pvr-350 playback issues

[bq2]

Hi,
I am experiencing a couple of issues with playback when using the output of the pvr-350 card. I know using the pvr-350 video out is not suggested, but if anyone has any suggestions, i would like to see if i can get this to work a little better (at least until the new Sage HD media extender is available).

The first issue is playback will occasionally pause on the output of the pvr-350. It will pause whether i am watching a recording or 'live' tv. Interesting enough, this almost always happens exactly on the half hour. For example, I can be 12 minutes into a recording, and on the half hour, the picture and sound will freeze. Pressing play does not restart the playback. Pressing the rewind button will start the playback, but not necessarily where it left off. Its like the playback is still going, but the output has stopped. So if i wait 15 seconds, and push the rewind which skips back 5 seconds, it will start playing 10 seconds from where it stopped. Does this explaination make sense?

The second problem is a bit more severe. Sometimes when i start playback, the output from the pvr-350 will go lite green on the whole screen. This happens more often if i am skipping forward or backward in a recording. The only way i can get output again is by restarting the system. Shutting down and restarting sage will not fix it, disabling and re-enabling the pvr-350 output in Sage does not fix it. Disabling and reneabling the pvr-350 in control pannel does not fix it. Only a power down and power back up fixes it. Some other impressions i have had, though there may be no correlation: the problem seems to occur less often if i lower the recording quality. It seems to occur less often if i have a few GB;s or more available on the recording HDD.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Here's a quick description of the system. ASUS P5B LGA 775 Intel P965 Express ATX Intel Motherboard, Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor, 1 GB system memory, ATI Radeon x1950 video card, WINXP Home. A dedicated 250 GB HDD for recordings. I am up to the latest Sage 6.1.8, the latest hauppauge driver and the latest ati video driver. I have a pvr250 and pvr350, each connected to a dish network satelite box through the s-video connector and an OTA to each coax input. I use a USBIRT to control the satelite boxes and to accept input from a remote control. I have hw decoding only, no sw decoding.

Thanks

[matt91]

I think most here have dumped the output of the 350. I used it for awhile, but the end-of-file crashes were too much for me.

The only advice I have is to test it with just the Hauppauge software (all sage software/service turned off).

If you still get errors, then it's probably something in the drivers or hardware. You could try reinstalling or swapping out for another 350 card.

I moved to the MVP and haven't looked back.

Matt

[slmc]

I've been having the same issue with my 350, and it used to work flawlessly. ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe, AMX X2 4600+, ASUS X1600 PCIE graphics card, 1 GB RAM, 10K WD SATA II hard drive. My hiccups are always on playback - recording continues ok. Sometimes my pauses are followed by a "no signal" message that requires a power cycle to overcome. I've always liked the direct output of the 350 so that whatever i have going on my monitors won't affect the TV output. Sounds like I may have to compromise.