HD-PVR lock-up roll call

[Shield]

Let me know if you have or do not ever have the following with your HD-PVR:

You have a completely black screen when tuned into live tv or you're recording; it is only remedied by shutting the HD-PVR off and back on again.

I am experiencing this problem. Unit is in a cool basement.

Unit is a "C2" with the fan and was purchased from SageTV directly.

If you bought multiple units that do this let me know, or if you haven't had any problems.

[Opus4]

I'm not sure it is a heat problem any more -- Hauppauge has commented that if a C2 unit locks/ceases recording, then the unit is faulty & should be replaced. One of mine should have been cool enough, but still kept stopping every so often. One of my previous comments is here.

- Andy

[sleonard]

I purchased 3 and had to RMA all 3 for the heat issue. Two of those were C2.

I now have 3 C2 that have worked fine for the last two weeks until yesterday. I came home from work and had to power cycle one because it had a black screen/no signal in Sage and another because the picture was garbled. Top half of picture on bottom and bottom half on top + some macroblocking. I ended up having to reboot the Sage server itself.

Even then one of them still gives me a momentary no signal before finally showing the picture.

S

[swats]

Wow you guys are scaring me. I just got mine installed today (it's a C2 as well). Cross my fingers, but so far so good. Easy install, took about 15 minutes and I was good to go. I am recording some stuff tonight, so I suppose that will be the true test. In fact everything went so smoothly I was going to post about how impressed I was with it-- it just does what it's supposed to.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by swats

Wow you guys are scaring me.

I have no idea what percentage of units are having problems, but don't forget: you are much more likely to see posts from people having issues than from people saying that their tuner still works today, and the next, and the next...

- Andy

[sic0048]

I thought mine might be overheating (and stated so in a recent thread), but I've actually narrowed it down to an IR blaster issue. For some reason, I keep killing Sage trying to set up the Hauppauge blaster to work in Sage and it takes a complete removal of Sage from my computer to fix. So it wasn't the HD-PVR that was falling over it was Sage itself.

I have a thread here giving more details and asking for help.

[popechild]

I've been getting an error in Sage on the server after the HD-PVR runs for a number of hours - something about "capture device drivers not found" or something. A reboot of the PVR, then the Sage service, and it works find again for awhile. On my HD100, the error doesn't always show, sometimes it just gives a black screen. It's a C2 unit.

No idea if this is an overheating issue or what. Should I be sending this back in for a replacement at this point, or is there something else there worth trying to check first?

[HelenWeathers]

I received my first HD PVR (from Hauppauge (C2)) 3.5 weeks ago and it was working fine with ArcSoft capture and the Haup scheduler. I received my second HD PVR unit (C2) from SageTV 1 week ago. I downloaded the 6.4.6 beta software and replaced MEC on my HDPC with the Sage 2 days ago. I checked my IR control etc but did no real watching/recording that first day. I started having the black screen and no signal messages on viewing/recordings on HDPVR1 (the one from Haup) after a few hours of using with Sage yesterday. I thought HDPVR1 was failing. I removed HDPVR1 as a source in Sage so Sage would use HDPVR2 for rest of days recordings yesterday. The first recording scheduled for HDPVR2 did the same thing (no signal/black screen) as the HDPVR1. Today I hooked the HDPVR1 (the one that showed failure 1st under Sage) up to another computer this morning and have set a series of 8 1hr recordings back to back. I am now in the fourth hour and have had no problem yet. I'll report back later on my success with all eight hours, but I'm beginning to suspect a problem with Sage and two HD PVRs, or with the Haup drivers, but not with the unit itself.

[HelenWeathers]

Well, on Second PC series of 8 1hr recordings back to back all did fine with HDPVR1 as a source thru ArcSoft capture.
I had left the HDPVR2 with My Sage PC and 5 hrs of back to back scheduled recordings. First 2 hrs went fine. Third hour recording started flashing black frames every 2-3 seconds for the last 7 minutes of the recording. Fourth hour recording had 25 min of flashing black frames followed by 35 min all black. Fifth recording all black. Total time for problems to start: 2hrs 53min. Total time to total black: 3hrs 25min.

I'll swap the HDPVR1/2 to opposing pc tonight and repeat the same process tomorrow.

I promise to be more brief tomorrow baring anything unforseen.

PS, My Equipment:
My Sage PC: Intel D975XBX2KR Mbd, Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 2.66, 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM, XFX GeForce 7950GT 512MB HDCP, Windows XP MCE 2005 SP2.
Second PC I used is same except Intel Core 2 Duo E4700, Asus EN9700GT 512MB HDCP, Windows Vista Home Premium SP1.

[sorrowstyr]

Originally Posted by Shield

Let me know if you have or do not ever have the following with your HD-PVR:

You have a completely black screen when tuned into live tv or you're recording; it is only remedied by shutting the HD-PVR off and back on again.

I am experiencing this problem. Unit is in a cool basement.

Unit is a "C2" with the fan and was purchased from SageTV directly.

If you bought multiple units that do this let me know, or if you haven't had any problems.

Yes, I have the exact same error and problem, also I have stuttered playback when it is near over heating. The pass through also begins to fail as well... I have opened a ticket with Hauppage.

