PVR500 and Avermedia A180 a bad mix?

[Ceger]

Posted this in the Hardware section, but felt it might be more appropriate to post here since you need to run the Beta of SageTV to get HDTV support.

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Hi all. I just recently registered, but have been reading and following the SageTV community for a while now. You guys are a great source for information and troubleshooting. I hope you can help me with a problem I am having.

I have had SageTV working just fine with a PVR500 (dual tuner) for about a month now. I am running an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 2.2GHz, 2GB DDRAM, ATI X800XT, and a dedicated 250GB HD for Video on Win XP Home (SP2). My ATIX800XT is connected to a HDTV via HDMI (converted to DVI).

I recently ordered the A180 HDtuner to add to my PVR. It installed no problems, but it seems to mess up the PVR500 setup when the card is enabled, reporting the usual Audio Encoding error. Now, if I go into the Hardware manager and disable the A180, the PVR500 works correctly again. It seems that when both are active, the PVR500 forgets how to encode audio via hardware.

Any ideas as to what is going on here? Does anyone else have a similar setup and had to work through these problems? Any pins on the cards themselves that need to be changed? The A180 also only displays solid black, no video nor audio, is this normal? I'm using an OTA Antenna for my HDTV. What is this DVXA about?

Any help would be appreciated.

Ceger

Edit: Some additional information.

I have Media set to use DirectX9 output (not overlay). Video, Audio and DVD are using DirectSound Audology NX 2, DirectX9 output and CineScope for video and audio. The A180 is installed using the latest driver (dual support) and there are no hardware IRQ or resource conflicts.

[agover]

Ceger,

I had a similar problem with a dvico fusion 5 card. I found that the best solution was to switch audio & video codec (ie dont use the ones that come with sage). If you have them I found the intervideo codecs pretty good, Ive also had some (albeit limited) luck with the nvidia codecs.

If you are using the nvidia ones make sure your running the newest version - from what ive seen the older versions are pigs (cpu wise) when using them for hd.

[Ceger]

Originally Posted by agover

Ceger,

I had a similar problem with a dvico fusion 5 card. I found that the best solution was to switch audio & video codec (ie dont use the ones that come with sage). If you have them I found the intervideo codecs pretty good, Ive also had some (albeit limited) luck with the nvidia codecs.

If you are using the nvidia ones make sure your running the newest version - from what ive seen the older versions are pigs (cpu wise) when using them for hd.

I have the latest NVidia Pure Decoder version. What would I set Media, Audio and DVD settings too? All of them to the NVidia codecs? Actually, I only have Default, SageTV Mpeg2 and one other option for media which is neither CineScope nor NVidia.

Also, is it okay to keep the renderer as DirectX 9 or should I switch to Overlay or Default?

Thanks for the heads up. I'll try playing around tonight regardless.

Ceger

[agover]

If you have the nvidia codecs set everything to use them. Apparently they have the best picture quality anyways - so its no loss.

Check out the HD first though - if the image stutters you may not have the processing power to use the nvidia codecs for hd.

[RandyJohnson]

Ceger..

Are you using digital audio out?

If so the nVidia decoder will work but it only output digital audio.

I use the nVidea video decoder and the Intervideo audio decoder.

Randy

[Ceger]

Originally Posted by RandyJohnson

Ceger..

Are you using digital audio out?

If so the nVidia decoder will work but it only output digital audio.

I use the nVidea video decoder and the Intervideo audio decoder.

Randy

Yes, I output via optical out, so I should be fine in that regard.


agover, I can set everything to use the NVidia codec except the media setting which only allows Default, SageTV and one other, I think. I'll have to relook. However, I had set it to use SageTV since that seems to be the only codec that properly showed a consistent picture when using hte VCR-like FF/RW import. All other codecs created digital blocks while scanning.

Could this be something to do with DirectX 9 c?

I appreciate all the help, I hope I can resolve my HD issue tonight.

Ceger

[Ceger]

Well, no go with either Nvidia PureVideo nor Cineplayer Codecs. As soon as the A180 is enabled, the PVR500 cannot do anything reporting the audio problem. Also weird is that when I tried using the NVidia Audio Decoder, I got no audio at all Via SageTV when watching a DVD, but had no sound problems when viewing the DVD via Windows Media Player 10.

This is very aggrravating. I'd like to get the A180 working as many others have, but cannot figure out why I lose PVR500 functionality.

Any more help would be greatly appreciated before I just consider the A180 a lost cause.

Ceger

[mikejaner]

The answer to your DVD audio woes is that the base Nvidia decoder doesn't decode the AC3 for any application other than Windows Media Center and Media Players. I fixed this by switching to Sonic decoders for audio and kept Nvidia for Video. Others have bought the TheaterTek drivers ($80) which include the Nvidia decoders and some audio decoders which decode everything, among many other features.

BTW you would also get no audio when playing back HDTV with the base Nvidia decoders. The Sonic and Theatertek ones fix that also.

[salsbst]

Did you install the newer A180 driver that supports multiple A180s? It may also have a fix for the apparent collision with the PVR500.

[Ceger]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

The answer to your DVD audio woes is that the base Nvidia decoder doesn't decode the AC3 for any application other than Windows Media Center and Media Players. I fixed this by switching to Sonic decoders for audio and kept Nvidia for Video. Others have bought the TheaterTek drivers ($80) which include the Nvidia decoders and some audio decoders which decode everything, among many other features.

BTW you would also get no audio when playing back HDTV with the base Nvidia decoders. The Sonic and Theatertek ones fix that also.

Yeah, I ended up using the Cineplayer Audio Codec. Question,is the NVidia video codec really any better than the Cineplayer one?

Originally Posted by salsbst

Did you install the newer A180 driver that supports multiple A180s? It may also have a fix for the apparent collision with the PVR500.

Yes, that is the only driver I have used.

Ceger

[gplasky]

Try moving one of the cards to a different slot. They may be trying to share the same IRQ.

Gerry

[Ceger]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Try moving one of the cards to a different slot. They may be trying to share the same IRQ.

Gerry

Checked that, they are using unique IRQs and resources. Good idea though, I hadn't checked.

Ceger