Query to all Hauppauge PVR-350 users

[Sheldon]

Greetings.

Frey markets their SageTV + WinTV-PVR-350 Bundle at

http://store.freytechnologies.com/Me...tegory_Code=SB

In the description of the bundle, they make the following claim:

"The on board MPEG decoder will also display the On-screen Display and User Interface of SageTV."

My question is this: Is there anyone out there who has gotten the Sage menus to be successfully outputted through the PVR-350 TV-OUT without hanging the TV-OUT? This is currently unsupported on the PVR-350, is it not?

Just curious, thanks.

-Sheldon

[ckron]

I know that Mike Janer has had success in this dept and I have had success when using a MB with certain chipset. There are numerous threads discussing which chipsets worked and which ones didn't. I have had success with 440BX, 815, and now the ATI 9100 like Mike has. I had no success with 845 and 865 chipsets.

[PeteL]

I currently do (successfully) with an old PII 400 Mhz system (Intel BX440 mobo)...

A minor issue every few days causes a lockup, but other than that my family is pretty happy with the system.

[zz5]

There's the thread that Mike Janer started where he seemed to get his to work by cooling the 350. Later, though, he had some lockups I believe, so I wouldn't call that a success. He had in running a few hours without lockups, and it seemed to fixed, but since he had lockups later also, I would think maybe the motherboard chipset or something else was overheating. Motherboard chipsets do overheat a lot.

Virtually everyone reports lockups with the 350 output. Probably most of the people who don't just don't consider lockups to be a problem. I've seen posts by people who report that there 350 is 100% stable, but then, when asked, they say that have lockups... Well, isn't that pretty much the ultimate unstabililty?

There's an interesting thread started recently by Hector. It's the best one I've see yet on possibly finding the problem. He's been running his system without lockups for 2 weeks after putting a fan directly on the 350. I would do some searches for posts by Hector to see what happens, if he ever gets any more lockups.

[pcuoco]

I'm running it successfully with a 440bx and a PIII 650 processor. I get the occaissional lockup like everyone else. I'm installing a new fan this weekend to see if it helps.

[Crashless]

My system rarely/never gets FF/REW crashes anymore - I can't remember the last time it did.

I do still get an end-of-file crash occasionally though. Apparently, simply turning off Hardware only gets rid of this though. I have not confirmed this myself though, as I see that as defeating the purpose of using the 350 in the first place.

I have an Asus a7n8x-e deluxe, 2600+, and a slot cooler that exhausts directly out the back of the case right on the 350. Case temps are around 36C on average. It's an antec overture. Can't remember the driver revs off hand, but they're pretty recent, and I'm running windows 2k. Sage 2.1.(final can't remember), usbuirt, NOT RUNNING SAGE as service.

[Sheldon]

Originally Posted by zz5

There's the thread that Mike Janer started where he seemed to get his to work by cooling the 350. Later, though, he had some lockups I believe, so I wouldn't call that a success. He had in running a few hours without lockups, and it seemed to fixed, but since he had lockups later also, I would think maybe the motherboard chipset or something else was overheating. Motherboard chipsets do overheat a lot.

Hey, now that's interesting! I have a MB with a newer Intel chipset. (I'm about as contraindicated for the PVR-350 as you can get. ) I have a monitor that came with the MB that constantly reads overtemps in a certain region of the MB! Very interesting ... I should pick up a fan and see if I can mitigate the problem at all. Thanks, zz5.

Originally Posted by zz5

Virtually everyone reports lockups with the 350 output. Probably most of the people who don't just don't consider lockups to be a problem. I've seen posts by people who report that there 350 is 100% stable, but then, when asked, they say that have lockups... Well, isn't that pretty much the ultimate unstabililty?

I pause before FF/REW, and I don't often lock up there. I have tons of other issues (missed recordings, recordings being deleted very early while others stick around for months, etc.) that frankly make me regret my SageTV purchase, but that's another story.

