I want to buy it but i'm concerned.

[commo]

Hello,
I need a little assurance that the problems the 250btv users are having are being worked on and will be fixed with the next release or update. (i.e. green line, contrast, can't find channel)

I'd hate to drop $180 bucks on a buggy package.

Thanks,

commo

[aurigus0]

I haven't had any problems with my PVR250. Most of the problems that you see come from the driver package for the 250 but if you use the right ones you are gold.

Also there are a ton of 250 users here if you ever need help!

[omnihilo]

Well, I'll weigh in here. It's a crap shoot, to be honest. You might get lucky and have everything work like it's supposed to out of the box with minimal amount of fiddling. Then again, you could be me, and run into all kinds of fun problems that end up going unsolved. Don't buy this if you're not willing to put in at least a few hours to make things work (not counting the original setup which doesn't take too long).

[commo]

I haven't had any problems with my PVR250. Most of the problems that you see come from the driver package for the 250 but if you use the right ones you are gold.

Also there are a ton of 250 users here if you ever need help!
which version of the card are you using? the retail 250 or the 250btv?

[aurigus0]

Retail version...

[commo]

Retail version...
The problems I'm referring to seem to come from the bundled 250btv version that was manufactured for windows media center pc's.

I still haven't heard from a Snapstream employee yet that they are working on solving these issues?

[ske1eter]

IMO, I'd buy the retail package kit of the 250 and not the 250BTV package. Sure, it's $40 more but then again you get a remote, editing software and a card that is supported by other software out there.

[omnihilo]

Hmm...the bundle came with a remote, not sure if it's a good one but it seems to work okay (it's the silver happauge one, I guess?). Nonetheless, I really wish I'd known beforehand, I would have bought the retail one just to avoid the problems.

[ske1eter]

Hmm...the bundle came with a remote, not sure if it's a good one but it seems to work okay (it's the silver happauge one, I guess?). Nonetheless, I really wish I'd known beforehand, I would have bought the retail one just to avoid the problems.

Looking at the SS web page, there are two kits that come with a remote. One is a bundle with the Firefly remote and the other is the PVR-250 retail box that comes with a remote. The are both priced the same.

[kevink]

I'm curious to see what the issue/failure rate is with the 250BTV package.
How many of these packages have they sold? 1K, 5K, 10K or more?
How many have been returned?
How many users have had short term, "quick solve" issues?
How many have had long term, seemingly unresolvable issues?

From the posts I have seen there are definitely some unhappy customers with the 250BTV but what is the percentage? Impossible to tell without knowing how many have been sold but my gut instinct says the number is very small. Just a intuitive guess but its probably close to the failure/issue rate or a retail PVR250.

BTV would do the consumer a big favor stating where the issue rate is in relation to a retail PVR250 package. Won't happen but it would be nice

FYI. My 250BTV package worked flawlessly out of the box.

[cmasters]

For me it comes down to drivers and support. I want a card that works in any application that supports the hauppague 250. With the current state of drivers you can't even have more than one of those cards running in the same machine so it kills multi-tuner possibilites as well.

[Eric3a]

From what i understand you can have multiple PVRs, just that at this stage you can't mix "15s" and "16s" series.
Apparently a new driver is coming out "soon".
I use a retail PVR with absolutely no problem whatsoever. If any doubt, and you don't mind the extra money in exchange for absolute certainty, get the retail PVR?

Eric

[cmasters]

The blackbird issue is different than the 15/16 issue. Since it uses different drivers it is not dependant on those retail issues. Here is the last post I saw on this from SHS.

http://www.shspvr.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=26945&highlight=blackbird#26945

[xanderf]

I need a little assurance that the problems the 250btv users are having are being worked on and will be fixed with the next release or update. (i.e. green line, contrast, can't find channel)

Hey, so I'm NOT the only one having these problems with the 250btv tuner!

(BTW, 'retail' 250 users....seriously, please do not contribute with "mine works fine" to these threads. We KNOW yours works fine. And DON'T CARE. *OURS DOESN'T*)

The contrast problem was easy enough to fix. In the 'web admin' mode, for the video sources, I configured the brightness to be 25%. IIRC., it defaults to 50%. After rebooting, it reset the brightness to 50%, but it stayed at the 'fixed' levels of contrast. Just play with those settings a bit, seems to take care of it.

As to the 'green line'. Apparently, there is an .ini file tweak on these boards I've seen to adjust the capture image to not capture it. I haven't tried it, as, honestly, it doesn't bug me any. It's just a single row of pixels. Hell, our cable signal is so crappy in this area, I didn't even realize it wasn't part of the picture until it was pointed out!

