Are you sucessfully using a multiple Roslyn tuner configuration?

[mdmint]

Seems like a lot of posts for Roslyn related problems. Doesn't necessarily mean they don't work in "someones" configuration I image... but whose and how?

Select all that apply.

[stanger89]

Good idea.

[justme]

I agree, it is a good idea. We(I'm just speaking as a user of this forum) know of three users who have issues. I just wish we knew how many of these packages Frey has sold. It would help put the poll's dataset in a better context. Oh well, you can never get all the data.

Are you only interested in the Roslyns, or do you want feedback on "blackbird" style cards in general? I know there are several people(me included) using other "blackbird" style cards for a while. Since these issues seem to be related to drivers, I'd stick with just Roslyns. Also, for info.. I believe the PVR250BTV sold by Snapstream is a Roslyn just like what Frey sells.

[mdmint]

Originally posted by justme
I agree, it is a good idea. We(I'm just speaking as a user of this forum) know of three users who have issues. I just wish we knew how many of these packages Frey has sold. It would help put the poll's dataset in a better context. Oh well, you can never get all the data.

Are you only interested in the Roslyns, or do you want feedback on "blackbird" style cards in general? I know there are several people(me included) using other "blackbird" style cards for a while. Since these issues seem to be related to drivers, I'd stick with just Roslyns. Also, for info.. I believe the PVR250BTV sold by Snapstream is a Roslyn just like what Frey sells.

Actually I'm just intellectually curious about the Roslyn and issues being reported since it's being sold by Frey with SageTV software and this is a Frey sponsored forum focused on Sage software. I have no personal stake or issues with the Roslyn, don't have one nor plan on getting one. Five 250s have it more than handled for the time being.

[justme]

I'm curious as well. Why do you think I hang around these forums, when my system is working fine. I don't work for Frey, I'm just another user like you.

I won't vote since I have a M150(blackbird) in my now 3 tuner(2 PVR250s) box. I personally feel that getting feedback from Roslyn users is the most usefull thing. But that's my personal opinion. I just ask because it was your poll and wanted to see what you were interested in.

/justme

[mdmint]

Question, Sage store calls it a Blackbird bundle but it's a Haupauge Roslyn. You have a "M150(Blackbird)" which must be a different Blackbird. What's the difference? Just curious again...

What I'm really curious about is Frey selling a bundle that seems to be giving some people fits! Is there an inherent bug in the Roslyn itself when used in multi-tuner configurations? Or did Frey blow it on the Sage programming to support it? Or is it a problem in the Roslyn driver? I'm sure Frey wants to know too! Or is it some incompatibility with some specific hardware?

[justme]

Blackbird is the codename for Conexant's reference design. Conexant is the company that basically(over simplifying) built the card's basic design. It's a little like how Nvidia comes out with a new Chip and other people sell cards based on Nvidia's design. Except with Nvidia most people stay very close to reference Spec so most cards can use generic Nvidia drivers.

With the "blackbird" things aren't quite so simple. Each company(AverMedia in my M150's case) makes small changes to the boards layout or feature set. They also make their own drivers based off the reference drivers. But in this case the changes are large enough that you must use that companies drivers for that card. Once again this is oversimplified.

Roslyn is Hauppauge's codename for the cards they make based on the Conexant "blackbird" design. Originally the Roslyn was meant for Win XP MCE2004, as far as I know. But people have been using MCE cards for other purposes for a while, so I guess Hauppauge decided to expand their market.

As for what went wacky and how wacky it truelly is... Who knows, maybe your poll will help. I personally have had a very long hard struggle with Hauppauge's PVR250 drivers, back before Sage even existed. It's probably just the inherent complexity of the PC market. These cards(PVR250 and up) weren't originally designed to be used in multituner setup, as far as I know. This seems to be something the companies(PVR card makers) found their users were doing and then worked on official support.

I really don't have enough info to say who's at fault. I suspect driver issues but that may not be all. I'm curious about that support statement posted by beautye350 here, that said something to the effect of...it will try to be fixed in the next version. Did they mean SageTV or the Hauppauge Roslyn drivers? Frey has worked around limitations in the PVR250 design in the past, so I guess they could work around an issue with the Roslyn. I think only time will tell us what's really going on.

Editted to add a link to the exact statemant made. This was done to avoid confusion, that my paraphrasing may have caused.

[beautye350]

Originally posted by mdmint .....<snip>.....
What I'm really curious about is Frey selling a bundle that seems to be giving some people fits! Is there an inherent bug in the Roslyn itself when used in multi-tuner configurations? Or did Frey blow it on the Sage programming to support it? Or is it a problem in the Roslyn driver? I'm sure Frey wants to know too! Or is it some incompatibility with some specific hardware?

