7.1.7 and HD-PVR, which driver?

[phelme]

So I installed 7.1.7 yesterday, tested it a couple times for recording and left it installed. Unfortunately, my HD-PVR, which is connected directly to the server had a meltdown and managed not to record any of the royal wedding stuff that was queued up.



This HD-PVR has been stellar up to now. I'm running old 1.0.5.301 drivers with that HD-PVR because it's been the most stable on the box. I've been reading the Colossus threads about issues with 7.1.7 and wonder if it (v7.1.7) will only by happy with the latest Hauppauge drivers for the HD-PVR as well? My network encoder box does have the latest drivers (1.5.7 I think) for its HD-PVR and seems fine so far.

[gplasky]

And that's what I run on mine. The latest HD-PVR drivers 1.5.7.0. Updated yesterday to Sage 7.1.7 and all my HD-PVR recordings were fine.

Gerry

[Savage1701]

Same here, on my Sage Server under 32-bit Win XP. I will need to see if my HD-PVR stays finicky or improves under newest beta. Intermittently, I have some of the same errors you experienced from time to time.

[phelme]

Well, I put 1.5.7.0 back in and we shall see what happens. I have been getting odd audio "brap" noises and such lately with 5.1 recordings, maybe this will clear that up too.

So far, so good.

[CanadianEh]

My original HDPVR never was stable under 1.5.7 drivers. I'm a little skeptical to upgrade. Can anyone else confirm that 1.0.5.301 doesn't work well with V7.1.7? I do not have a Colossus, just two HDPVRs

[mibsy]

The short answer to your question is, I'm currently using the 1.0.5.301 driver under SageTV 7.1.7 and haven't had an issue for the past day.

WARNING LONG...

The long answer is about a month ago, I had to change out the tuner boxes feeding my two HD-PVRs. Sounds simple, but I have been in HD-PVR misery ever since.

I've had every problem in the book that probably started out as a simple problem when the audio optical input cord got pulled out of one of my HD-PVRs. I had everything running fine for months on a Windows 7 x64 Machine, Sage 7.0.23 with the 1.5.7.0 drivers for my HD-PVRs (one version C1 and one E1). I followed one of the recommendations in a forum thread and had them hanging off of a RocketFish USB card with an NEC chipset.

Once I started changing things like switching USB ports, reinstalling driver and trying out the Sagetv beta things got worse: Halt Detected in Recording messages, No Signal, channels not changing, audio sync problems, stuttering, video and audio skipping, and lockups of the HD-PVRs requiring a power cycle of the device itself (not just the server).

So, I followed some of the advice on the forums - uninstalled all Plugins (so they could be eliminated as a cause), backed up my SageTV directory, uninstalled Sage (leaving the config files in place), ran HCWCLEAR.exe, rebooted, installed my HVR-2250 drivers, rebooted, installed the HD-PVR driver version 1.0.5.301 for my HD-PVRs (I'll explain why I used the older version in a minute), rebooted, installed TME and Sagetv 7.1.7, rebooted. I've been operating for about 24 hours without a problem (which is about 20 hours longer than I've had it working in a row over the past month). We'll see what happens over the next week. I went with the old version of the driver since a few folks on the boards suggested that it was working better for them. I also am curious if it may work better with my older, C1 version. I prefer the latest driver versions whenever possible, but there are discussions on this forum if older drivers might not be better for older hardware revisions of the HD-PVR.

A few observations or lessons I learned(YMMV):

1) If you get you HD-PVR(s) working well with Sagetv - don't touch them unless you absolutely have to. Be very careful if you do have to work on them or on you machine.

2) Check your cables between your set-top boxes and the HD-PVR. For example, if the HD-PVR isn't getting the signal on the optical audio you don't get video with no sound, it won't tune.

3) There are a lot of different versions of HD-PVRs. Some versions have different capabilities and some *MAY* work better with a different version of the driver. The most popular versions seem to be 1.0.5.301, 1.5.6.1, or 1.5.7.0.

4) USB ports may matter. I have moved mine to different onboard ports and to PCI-Express add-on ports. Right now I have them on two different USB port clusters on the motherboard. It can change interrupts or I/O ports and may make the HD-PVR drivers happy. I had one HD-PVR device that would not start (under the device manager) but when I plugged it into another port, it started right up.

5) Use the HCWCLEAR and install all other Hauppauge drivers and install the HD-PVR drivers last.

6) Not sure if it matters, but some suggest turning of USB Selective Suspend under power options.

7) If you have audio sync issues, try adding the following to your Sage.properties file:

xcode_fix_broken_hdpvr_streams=true

I tried a reinstall from scratch and still had audio problems with my Dish Network receiver and the HD PVR. This seems to have done the trick.

