BAD Pixelizing on new install

[cummings66]

First off I had SageTv working with the same drivers as what I'm using now, both windows and the PVR-350 drivers.

Yesterday I did a fresh install of Windows XP Pro SP2 and reinstalled SageTV. Now when I first run it the screen breaks up badly with rather large square blocks. If I stop it and rerun it then it works, unless I run it at a higher priority in which case it breaks up badly. It does this on liveTv and if I rewind on livetv I get it. If I view an old recording then it's fine. I watch it using the TV Out on the PVR-350 card, so as I understand it I'm only using hardware for encoding and decoding, nothing is displayed on the monitor so no external mpeg decoder can be affecting it because it's all hardware.

The card is fine, I can boot on the old drive and it's fine so I know it's a software issue somehow. I'm using the old sage.properties and wiz.bin stuff, reinstalled SageTv with no change.

For what it's worth I am running the beta drivers from SHS's site, though they did work before.

This is how I installed the card. I used the beta drivers CD only, I did not install any of the WinTV stuff save the IRRemote.

So, what should I look for, or at in order to make this thing run right given that I'm using the old sage.properties and all of it is the same as before. Has anybody run into this before?

I did revert back to the lastest non beta drivers with no change. I don't remember if I had installed before the Intel App Accelerator. What's your opinion on that?

[cummings66]

A followup. The problem will occur on the first run every time no matter how it's started.

It's a problem where it pulses about once a second, that pulse being the square block problem. I can't see any programs taking up CPU time during that pulse except for SageTV.

[cummings66]

I called Tech support last week and they are sending me a replacement card because they think it's a hardware problem.

Now the interesting part. Today we had a thunderstorm and I always unplug my stuff during storms, I also unplug it during hardware installs etc.

I had to move the card to a new slot during testing and I had to move a fan that was in the way as well, so the computer was unplugged maybe 10 minutes during that move. I assumed that was long enough to reset stuff because in the past it had been, plus I had pushed the power button after removing power so the MB would drain the power quicker. The storm meant I had the gear unplugged for about 6 hours and when I plugged it back in the card worked normally again so something retained energy for a longer length of time. I wonder if there's a cap on the card that's retaining a charge?

I had discovered that if I had the problem I could turn off the tv out, turn it back on and the problem would be gone. The display on the monitor by the way was perfect, no blocking or pausing during any of the blocking or pausing on the TV Out.

So, the long power outage seemed to cure it, but I think I'll still swap cards out when I get the replacement just in case the card really has a problem.

In any event, the way it's working is that Haupauge will send me a card, I have 30 days to send back the old one or they charge my CC. I don't have to remove it and wait for them to get it, then wait for them to ship it to me. All I did was ask them if they would cross ship a card and they readily agreed to do so.