I am one of those people that the bundle is giving fits. I have a lot of information on the forum in scattered posts, so I'll try and post it all here for better reference. Please excuse the long post.

My Sage system:

Hardware:

Antec Sonata
ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe Rev 2 (with IOSS BIOS Savoir, active cooling on NB and passive on SB))
2500+
1 GB Corsair XMS PC3200 (dual channel configuration)
1 x 160 GB Western Digital (Partitions: 25 GB window(C: )/135 GB Storage (M: ))
1 x 250 GB Maxtor (Partition: all for Sage recordings (D: ))
1 x Pioneer a04 DVDRW
1 x Liteon 16x DVD-ROM
Sony Floppy
ATi 9500 Pro
ATi Remote Wonder
2 x (Frey Store) Roslyn cards


Software:

Windows XP (All critical updates installed)
nVIDIA platform drivers v4.24
Sonic Decoder package
Java 2 Runtime Environment v1.4.2_04
SageTV v2
Remote Administrator v2.1


My Story:

Been lurking the forums for a little while after reading the review of Sage at htpcnews. I Decided it was time to put my HTPC plan into action. At the time, my HTPC had XP MCE 2k4 installed. I placed my order at the Frey online store after deciding I couldn't wait for pcalchemy to get their bundles back in stock. The day I received my order, I followed the install directions sent with the cards from Frey. I installed just a single card....and bounced the system. I placed the CD Frey sent and installed the drivers for the card. I then tried to install the MPG decoders from said CD, but I was getting an error. I checked the forums and found a thread on this problem. There was an updated driver posted by Narflex as well as updated decoders that were supposed to take care of the issue. I went into the hardware manager and proceeded to update my card's drivers. Upon rebooting, all seemed well but I still could not install the decoder. At this point I installed WinDVD 5 and was able to view some live TV. I thought all was well so I decided to install the second Roslyn. (Slot Placement: Due to the overwhelming amount of crap (read: connectors) ASUS packed on the board, I was only able to install the first card in the 3rd slot from the bottom due to the card not fully seating elsewhere. The second tuner added was placed into the lowest slot, leaving a one slot cushion. I checked the mobo's manual and found that these two slots would never share IRQs and breathed a sigh of relief.) So, now with both cards in, I bounced again and followed the instructions to configure the second card. The driver install went fine and I had a smile like a butcher's dog. It would not last though. I opened Sage and proceeded to configure the second card. All appeared to function correctly until I tried to view a channel in the channel setup menu. I was then presented with two errors:

The errors are sequential and the second notification tends to cover the first one so I
have to hit OK twice:

First Error:

There was a capture error in playback. Details:
Unable to connect analog video cross streams
ErrCode=0x80040217


Second error:

There was a Async reader error in the playback
Details:
Failure loading file
ErrCode=0x80004005


I chalked this up to an anomaly and chose to complete the setup wizard. Gave a sigh of relief as I chose to view some live TV and it worked. I then tried recording one program while watching another and that's when all hell broke loose. Sage became very unstable mostly just crashing to the desktop with no warning, but I would also get more errors like posted before. I then set up the Sage Client that I bought with the cards on another machine. I could connect to the server just fine, but as soon as I would start watching TV or recording something, I would get a screen that said connection to the server had been lost. I logged into the server with remote administrator and sage was dead. Nothing I could do seemed to fix this behavoir. This happened on a Friday night so I was finally fed up enough to try formatting and starting over after sleeping on it to calm me down. Saturday, I spent the day doing multiple formats and OS installs as my once again fresh MCE 2k4 install bared no fruit.

I formatted and installed XP Pro for a vanilla install and installed one of the cards. The system appeared to function properly so, I tried adding in the second tuner and that's when the problems started. The second tuner worked and rendered the first-installed tuner non-functional. I removed the first card as a source and am using the second tuner only. If I try to add back in the first card I get the errors when doing a channel setup. So, until we see some new drivers or an updated app, I am stuck with one tuner which has been really stable and a pleasure to work with, but I want dual tuners dammit, and maybe even more...but I am not sinking anymore money into this until I get what I have working or I will just go back to no PVR at all. This whole experience has not left me with a enjoyable taste in my mouth.

I won't even go into the debacle I had with support over the last two weeks about this, but suffice to say, I was the one whom they told to move my cards to another computer as "it should work" Otherwise, I needed to wait until the next release cause the developer couldn't get me anything in the meantime. :-/

I hope all this helps someone make a more informed buying decision. As it stands right now, I cannot recommend a dual-tuner Roslyn bundle from Frey.