I'll let you know how things are after a few days.

[phelme]

As the OP, thought I'd pipe in again. The HD-PVR that had the freak-out is one of the first gen models. Like others, I had found that the 1.0.5.301 driver produced less hangs than 1.5.7.0 with that guy (but I do get audio glitches all the time on 5.1 digital recordings with that driver).

It could be of course that the lock-up I had was something else entirely, but I'm willing to try 1.5.7.0 for a while to see how stable it is. After two days (and it got a lot of use last night, jumping around with all the OBL news) it seems fine.

[mangriotis]

I will also throw my experience out there. I have a rev E1 HD-PVR (purchased exactly one year ago this week) that was working reasonably well (via component and optical 5.1), using driver 1.5.6.1.

Rare lockups, but it locked up probably once per month or so, requiring a physical power cycle of the HDPVR unit to resolve.

Within the last two weeks, I was getting these lockups regularly (almost every night). I couldn't pinpoint if it was only while I was watching something (through an extender) or not... I was on Sage 7.1.5 when it started happening. I tried upgrading to Sage 7.1.7, but similar behavior.

I then upgraded to 1.5.7.0 HDPVR drivers, and have not seen the issue return (after ~1 week of normal use).

I am now wondering if these drivers somehow become corrupted over time and just require a re-installation or something.

[srothwell]

I have 2x HDPVRs and, up until Tuesday, had been running on WinXp for over a year with (knock on wood) nary an issue other than once in a couple of months had to power cycle one of them....

I just replaced my sage server from XP to Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. Installed the same exact drivers I've been using for a year (1.5.7.0) and (again knock on wood) everything seems to be working exactly as it always has.

I am currently running 7.17, but only upgraded yesterday. Prior to that I was running 7.15 under Win2K8R2 for a day (NEVER change an OS and upgrade the application at the same time!), and have been testing each iteration of 7.1.x under XP since they came out. So far no issues.

Of course, now I'm afraid I'm going to jinx something :-) Did I say "Knock on Wood?"

[esubramanian]

I have had the same issue like mangriotis said. I have been running 1.5.6.1 driver for a long time with no issues, but recently started getting lockup issues. I upgraded to 1.5.7 driver and everything seems to be fine now.

[mibsy]

Originally Posted by mibsy

The short answer to your question is, I'm currently using the 1.0.5.301 driver under SageTV 7.1.7 and haven't had an issue for the past day.

LONG Text....

I'll let you know how things are after a few days.

So I ran for about 7 days and I did not have one error message, lost signal, or halt detected in recording using 1.0.5.301. I did have two or three times where the video would pause and then run at fast forward to catch up, but that was light years ahead of where I was over a week ago.

In violation of my list of recommendations, I have touched my relatively stable configuration and upgraded to the 1.5.7 version of the drivers in an attempt to resolve the two or three times the video paused and fast-forwarded.

[mibsy]

Originally Posted by mibsy

So I ran for about 7 days and I did not have one error message, lost signal, or halt detected in recording using 1.0.5.301. I did have two or three times where the video would pause and then run at fast forward to catch up, but that was light years ahead of where I was over a week ago.

In violation of my list of recommendations, I have touched my relatively stable configuration and upgraded to the 1.5.7 version of the drivers in an attempt to resolve the two or three times the video paused and fast-forwarded.

So, I had to back out the 1.5.7.0 driver after a few hours. It worked fine with my HD-PVR Rev E1, but on the Rev C2 the audio sync problem would pop up after ten minutes on any show. I went back to driver version 1.0.5.301 since the problems are much less pronounced. Since the new driver appears to be the way to get rid of the remaining problem (video occasionally pauses and then fast forwards to catch up), I called Hauppauge tech support. I told them my problems and the guy told me that it was a know hardware problem with the earlier revisions. The rev C2 and below exhibit this issue. I'm RMAing the unit. I thought I'd pass it on here, because I didn't see it clearly spelled out in these forums and I've been pulling my hair out for quite a while.

[appelm]

Originally Posted by mangriotis

I am now wondering if these drivers somehow become corrupted over time and just require a re-installation or something.

I have been thinking the same thing. Or perhaps just the act of reinstalling the driver fixes the problem temporarily. It seems to be a way to fix the problem without power cycling the units which is convenient if doing it remotely.

[Xiphoid]

So I upgraded to 7.1.7 yesterday and my HD-PVR locked-up about 6 or 8 times over the course of watching two programs (Canucks game 1 of western conference and season finale of Desperate Housewives). Needless to say both me and my wife are pissed for the loss of each of our programs (which already has a tenuous WAF due to general hardware failures). Never has the pvr locked up so much. Is it possible that it's related to the beta upgrade? Seems coincidental....