HD-PVR lock-up roll call

[Cooper]

I had to recently RMA a D2 as it died. I received my new unit the other day and it was an E1.

I also updated to the new drives last night dated 11/21 and so far no issues what so ever. I will be running it a lot this weekend and hope to not get the No Signal any longer and have to recycle.

[OldPCGUY]

Originally Posted by Cooper

I had to recently RMA a D2 as it died. I received my new unit the other day and it was an E1.

I also updated to the new drives last night dated 11/21 and so far no issues what so ever. I will be running it a lot this weekend and hope to not get the No Signal any longer and have to recycle.

I had REV D1 and it had a bad 5.1 Audio that sounded like jitter or under the water (as some else described). The REV D1 would lockup maybe once every week. Sage lockup was more of an issue.

I worked with Hauppauge and they told me that I needed a hardware update that would fix the problem. They issued me an RMA.

I received E1 on Friday and tried it with REV 1.1 Drivers. The sound was great and I recorded a movie from a Dish VIP611. The movie and the audio was fine but I had to delay the Audio by 700ms in Sage to sync them up.

Then I noticed that the HD-PVR was locking up (crashing?) whenever I changed the channel.

The VIP611 has three digital audio settings:
A) SPDIF/PCM (5.1 or 2.0 Audio) It sends out the source
B) SPDIF only (5.1 Convert 2.0 audio to 5.1)
C) PCM (2.0 convert 5.1 to 2.0)


Setting to C) fixed the problem but that locks me into 2.0 audio. I already had this working with REV D1.

I need to try the new drivers tonight and see what happens. I will let you guys and gals know in about 2 hours.

[OldPCGUY]

I updated the drivers and now I am getting 5.1 with channel changes and no lockup. So this is great news and now for the first overnight test.

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

I updated the drivers and now I am getting 5.1 with channel changes and no lockup. So this is great news and now for the first overnight test.

How is the test going? I currently have a C2 and D1 that lock up on me. I sent in a C1 for repair and it came back with a C3 sticker over the C1. It hasn't locked up for the week I've had it. If E1 is solid I'm tempted to try and get Hauppauge to replace my C2 & D1.

-Jeremy

[Chriscic]

My D2 locks up at least once or twice a week. Very frustrating... this is my third unit as I started with C1 then C2.

I just got a second HD-PVR (don't ask me why), also a D2. Before going to two units at the same time I'm going to swap out and see if I get any lockups with the new D2.

My guess is that revision E1 exists for a reason.

[valnar]

I don't have a HD PVR yet (looking to get one), but it might be nice to re-do the poll in a new thread and only ask owners of the latest E1 firmware boxes if their experience is better. The current poll has been skewed with all versions of firmware and drivers.

Just a thought...

[Chriscic]

I don't think E1 is just firmware... it's a hardware revision.

I doubt there are many E1's out there. I just got a new unit from Dell and it's D2.

[valnar]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

I don't think E1 is just firmware... it's a hardware revision.

Ah yes, that is what I meant. Fingers got ahead of the brain. Thanks.

[SWKerr]

I added a D2 recently and had issues until I downgraded the driver to an older version. It has been running now for 8 days without a reset.

From an earlier post:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37571


I got an HD-PVR hooked up to a DirecTV H20 fairly early on and really never had it lock up on me. It has run flawlessly since the beginning. I had some difficultly getting playback setup but the recording has always been solid. At some point I upgraded to the (1.1/1.0.5.1) driver.

I recently added a second HD-PVR as a network encoder to a second machine upstairs using another DirecTV H20. This is a D2 version and I downloaded the latest drivers from Hauppauge for the setup. The install went fairly clean but it did seem to lock up about every day and required me to reset the device. (Did not have to unplug it just used the front power button.) I never noticed that it died during a recording just stopped responding at some point.

After a few days of this I downgraded the driver to the one that was working on the one downstairs (1.1/1.0.5.1). So far it has been running for 4 days without a reset. Hope it lasts.

I am using XP MCE on service pack 3 for both the server and the network encoder machine. It is the latest non beta release of SageTV and both have SageMC on them. The main server is Intel Core Duo while the problem machine is an AMD X2.

[jerryt]

Shall we do a poll of processor type and lock-ups?

Intel dual core = zero lock ups.

[Chriscic]

I'm skeptical that the lockups have anything to do with something other than the HD-PVR itself. All you have to do to "revive" it is to turn it off and then back on. My original unit exhibited the same behavior but would stop responding after about 30 second; my third unit goes a day or several between, but does the exact same thing.

[hanki]

I have one HD PVR, A pvr 500 Card, and a Win tv card. Ireinstalled everything from scratch, starting with the HD PVR, and I lock up consistently about 1.5 hours in.

[pawn]

So is this thread still relevant? After getting my HD-PVR running yesterday (E1 unit, latest drivers) I haven't been able to go an hour without a lockup. I doubt very seriously it has anything to do with Sage since even the Arcsoft TME preview window craps out after a half hour (with a popup saying he unit has been disconnected), always fixed by powering off and on the hd-pvr.