Thanks again for the great information.

-Sheldon

[Sheldon]

Thanks to everyone for the great replies.

Hauppauge has new PVR-350 drivers on their website:

Name: PVR250_22_22292.exe
Size: 2100K
Updated: Oct. 18, 2004

Anybody try these?

-Sheldon

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Sheldon

I have tons of other issues (missed recordings, recordings being deleted very early while others stick around for months, etc.)

Could you say what kinds of problems you are experiencing (or perhaps mention it in the "SageTV Software" forum)? My system doesn't miss any recordings. There are a few things you should be aware of, including:

1. SageTV schedules recordings to fit as many favorites into the schedule as possible, meaning it may not record the first airing of a show if it will be aired again later & there is another show to record during the first airing.
   
   
2. See Appendix C (p. 187) in the v2.1 manual found in your SageTV directory for info on how SageTV decides which recording to delete in order to make room for new recordings.
   
   
3. Make sure that SageTV is only sleeping & not exited when you finish watching anything. Nothing can record if the program isn't running. (If you are using the service in v2.1, then it doesn't matter if the UI is running or not.)

- Andy

[Sheldon]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Could you say what kinds of problems you are experiencing (or perhaps mention it in the "SageTV Software" forum)? My system doesn't miss any recordings. There are a few things you should be aware of, including:[list=1][*]SageTV schedules recordings to fit as many favorites into the schedule as possible, meaning it may not record the first airing of a show if it will be aired again later & there is another show to record during the first airing.

Hi, Andy. I haven't read your comments yet (thank you for those), but let me paste in an email or two I sent to Frey customer support:

This one was sent 10/25/04:
Hello.

I like ER. It’s the only dramatic series I watch.

Since I’ve owned Sage 2.0, I have not yet seen an episode of ER. There have been three episodes since the start of the new season, and I’ve missed every one: either Sage messed up the recording, or it deleted it before I had a chance to watch it.

On the night of the season premier, I discovered that Sage had hung during playback or record (I can’t remember which) of a show that was on before ER. Consequently, ER was never recorded.

Two Thursdays ago, the recording occurred properly, but Sage deleted the show before I had a chance to watch it. Now, tonight, Sunday, I see that this past Thursday’s episode, just 3 days earlier, has been deleted. Mind you, there are still *many* other non-ER shows that are still available, one of which is dated 9/9.

Why does Sage delete ER so quickly while other shows – even shows recorded with Intelligent Recording – are allowed to sit on my hard drive for weeks?

Does Sage have something against ER? Is it because George Clooney left? What about Anthony Edwards?

Thank you,

-Sheldon

Here's one I sent the very next day, after George responded to my previous email, and described Sage as "solid." This one indicates some of the many problems I've had with Sage:

George, have you ever heard of AVG Anti-Virus? It’s by a company called Grisoft. I have the freebie version. It’s amazing. It updates virus definitions automatically, and every few months or so it downloads program updates. Everything is transparent to me; I never know it’s happening. The program has detected and eradicated several viruses and worms in email attachments and downloaded programs. The program is rock-stable: not once has it crashed, malfunctioned, or had even the slightest hiccup. Did I mention that this software is completely free?

Why do I have to pause playback in order to rewind and fast forward without the application hanging? (And sometimes it hangs anyway.) Why does Sage occasionally lose the .properties file and force me to go through the guided setup again? (I have long since learned to backup my .properties file so I don’t have to repeat guided setup every time this happens.)? Why does the properties file fill up with /0000/0000/0000/0000 sequence? Why do I have to hold my breath every time I choose a live or pre-recorded program, wondering whether it’s going to start, or whether I’m going to have to restart Sage, or reboot my system? Why do I have to configure the software to not output menus to TV-OUT on the Hauppauge card?

Sage is simply the lowest quality production software I have ever used by a long shot. This includes many shareware and freeware programs I have downloaded. Granted, most probably don’t have the complexity of Sage, but many were extremely sophisticated and feature rich.