Regards,

Beau

[kny3twalker]

hey there are always newer drivers at shspvr.com/forum
they may be the same as frey sent out but the roslyns just recently started supporting multiple cards
and shs mentioned this feature being added when he posted the new drivers at his site

http://www.shspvr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4947

Announcement: Roslyn OEM Drivers 2.98.22124 with Multi-Tuner support.

[mdmint]

Originally posted by kny3twalker
hey there are always newer drivers at shspvr.com/forum
they may be the same as frey sent out but the roslyns just recently started supporting multiple cards
and shs mentioned this feature being added when he posted the new drivers at his site

http://www.shspvr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4947

Announcement: Roslyn OEM Drivers 2.98.22124 with Multi-Tuner support.

SHSPVR.com may or may not have drivers that enable the Roslyn Frey is selling in multi-tuner bundles that allow multiple Roslyns to work together in Sage. While I've not been bitten by the Roslyn, even if drivers from other sources will make it work, it's seems extremely poor business to sell a bundle that doesn't work with the drivers provided in the bundle.

If I didn't already have a rock solid 5 PVR250 tuner Client/Server setup, and was just now looking into building it, I wouldn't buy hardware from Frey. Last time I looked, which as about 2sec ago, they are still selling the Roslyn multi-tuner bundle even though from what has been said Frey tech support says it won't work until next release of Sage (or drivers or whatever) and are not selling any 250s.

And I'm not a happy TIVO user. I thoroughly checked out TIVO and ReplayTV and built my SageTV system. I am a happy SageTV user, but don't like what I see and hear. Doesn't bode well for the future of Sage IMO.

If there is in fact a problem using multiple Roslyns with Sage, and Frey knows about it, they should make an announcement both on the Sales site and this Forum and cease selling the bundles, or at the minimum selling them with full disclosure of known problems. Nada input on the issue from Sage at the sales site or here that I've seen.

And I'll say it again, I'm very pleased with my beats the heck out of TIVO rock solid SageTV setup. But right now I couldn't and wouldn't recommend buying from Frey, at least not any hardware portion.

And while the poll numbers are very low, so far zero responded saying multiple Roslyn config works.

[kny3twalker]

SHS gets his drivers from someone at hauppauge (and furthermore they support him and his forum)
and remember these are OEM cards so hauppauge will not post drivers them on its website
it is up to the OEMs like windows, sage, and snapstream to distribute the drivers but if hauppauge has not sent the new drivers to them before the CD that is sent with the card is shipped
there is nothing they can do
But I do think it is frey responsibility to make sure the newest drivers are available
they did that in the forum for the mixed drivers for 350s and 250s but these is not not enough for drivers which are not beta (it is ok to post beta drivers in the forum)
they need on the support section of there site to add drivers for all cards they sell or at least the roslyns and links for the retail cards (which I think they have done)

but anyways there is only one roslyn card and the drivers at shs's are for these cards

and furthermore if hauppauge has only gotten the newest drivers to SHS and not frey and such
there is nothing they can do

SHS has a friend remember so he gets everything fast

SHS's has drivers that support other blackbirds cards as well just so you know(discussed before)

I am sure whenever the fixed is found or if this is it
this will all be a moot point
new technologies have bugs you just happened to come along when things are good now
but what about when people are capturing beautiful AVIs with the roslyns then
are you going to angry about it since your cards (mine too) cannot

trying to be critical that why I said mine too
but no reason to go overboard yet

[Opus4]

Quick question: Is there a good reason why I might want to be able to create AVIs? What advantage(s) would there be? Thanks.

- Andy

[mdmint]

I'll agree to disagree with you. Frey sells it, it's Freys' responsibility to make sure it works, or at the mimimun to make it very clear they won't/don't support the hardware they sell. Up front, on the sales page right with the item.