After hours of reading these forums and other sources, there seems to be numerous fixes suggested, leaving me a little overwhelmed with troubleshooting. That said, one of the first things I've tried is disconnecting the SPDIF and using analog cables for sound and I've had the preview going for about an hour now without a lockup. Time will tell.

Edit:

Yup, using analog cables instead of the SPDIF cable has definitely made a big difference for me. A few hours of watching live shows, channels changes, one show spilling into another without issues. I fully expect there wil still be hiccups (might as well expect the worst), but so far so good. I can live without digital sound for TV for now, but clearly this is an issue Hauppauge is going to have to put far more effort into. I can't believe the hoops I've had to jump through to get this thing (mostly) working.

Further edit:

Nope, still a lot of problems. Honestly, I've never bought anything as undependable and buggy as the hd-pvr. And it happens to be the only available solution. No idea what to try next, but I'll keep trying different conifigurations. I'm in too deep to give up at this point.

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by valnar

I don't have a HD PVR yet (looking to get one), but it might be nice to re-do the poll in a new thread and only ask owners of the latest E1 firmware boxes if their experience is better. The current poll has been skewed with all versions of firmware and drivers.

Just a thought...

I have an E1 unit with a Motorolla DCT6200 connected via component and spidif.

I can't trust the unit and I am so glad I still have my SD STB's with my reliable Theater 550 cards. Those units never miss a recording.

THe HDPVR locks up frequently and often will not work if I reboot the system unless I shut down Sage, Power Cycle the device and then start Sage again.

I have to lock my STB output at 720p or the HDPVR will lock up.

I'm seriously considering contacting Hauppage about an RMA because everything I read on these forums tends to indicate that the E1 is pretty reliable and I'm wondering if I just got a bad one in the batch, but until there is an E2 or an F whatever I don't that I will actually get anything better back and I don't know if it will actually be worth the hassel.

I would be very interested to see a poll of E1 users and for those who have it working successfully to know if they are using VMR9 or Overlay, 5.1 or 2.0 audio, what resolution they record, and which audio/video codecs they have Sage configured to use.

-Striker-

[bmh]

My HD-PVR has been running now for 3 days without a single problem (with 5.1 dolby). I had RMA'ed a D1 and recieved an E1 last week. After hooking up the new unit, it was still locking up frequently. I did 2 things that seemed to have fixed the lock-ups. First, I installed the latest SageTV beta v6.5.5. Second, I reinstalled the drivers for the HD-PVR by first installing the 1.1 drivers then the latest 1.053 drivers overtop of them.

[Ender]

I have has an HD-PVR now for about two months. With my default hardware setup, I never seem to get a lock up. That being said, for Christmas my sister decided I needed a new video card. So I replaced my 3650, with a Powercolor 4650. After that, I had so many issues, it was unbearable. The HD-PVR would lock up, the Video drivers would stop responding, and H.264 material would stutter badly.

I have put the old card back in cleared out all the old ATI drivers with driver cleaner as usual, now all is well again.

I just wish I could use the 5.1 optical in, and still use the remote.

So I am wondering how many lock up issues are not HD-PVR related, but something else all together.

[PADude1]

I have one of the first C1 units. From day 1 it ran hot and locked up. After a few months of this, I placed a 120mm fan outside the case blowing on it. That seemed to help a bit, but in September I opened the case up and drilled holes in the lid. Now with the unit sitting horizontal (normal position), I can actually record for a time without any lockups, but I would now like to RMA the unit to get a newer revision, after reading about the various problems here. Will they reject my return because my unit has the air holes drilled in the top? If yes, should I just try to unload that C1 on eBay and buy a newer one?

Thanks!

[gplasky]

I doubt if they're going to take back any unit modifed but especially with holes drilled in it. But-hey-it wouldn't hurt to ask.

Gerry.

[TorontoSage]

There haven't been any updates to this forum in almost a month. I am a newbie an am just about to buy an HTPC (with an Intel i7-920, one of the latest quad core cpu's they've released), 3 HD-PVRs and 5 HD200s as I want to be able to record 2 programs while watching and pausing a third program. My SA8300HD DVR cable box only lets me record 2 programs at once or record 1 and watch 1 and sometimes I want more.

But, after reading all his I am wondering if I am going to have a problem with only running one HD-PVR. An OTA tuner is an option for some channels, but not for specialty HD cable channels. Also, I am in Toronto, Canada, so a QAM tuner is not an option as they are scrambled.

So, any updates to HD-PVR locking issue?

[pawn]

Not sure what update you're looking for exactly. It seems to be hit and miss for some people. There have been many claims if you search around that most people have no trouble at all, and all we see is the people having trouble posting here.

I can tell you that after quite a bit of frustration, I found a stable setup by putting both of my hd-pvr units (both revision E1) on a new PC I had recently built and they work fine. Placing one or both on two other computers I have (one of them my Sage server) resulted in routine freeze-ups. I have no idea what the magic combination is, but what I have now is what I would call dependable. About the only problem I have now is playback: whenever I fast forward or rewind an HD h264 file, the playback becomes jerky until I do a quick pause/play. I doubt that has anything to do with the hd-pvr though.