I understand that many of the problems I experience may have to do with the Hauppauge PVR-350 card I had the misfortune of purchasing, but your product was bundled with the Hauppauge card. To the consumer, it’s a seamless solution: the solution is mediocre. Even the documentation is bad.

Sorry to sound harsh, but I’m just really, really sorry I bought the Sage/PVR-350 bundle. I paid full retail, and received below-acceptable quality.

If you are able to address some of the questions I raised in this email, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

-Sheldon

Does anyone else have problems like these??? A lot of people seem really happy with the product; I wish I was one of them.

Here's another email I sent just a few days ago:

Hi, George.

Please have a look at the following four screens. Note that screen 1 has four Fit Cuisine episodes all well over a month old, one of which is marked as watched; screen 2 show shows a favorite I’ve had set up for months, for Phantom Gourmet; screen 3 shows that an episode of Phantom Gourmet was scheduled for 11AM this morning; screen 4 shows my Fit Cuisine favorite, and that it’s set to autodelete.

Last two data points: There are approximately 4GB available on the drive I’m using to store shows, and my recording quality is set to “Great.”

Phantom Gourmet was never recorded. Before you tell me it was a drive space issue, the ancient Fit Cuisine episodes could have been deleted. (Unwatched ER episodes get deleted after 3 days, but a watched episode of Fit Cuisine never gets deleted???) There are also many other month-old recordings of different shows that could be deleted.

Oh, by the way, this is with the 2.1 beta. (But I’ve observed that 2.0 exhibited similar behavior.)

Why didn’t “solid” Sage record Phantom Gourmet? Why? This is not a hardware issue on my system; this is not an issue with Hauppauge. This is all Sage.

Why don’t those old episodes get deleted? Why wasn’t a scheduled episode recorded?

This is absolutely ridiculous

I might have come across as harsh. If you knew me in person, you'd know I'm not generally like that. However, I am really, really frustrated with this product. I just can't imagine why I seem to have all these problems, when other people do not. My system is brand new, as of August ... I don't know, maybe it's a lemon.

-Sheldon
Intel D865GLCL MB; Intel P4-2.8GHz with 1MB cache; Western Digital 250G SATA 7200RPM HD; ATI Radeon 9600 XT; Antec Overture Piano case; ATP 512MB (256MBx2) PC3200 DDR400 RAM; SB Audigy ZS; Sony DVD+/-RW

[Opus4]

1. Where are you located? In the US or somewhere else where you have to use XMLTV? I noticed comments from a couple people recently who were using 2.0... when the XMLTV data changed a show's data from First Run to Rerun, the show no longer 'qualified' for the First Run-only favorite & got deleted since it was no longer a fav. (v2.1 doesn't auto-delete recordings that lose fav status.)
   
   
2. I would say that the lock up and thus missed recordings due to SageTV not running correctly any more are probably due to the 350. I don't know if it is that card or its drivers, but that thing just doesn't seem stable on lots of systems.
   
   
3. What screen did you look at to see that Phantom Gourmet was set to record? Was it listed on the Scheduled Recordings screen, or did it simply have a white border on the LiveTV Guide? There are so many variables that could come into play here as to why the show wasn't recorded that it would be hard to list them all, including having it recorded but due to hardware problems causing the recording to be corrupted & then deleted... this could very well be a hardware issue: the 350. Was someone else watching live Tv & thus prevented the recording? Was that episode previously watched? Have you got your SageTV Recordings screen filtered to show only favs or manual recordings? Shows that lose their fav status wouldn't show up, but would still be on disk -- are any of these files on disk? And so on...

So... I'm not saying that those are _definitely_ your issues (well, the 350 could be a near definite), just that there are a lot of causes for seemingly strange behavior.

- Andy

[Sheldon]

Jesus, Andy, you read fast!

Originally Posted by Opus4

[list=1][*]Where are you located? In the US or somewhere else where you have to use XMLTV?