The only way to fix is just like you described, letting the HD PVR sit un plugged for a while. I dont need to restart Sage though.

[sleonard]

It happened again today on unit #2 of 3. Sage shows no signal and black screen. Turned it off for 20 sec. and back on again and it is back to working. The red recording light now comes on when it is being used although it hasn't since last week when this happened last.

S

[phelme]

I'm wondering if any of you have tried, before resorting to rebooting the HD-PVR itself, uninstalling it and then letting Windows find it again on a hardware scan?

I actually had a system reboot last night, not sure why and the HD-PVR was giving me the "No Signal" treatment. I couldn't get Sage nor the TME stuff to function even though the Device Manager said it was fine. This is a bit frightening to me as the PC did an *entire* reboot and obviously something about the HD-PVR or the USB bus wasn't happy. Instead of reaching for the power switch on the HD-PVR, I uninstalled the device from the Device Mgr and then reinstalled via a hardware scan. It worked fine after that. This makes me think Hauppauge has driver issues in addition to overheating problems.

[sorrowstyr]

I'm wondering if any of you have tried, before resorting to rebooting the HD-PVR itself, uninstalling it and then letting Windows find it again on a hardware scan?

I will have to try that, but here is why I think mine is overheating, other than it is hot to touch.

The pass through connection losses audio signal, and I cant hear anything on the TV through it. After a reboot the pass through audio works like normal.

Wacky huh ? RMA-ing through hauppauge soon hopefully.

[HelenWeathers]

I ended up installing Sage on my vista pc as well as my xp pc after determining that both my HDPVRs worked for 8hrs recording straight with arcsoft capture. With one HDPVR on each computer, both worked all day today recording, switching channels etc. AND SAGE TRIGGERED THE RECORD LIGHT on each of the units on each pc. That got me thinking. When the record light triggers you can feel the box vibrating slightly. The vibration stops when the light goes off. It's the cooling fan I believe on the C2 units. You can try this yourselves and see if I'm barking up the wrong tree. MY POINT IS, that when I put both units back on one computer and a recording is triggered by sage I don't feel the vibration and the record light doesn't come on. If any one with two HDPVRs on one computer tries this out, I'd like to know your results. I think that on my system with 2 HD PVRs, when sage starts recording the fan in the PVR doesn't come on and that's when I get the overheating and subsequent black screen/no signal.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

when I put both units back on one computer and a recording is triggered by sage I don't feel the vibration and the record light doesn't come on.

I have 2 units and when they are working, the recording light comes on & the fan starts. I could easily tell this when I had the covers off a couple weeks ago. If the recording light doesn't come on & the fan doesn't start, that's pretty much the definition of a locked HD-PVR.

The question is: when you recorded using 1 in SageTV, did you have a problem? And, when recording using the other software, was there a problem using multiple units (if it could do that) and were recordings starting/stopping or was it one long continuous recording. I'll post more in a few minutes...

- Andy

[Opus4]

In order to get more information about people's results using the HD-PVR, I have added a poll to this topic.

Please let us know your experiences with the HD-PVR.

I'm especially interested in whether there are problems when using a single unit, and when multiple units are in use, whether it is always the same unit or the unit that locks varies.

Thanks for the responses.

- Andy

[Fluffdaddy]

Using 1 HD-PVR received week two of release, never a locked up and never missed a recording.

[sleonard]

Since I am now relying upon the 3 HD-PVR's I don't have much time to troubleshoot. Also, the lockups are fairly rare and I might not be around or watching what is happening in Sage so this is pretty hard to narrow down a cause. Nevertheless, I now suspect an issue with the S3 sleep state and these devices coming back fully after waking the server. I have disabled all power management and will watch to see if it keeps happening.

To be clear, I no longer have the classic overheat lockup. What happens is I get a black screen and "No Signal" in Sage, the red recording light stops coming on during recordings, and I have to power cycle the offending device using its power button before it starts working properly. It happened yesterday on #3 and I had noticed earlier that my server had stuck going into S3.

S

[HelenWeathers]

"The question is: when you recorded using 1 in SageTV, did you have a problem? And, when recording using the other software, was there a problem using multiple units (if it could do that) and were recordings starting/stopping or was it one long continuous recording."?....

I did 8hrs of half hour and full hour recordings mixed to total the eight hours. I was using the Haup bundled software for these recordings so couldn't run the two units at the same time... I just wanted to be sure the hardware was working for extended periods of time...

With Sage and one unit, I can also record for long periods of time, but if I add the second unit to the mix everything goes to pot.

ALSO, after my cpu comes out of standby (even with only one unit) the unit hangs and I get the black screen.

I am beginning to think it is a driver problem. Hope this gets worked out.

[Opus4]

Thanks for the votes & responses so far.

BTW: I don't put my PC into any sleep state. Usually, I get a lock up in the middle of a recording. I'm not sure whether I've ever had the lock start right at the beginning of a recording.

I'm half tempted to disconnect 1 unit & try that for a while, but someone voted that they have a single unit & it locks and I beleie people at the start of this thread said that too.

- Andy