings, is more than sufficient for me.

EDIT: And, most importantly, it's been rock solid/not a single issue since I popped the Colossus card into my server.

[impro]

Asus board core 2 duo 4gigs ram
100gb 5400 laptop sys drive
1trb video drive
1trb sage drive
Music on NAS

Brand new win7 64bit installation
2 colossus card installed first
1 pvr 1600 card installed after.
No win tv software installed.

It took 6 days to get a glitch which disappeared after restart.
Very stable.

[The Truth]

Originally Posted by Wakecrash

SHS, that is pretty much what I would start seeing, however since I began restarting my server every morning I have not had the issue in a week. Seemed like I was getting the stutter issue about every 28 - 30 hours.

I have to Agree with this. I think it may be some kind of a memory leak and an unstable driver. I also havent had the issue. if you have multiple cards installed, I recommend you HCWdriverinstall to install the drivers or your cards may not work at all.

1st install cards then power up and use HCWdriverinstall, then reboot. you should be okay if you restart the computer everyday.

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by The Truth

I have to Agree with this. I think it may be some kind of a memory leak and an unstable driver. I also havent had the issue. if you have multiple cards installed, I recommend you HCWdriverinstall to install the drivers or your cards may not work at all.

1st install cards then power up and use HCWdriverinstall, then reboot. you should be okay if you restart the computer everyday.

This is not about hours, it's rather about channel changes (which essentially means new recordings from the Colossus perspective). Right now while watching 2 Hockey games in parallel (and switching back and forth between both), I get somewhere between 15 and 20 changes before I have to restart the Sage service. Yes maybe it's a driver issue, but the Sage server drags down my whole system as a result of this.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Rico66

This is not about hours, it's rather about channel changes (which essentially means new recordings from the Colossus perspective). Right now while watching 2 Hockey games in parallel (and switching back and forth between both), I get somewhere between 15 and 20 changes before I have to restart the Sage service. Yes maybe it's a driver issue, but the Sage server drags down my whole system as a result of this.

fascinating . . . more testing now

[uberpixel]

I've seen some improvements since scheduling a daily SageTV restart (not a full system restart).

I have only had the slo-mo choppy video once in over a hundred recordings.

That said, I am still having audio sync issues with Component+SPDIF. It seems to be a cumulative problem where the audio is pretty close in the beginning of the recording but after an hour or more, it can be off by more than a second. I have also had some recordings that were out of sync from the very beginning as well, but that is less frequent.

I've switched to Component (w/ stereo audio) to see if the problem is specific to SPDIF as others are reporting.

Not sure who's at fault here, but I wish Sage and Hauppauge could get together and come up with a fix for some of these issues.

-uberpixel

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by uberpixel

Not sure who's at fault here, but I wish Sage and Hauppauge could get together and come up with a fix for some of these issues.

It's Hauppauge's issue. The device filters output premixed TS packets, all Sage has to do is write the packets to disk.