NOW....the 'can not tune' problem! :mad: :mad: :mad: THAT pisses me off. I mean, royally, seriously, COMPLETELY pisses me off. It ALWAYS seems to happen on the shows that are 'one-ofs'. I'll come back and check the recordings for the previous day...almost 10 shows, no problem! But, like, 1 in every 10 shows it "cannot tune" and tells me maybe my cable feed is disconnected. Uhhh....NO. You tuned the last 9 just fine, stupid program! :mad: And if I try again right away, it almost always works!

VERY annoying! Too bad I bought this card thinking it wouldn't have any problems (since it was recommended by Snapstream) and now really can't afford a 250 retail. *sigh*.

Anyway, my log of the problem:
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] Requested dimensions: 720 x 480
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] MPEG-2 Video Recording bitrate: 7000000
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] MPEG-2 using 2 B-Frames and 5 P-Frames per group
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] MPEG-2 Noise Filter enabled and set to 20
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] MPEG-2 Motion Precision set to 20%
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] MPEG-2 Audio Bitrate is set to 224000
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] MPEG-2 Audio Sampling Frequency is set to 48000
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] Default FileFormat is currently: MPEG-2
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] Video capture device: Hauppauge WinTV 88x Video Capture
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] Creating card builder for 'Hauppauge WinTV 88x Video Capture'
[5/10/2004 14:19:04] Set TV format to NTSC_M.
[5/10/2004 14:19:05] Unable to set desired P Frame number. P Frame number set to 4.
[5/10/2004 14:19:05] Using "Video Tuner" crossbar input.
[5/10/2004 14:19:05] Setting country code: 1
[5/10/2004 14:19:05] Using "Video Tuner" crossbar input.
[5/10/2004 14:19:05] Using "Video Tuner" crossbar input.
[5/10/2004 14:19:06] Using "Video Tuner" crossbar input.
[5/10/2004 14:19:16] CFSLivePlayer::AddAndConfigureSource - 'm_pFileSource->Load( C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\SnapStream\Beyond TV\tsindex.dat, NULL );' failed, err = 0x80004005
[5/10/2004 14:19:16] CFSTSSourcePlayer::InitHelper - AddAndConfigureSource failed, err = 0x80004005
[5/10/2004 14:19:26] CFSLivePlayer::AddAndConfigureSource - 'm_pFileSource->Load( C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\SnapStream\Beyond TV\tsindex.dat, NULL );' failed, err = 0x80004005
[5/10/2004 14:19:26] CFSTSSourcePlayer::InitHelper - AddAndConfigureSource failed, err = 0x80004005
[5/10/2004 14:19:26] MovieWindow: Failed to initialize live TV player
[5/10/2004 14:19:28] Halting the recording engine.
[5/10/2004 14:19:28] Recording engine halted. (0)

I should add....I do tech support for a living, so I *have* tried to fix this:
* Completely uninstalled Snapstream and 250btv drivers. Deleted all folders that remained after uninstall (mostly the 'Documents and Settings\All Users' stuff).
* Moved 250btv card to a different slot. Reinstalled drivers, rebooted.
* Reinstalled Snapstream.
- No effect -

* Checked the permissions on the 'All Users' folders.
* Made sure I had admin permissions (well, yeah).
* Check the permissions on the specific file in question in the above log. All fine.
* Check for file lock - not locked, readable and writable.
- No effect -

* Updated Windows. Applied all latest service packs and patches
* Updated to latest version of BTV. Already was on it, but tried update anyway. BTV 3.4 build 1334.
* Updated DirectX (already on DX9, just reapplied)
* Updated to latest video card, sound card, motherboard drivers
- No effect -

* Changed MPEG2 record quality (several attempts)
* Changed MPEG2 interpolative frames per group
* Changed MPEG2 predictive frames per group
* Enable and disabled and played with Video Noise-Reduction filter (and level)
* Tinkered with motion precision
- Minimal effect -
Originally, it was about 1 in 4 recordings that failed. Setting 'Noise Reduction' on and to level 20 and setting 'Motion Precision' to 20 seems to have reduced the failure rate to 1 in 10. No additional tinkering here helped any. I did confirm these results by changing these values back to defaults, and the failure rate went back to about 1 in 4.