[kny3twalker]

people like to capture AVIs because it is more supported for like authoring programs and such
right now only Ulead MF 2 SE can do this with the retail pvr 250s

also it is realtime
I have heard users complain that they could play video games through there pvr 250s

right now no one supports it really so it does not matter but SageTV said they are going to

well mdmint
sage is first company to offer multiple roslyns support
windows has never offered support for any mulitple tuners with MCE
and beyondTV is beta testing it

these drivers were posted at shs's immediately after the sage bundles were released
this was not a coincidence
I am quessing

Frey does need to post the most current drivers on their web site not in the forum

but has beautye350 or whoever even tried them yet
this is just like the m150 issue a little while ago
Chill Bro

frey may not be doing everything right but look at the freakin' pvr 350
but it should be obvious that they are trying

also I found a nice post
what drivers are these people running that have this problem?

pvr_lurker
Super Senior Member



Joined: 20 Feb 2003
Posts: 202
Location: Hauppauge, NY
Posted: Wed, 28 Apr 2004 05:41:51 +0000 Post subject:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The released Roslyn drivers (2.96 or earlier) only support a single board; there are newer drivers in test that do support more than one board. Stay tuned.
_________________
My opinions are my own. No one else takes them seriously, you shouldn't either.


look at the location!

and the post is a little old before the newer drivers were released

[Grey_Goose]

well, kny, why don't you get a multiple roslyn system working before telling everyone it's a driver issue?

these roslyns DO NOT work in a multi tuner config. when you finally get them to appear to work, there is a hideous end of file bug. beau's post confirms this.

i narrowed it down to a reproducable cause and effect.

and this IS a roslyn problem, because as soon as i used retail 250's, my system was stable and working like a champ.

frey obviously never tested this. they installed the new drivers, saw some streaming video, and decided to put it on their shop as a cheap multi-tuner solution.

[kny3twalker]

hey thats not how this started out
I just suggested there are newer drivers at SHSpvr.com/forum
and I get responses SHS drivers will not work with these cards
frey should stop selling them blah blah blah
All I was saying is that there could be a driver issue and there are new drivers
SHS gets his drivers from hauppauge
and I do not think it is time to get a rope for Frey

I could be wrong though

A suggestion to try other drivers is not always taken so hard

Sorry I never bought a roslyn so I do not know your problems

if worst comes to worst
hopefully Frey can AT LEAST give you a free copy of sagerecorder so you can throw another one in another computer and network record with it

[Grey_Goose]

A free copy of recorder?

No thanks.

What Frey needs to give me is an RMA #, and a check for return postage.

[kny3twalker]

hey that could be temp fix to hold the user over until they can get a fix out

is there something wrong with the hardware?

[beautye350]

Originally posted by kny3twalker
<snip>

but has beautye350 or whoever even tried them yet
this is just like the m150 issue a little while ago
Chill Bro

As I stated in my post, I first installed the driver that Frey shipped with the card. They are version 2.98.22124. I also found a newer driver posted by Narflex in this thread: Cannot install software MPEG decoders for SageTV 2.0 with Roslyn . These are version 88x_OEM_roslyn_2_99_22145_88x-98XP. With the old driver as well as the new, I cannot get both cards working in concert. I even tried installing one card with the old and one with new driver. When necessary, I used the hcwclear and hcw_unregister.bat utils, or I used a complete new OS install. I am an MCSE and work as a System Administrator, so this is definitely not above my head. Something is wrong SOMEWHERE in the bundle I bought and I don't believe it is my responsibility to make it work as I have already gone above and beyond the call. BTW, I am using the 22145 drivers at present with one tuner and it is working great.

I'm with Grey_Goose on the recorder, no thanks. I am tempted to send them back, but I want to give Frey the benefit of the doubt as I love the software. The problem is the longer I wait the more issues I will have trying to get my money back.


Regards,

Beau

[dkardatzke]

First of all I would like to apologize for the problems that some of you have been experiencing with using Multiple Roslyn cards at a time. Here's an update and what your options are right now.

Before offering the Multi-Tuner bundle in our store we did extensive testing and we experienced no problems using the latest drivers from Hauppauge and Version 2.0 of SageTV. Since the release of this bundle, a few of you have not been able to get two tuners to work together. We are aware of the problem and are working with Hauppauge on a fix. This is only affecting certain systems, but not all since we have many customers using Multiple Roslyns successfully. We have nailed this down to the Roslyn drivers and not with SageTV as may have been previously communicated.

Next steps are the following. We've been working with Hauppauge all this week on the specific issues that we've been able to reproduce on a different PC (one we didn't have before). Once these issues have been resolved we will make an updated driver available for testing. Since these Roslyn cards are not available at retail I recommend you only use drivers we provide and do not try testing drivers available from other sources like you normally do with the retail cards. I will try to update everyone in this post as more information becomes available.

If this is unacceptable, we will refund your money for the bundle plus shipping costs back to us for the return. Please contact me at orders@freytechnologies if this is your decision. We have also removed the multi-tuner bundles from the store until this gets resolved.

Once again I apologize and if you are willing to help us test updated drivers we'll get this problem corrected so you can experience the joy of multiple tuners. If you have any other questions, please post them here and I will respond.

Dan