PVR350 & Sage = Crash

[MonsterMaxx]

This is now the third machine I've built to do this PVR stuff.
I've yet to have any success at all.

For quite a while I gave up completely. Use the lil machine to play DVDs I've been ripping to my server - got quite a collection now, over 200!

Machine works great, though the vid is not fantastic.
Playback is via PowerDVD5, system is an nVidia chipset w/ dual VGA output which I feed into a converter box.

Been doing that for a couple months.

Decided to revive the pvr350 which has been sitting all this time and see if I can get the S-Vid out on it to work and maybe just maybe even get this pvr stuff working.

Sadly, tonight I think I'm giving up again.

A brief try w/ the hauppauge software leaves me thinking that they really put no effort into it.
A short stay with the 'other stuff' lead to an uninstall.

Now on Sage and not having much better luck. It plays for a bit, then locks up. Can't get audio out w/ pvr->tv working. If I change the channel it hard lock pvr and I can't even kill it with task manager.

I do have to wonder if perhaps Hap had a bad run of these cards or something since many of you seem pleased with this technology. I on the other hand find it to be in it's infancy, perhaps even pre-born.


Thinking about chucking the pvr in the garbage, getting an ATI AIW96 and calling it good enough, screw this TV nonsense.

Convince me why I should keep wasting my time on this project...

[MonsterMaxx]

Oh, before you ask...


BioStar SFF w/ nForce2 chipset, GeForce 4 MX vid.
AMD1900, 1gb of ram

WinXP, all the latest patches & drivers

System will run PowDVD5 all day long, one movie after another, while ripping a DVD to the server.

System is tested stabile and solid, no problems, no overclock.

[mlbdude]

Verify that you have the latest Hauppauge drivers loaded and that the 350 is running on its own IRQ.

[MonsterMaxx]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Verify that you have the latest Hauppauge drivers loaded

check, got that

Originally posted by mlbdude
and that the 350 is running on its own IRQ.

pretty much impossible in XP, there is a boatload of them open, but it's got several items on 16, as usual, not allowing changes - {Bill's so smart}

[mlbdude]

Your MB is still assigning it an IRQ. Have you tried different PCI slots?

Check the forums. Guess you can't get into the Beta forums, but it definitely looks like the 350 is not stable with some MB/Chip-Set combo's. People are having it work completely or not at all.

Do you have a cheap video card you can use for video out? You could use that to test if it is the 350's TV out that is causing the lockups (probably is).

[MonsterMaxx]

It's an SFF, only has one slot.
nForce2 chipset, latest drivers

Checked in Bios, no control for assigning IRQ->slot. Even if it was, I've had spotty luck doing this in the past anyway. Mainly due to having to disable ACPI in order to get it to work at all.

[TunaBoo]

irqs share pretty well in XP....

[MonsterMaxx]

is XP

This perhaps is problem. That or card defective?

When you change channels using Happ's app, do you get a static/audioglitch or is it a smooth channel change like if you were using the TV by itself?

It's sharing w/ the GeForce4 MC integrated GPU and the Sata Raid controller (not in use.)

Going hunting for a way to push it off onto it's own...

[mlbdude]

Since this is Sage 1.4, have you tried it with software decoding enabled and disabled?

[MonsterMaxx]

Originally posted by mlbdude
Since this is Sage 1.4, have you tried it with software decoding enabled and disabled?

yes, w/ disabled I lose the audio

I can get it to do live TV on the TV, but so far, no AVIs have played - get only a test pattern on the TV, I do get the soft on PC, but no output to TV

Machine has successfully played these w/ PowerDVD5 so I'm quite sure the codexs are installed...they were encoded w/ divx5

VOBs appear to be completely unsupported.

[MonsterMaxx]

Oh shoot, I just thought of something...the 350 is a mpeg decoder...does that mean that it will not play anything else? VOBs, AVIs, etc.
Is the hardware file format specific?

Are all the s-vid output cards this way?
Have I totally wasted my time?

[mlbdude]

I own one and don't use it because of this. I went to three 250's because I was tired of switching between my 350 SVideo and my regular video cards SVideo to watch DVD's or DivX.

The 350 could probably do VOB's as long as the decryption is removed.

The XCard does a little more but also has other limitations.