* Checked 250btv card for IRQ conflicts. None
* Checked 250btv card for driver issues. None, all drivers installed properly.
* No unknown devices in Device Manager (even with 'show hidden devices' and 'show nonpresent devices' enabled) indicating hardware problem
* Attempted different audio and video tuner settings, TV format for 250btv in Web Admin. Predictably, none worked at all.
- No effect -

So, I'm at a loss. Just grumpy.

[dane_62]

I know this might not help much but I have a 250BTV ( not the retail) and have never had this tunning problem. I did have the the brightness problem and the green line ( I agrea that the green line is negligable problem).

I have anolog cable going direct to my tunner card ( box) I have a giga-byte mobo and I'm quite certain I have my tunner card in the slot right next to the agp card ( that's from memory didn't think much about it when I installed it). I installed the drivers that came on the BTV CD just like instructions said.


from the posts I've read the problem has to be one of 4 things,
a driver issue of some kind
a bad batch of cards
all 250btv cards must be installed in the slot right next to the agp slot
or some sort of motherboard conflict.

not sure any of this info will help but I thought sometimes comparing your setup to a simalar setup that works the differnces can point at the cause of the problem



amd athlon 2100+
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP Via KT400
512 mb 333 mhz ddr
radeon 9000
haupauge 250btv
80GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 Ultra ATA/133 7200RPM w/8MB Buffer
ATI wonder remote

[Zogg]

xanderf, I bought the pvr250mce separately, not from SnapStream, but it's the same card. I had trouble getting the drivers I downloaded from SS to work right.

I finally got it to work with the drivers at shsprv.com. I have the same green pixels as others, a bit annoying but not too bad. Anyway, you might try the other drivers and see how it goes.

Z

[cmasters]

pvr250mce is not the same card that SS is selling. The MCE version is pretty much the same as the retail version. Especially when it comes to drivers.

[omnihilo]

I just wanted to make sure no one thought I'm ragging on snapstream or the card they're selling. However, what *would* be nice is if snapstream made it more obvious that the card they're selling as a bundle is not retail, and will require slightly different steps for installation, along with perhaps listing the most needed tweaks (green line, contrast, etc). I know all of the information is available, but you pretty much have to search the forum and have someone knowledgeable get back to you. Anyway, I haven't had the time to uninstall/reinstall using the proper drivers, but I'll let you all know how that works out if you want.

[ullrichr]

I've had the retail box for over a week now and have done nothing but fight with it. If I had to do it again i would wait until 3.5 comes out. But that's just me. I'm not saying I've given up but in all my years of working with computers I've never had this much trouble with an out of the box install (including Micosoft products which is saying a lot). :-) The community seems to be more help than the online support. It seems that many of the problems stem from the 250 video card drivers. For a piece of hardware that is sold with the item there seems to be a lot of problems.

Also, a major feature seem to be missing; Multiple inputs/guides/tuner cards. And there seems to be no formal release date. I'm new to the product/company and could be wrong but there seems to be some disorganization or lack of information. It hasn't been a good first impression.

Just my two cents for what it's worth.

[commo]

Wow, great stuff in this thread folks. I went ahead and ordered the 250btv version with firefly remote. Hopefully everything goes smoothly.

I will probably combine all the info and tweaks I find in these forums and place them on my webpage for others to use as well.

I find it interesting that no one from Snapstream has replied in this thread with any sort of comment.... I have read on other forums complaints from people about snapstreams lack of "interaction" with users on these forums, and some of them have given up and switched to SageTV.

Hopefully there are lots of users out there using this 250btv bundle with no problems whatsoever, so they tend not to post. As the saying goes: "the squeeky wheel gets the grease".

[omnihilo]

only in this case, the squeaky wheel doesn't get jack :( It's definitely great having this forum where other users can help, but yeah, it would be nice if someone from snapstream could comment on the general confusion over the card they're offering, and the best way to set it up, etc. Anyone know if the PVR250BTV will work with SageTV?

[commo]

http://www.shspvr.com/forum/index.php?h=0&pf=0&c=10

[omnihilo]

Thanks for the link, commo! Hopefully between what people here have posted and what is there, and the ticket I have open through snapstream, I can get things up and running. Just did a reinstall of the pvr250, tried to use the drivers that snapstream offers, but windows told me those wouldn't work. So I used the ones from hauppage's site (again) and it works. I don't even know how to check and see what kind of PVR250 I have, I remember checking the hardware device manager and it didn't show up, but that was after I ran hwclear and I don't think I checked afterwards. So...still trudging along. Haven't had enough time to see if I still have the channel changing on its own problem, but it has exited out to the main screen from live tv at least once, which I think is a related problem (and annoying as hell, it tends to clear out the cache)