I am in the US -- Massachusetts.

Originally Posted by Opus4

[*]I would say that the lock up and thus missed recordings due to SageTV not running correctly any more are probably due to the 350. I don't know if it is that card or its drivers, but that thing just doesn't seem stable on lots of systems.

I think your assessment is correct: that issue was probably due to the 350.

Originally Posted by Opus4

[*]What screen did you look at to see that Phantom Gourmet was set to record? Was it listed on the Scheduled Recordings screen, or did it simply have a white border on the LiveTV Guide?

Hmm ... well, I don't know ... I have it set as a favorite, so I simply assumed that it would be recorded; it's been recorded every other time it's aired without a problem. There wasn't any conflict indicated that would have caused it not to be recorded ... but admittedly, I didn't look in the Scheduled Recordings list to see that it was explicitly set to record. I'll make sure to do that this weekend when it's set to record again.

Originally Posted by Opus4

There are so many variables that could come into play here as to why the show wasn't recorded that it would be hard to list them all, including having it recorded but due to hardware problems causing the recording to be corrupted & then deleted... this could very well be a hardware issue: the 350.

OK ... interesting. Andy, are you affiliated with Frey? You've provided me with more information in a few paragraphs than Frey support has in months (something that does little to repair my damaged perception of Frey).

Originally Posted by Opus4

Was someone else watching live Tv & thus prevented the recording?

Definitely not; I live alone.

Originally Posted by Opus4

Was that episode previously watched?

Definitely not, that episode had never been recorded by Frey. Even if it was, my favorite is set to record first-runs and repeats.

Originally Posted by Opus4

Have you got your SageTV Recordings screen filtered to show only favs or manual recordings? Shows that lose their fav status wouldn't show up, but would still be on disk -- are any of these files on disk? And so on...

OK ... that's something to check!

Thank you, Andy!

-Sheldon

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by Sheldon

Hmm ... well, I don't know ... I have it set as a favorite, so I simply assumed that it would be recorded; it's been recorded every other time it's aired without a problem. There wasn't any conflict indicated that would have caused it not to be recorded ... but admittedly, I didn't look in the Scheduled Recordings list to see that it was explicitly set to record. I'll make sure to do that this weekend when it's set to record again.

In the Live TV Guide, _every_ airing of a favorite is outlined with a white border. But, that does not mean that they will all record. If an episode is aired 3 times, the scheduler will choose to record one of them, as it determines the schedule that catches the most favs. (I commented on that in my first reply above.)

OK ... interesting. Andy, are you affiliated with Frey?

In the sense that I wrote the 2.0 & 2.1 manuals and am a moderator on the forum. I and this forum are not official tech support, though; thus the comment in my sig lines.

Definitely not, that episode had never been recorded by Frey. Even if it was, my favorite is set to record first-runs and repeats.

Telling the fav to record reruns will not force it to re-record an already watched episode or one that already exists in your list of SageTV Recordings.

BTW: I don't know if the EPG info for those ER shows would change. If something gets recorded and you KNOW it is listed in the SageTV Recordings screen & then disappears, be sure to scroll back in time in the LiveTV Guide to see if its listing has changed, see if it is still on the drive, and make sure it isn't the lowest fav in the fav list. You can change the priority of favs -- see the manual for how to do so. (ok, ok: p 58). And, I think you said you checked this, but make sure the other favs are set for auto delete, as manual delete favs & Manual Recordings are never supposed to be auto-deleted by SageTV. That's about all I can think of at the moment.

- Andy

[Crashless]

Though this thread lost a little focus, I'd like to pose a question to Sheldon: What are your Preview settings? In 2.0 I found that with that enabled, if I didn't put sage to sleep correctly, it would set all it's recordings as watched, which would give it the go-ahead to delete it before I really got to watch it. This has since been fixed by a couple of things - 1. the 350 now works properly with Sage sleeping 2. I got a harmony remote that prevents users from not putting sage to sleep.

A small tip, for my MUST SEE favorites, I always set them to manual delete only in their preferences. This assures me that Sage won't be deleting them before I want it too. I recommend you use this for ER.

For all shows that I know I want to watch after it airs the first time, I set it to manual record. This removes all doubt and makes Sage record that no matter what it's internal logic thinks is best. I use this for sports, premieres, and sometimes movies. Remember "You're In Control"

[SFX Group]

A few questions....

I have a PAL-I (50Hz) PVR 350 cards, seems like the output from SAGE is still 60Hz (description does say 60Hz only), can someone confirm this?

Why on earth would the CHIPSET have anythign to do with a BUS on a PCI board???? Surely this is abit of a getout for bad programming????

Unless anyone can prove me wrong???? (and would like them to as well).

What firware is on the card of the one SAGE sells???

Ashley

[dgeffs]

I got so fed up with the OSD/350 and Sage I simply switched to TVedia and all my quality problems went away. The Xcard is superb for output to larger TV's and as soon as Sage supports this card (w/OSD) I'll switch back. TVedia isn't as full featured as SageTV in the PVR arena but its quality output and the ability to play virtually everything through the Xcard is hard to overlook. It uses XMLTV which is a royal pain. Sage is way ahead in user interface and several other areas. If the OSD/350 worked realiably with Sage I probably would not have switched. As it is I have a mediocre PVR that has great output, never locks up, never misses a recording and none of the issues associated with using normal graphics cards.

Dale

[jchiso]

The Sage menus and TV-out have worked flawlessly for me on a VIA EPIA 800MHz system.

[dgeffs]

Originally Posted by jchiso

The Sage menus and TV-out have worked flawlessly for me on a VIA EPIA 800MHz system.

I guess you are one of the lucky ones. I built mine using an old PIII 933MHZ with a VIA chipset and had nothing but problems no matter what I tried. I even disabled the 350 TV out and tried to get it to work with an ATI 9600XT graphics card. The signal didn't look too bad but it stuttered constantly. I changed every conceivable setting and still had no luck.

I still prefer SageTV but it is unusable on my system. I can only hope that Sage will overcome the 350 issues which most people seem to have or support the Xcard. Either card produces a great output. I wonder if MCE2005 supports the 350 TVout or the Xcard?

Dale

[mlbdude]

MCE2005 does not support any kind of hardware output. They are moving into the HDTV world faster than Sage so putting dev time into something used for SDTV's would be pointless for MS.

[Hector]

I just want to reiterate to anyone having problems with your pvr-350 locking up (esp when FF/REW) just put a fan of some sort on it (I started with an 12" desk fan to prove the point) if for no other reason than its by far the easiest thing to try. Ignore the fact your case, motherboard and cpu temps are all fine and that you generally believe that your box just couldn't have a heat issue because I thought all of these things for months. So sure was I that I bought a new motherboard/cpu, extra memory, installed every driver everyone said would work and still had lockups.

So far now I have gone from several OSD lockups a day pretty much never. I still get the 'end of file' bug so to that end the 350 is still somewhat problematic but in these type of user cobbled together advanced and disparate systems it's always seems to be something.

Basically what I have found is that with the OSD enabled FF/REW stresses the system far more than one would think. More details in this thread http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=8302. To be clear credit goes to mikejaner for first identifying the heat issue. Based on his realization I was able to find that the transport controls stressed my system to the point it would overheat and the card would crash.

So if you're having problems with it then forget what you know about your case, mb and cpu temps. Be sure your system has been running long enough to be up to normal temps then open your case and play some high quality video for awhile then start FF/REW as much as you can for a minute or so (for extra fun watch the task manager). Then carefully approach the chip on the pvr-350 with the heat sink on it and you'll likely find it surprisingly hot.

To me the 350 is well worth the minor issues I have now because hardware decoding is FAR and away a superior output.

peace . . .