Hauppauge HD-PVR support

[ZetaVu]

try pm-ing Kilrsat, zack, myktek, or even rakeshagrawl. Their emails should be their names @snapstream.com (I've always just PM'd them, they respond when they can)

[ijourneaux]

Ok I am at 40 hours and 25 recording without a hang. Atleast for me the voodoo seems to have been the IRBlaster on the HD PVR. I have several USB hard drives (none with recording folders), USB blue tooth, mouse and Adaptec dual tuner all on the same USB host controller so, for me, if the problem was USB contentions they were associated with the IR Blaster and not with the other devices.

I had my suspicions about the IR Blaster on the HD PVR earlier in the process but only now figured out how to switch the IR Blaster output to the PVR-150. I am not using the tuner on the PVR-150.

At least a measure of success for me. It shouldn't be this difficult though. I am just glad it is finally working.

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by ijourneaux

At least a measure of success for me. It shouldn't be this difficult though. I am just glad it is finally working.

Great news! You've been struggling with this for a long time.

[ijourneaux]

I think this is finally behind me. (Voodoo gods will probably punish me now). Continued to run through Sunday and into today without a hang!

[glyph]

still having odd crashes. Some of them are tied in with the computer itself. It wasn't even starting recordings, saying it couldn't find the recorder, but I had reset it a couple times. Had to reboot the computer. Daily power cycles with the timer help immensely, though.

[ijourneaux]

Crashes seem to be under control but know I have lost the ability to watch a recording that is in progess. If I let the recording terminate, I was watch it then but if I try and watch it while it is recording, I get a "recording is corrupt" error message.

This is a new one for me. Any ideas?

[glyph]

reboot and power reset on the hdpvr?

[derfel]

I have an issue for maybe the last month, the volume of my shows dropped. I didn't change any setting to my knowledge and my STB is set to keep to same output.

Any idea what it could be?

I'm using analog/RCA

[ijourneaux]

I was able to fix my problem regarding my loss of ability to watch current recording on my HD-PVR.

I noticed that GPU accellerated decoding was nolonger working so first I tried switch to the snapstream H264 decioder. LiveTV started working again. Switched back to arcsoft. No workee.

In the past I have had success getting the GPU accelerated decoding working again if I installed the HDPack 23 codec pack. As before, it worked and I restored hardware acceleration and LiveTV started working again with the Arcsoft codec.

I am not a fan of installing codec pack, prefering to install the codecs I need individually but whatever HDPack23 is doing, it correctly sets up the codecs so that hardware acceleration works.

The next time I get a system up, I will start up an install manager so I can see exactly what HCPack23 does. Perhaps it can be distilled down to a few simple registry changes.

[glyph]

I recommend the coreavc codec. It's $20, but works beautifully.

[ijourneaux]

It has been a week now since I stopped using the IRBlaster on the HD-PVR. Stability has improved but I am still getting hangs.

Before I started using the IR Blaster on my PVR-150, the HD-PVR wsa hanging atleast once per day and it always occurred just as a new recording was starting. The channel onthe stb was not changed and the HD-PVR never made an attempt to start recording )I.e. no blue light).

Since I have started using the IRBlaster on the PVR-150 instead of the one on the HD-PVR, hangs are one every few days. but the hangs are different. Now the HD-PVR starts the recording but partway through the recording, BeyondTV stops the recording and restarts it but neithe portion is viewable. The blue light on the HD-PVR doesn't turn off. All future recording fail until the HD-PVR is power cycled.

Next step is to put in a separate USB controller for the HD-PVR and after that, configure the firewire tuning on the stb.

[ijourneaux]

The never ending saga.

Since I stopped using the IR Blaster on the HD PVR my reliability has gone up but still not good enough. Interestingly, the failure mode is different now.

Before the failures were always when new recordings were starting. The STB would not change channel and the HD-PVR would not start recording.

Now the failure are more random where the recording starts (i.e. blue vanity light comes on) but the light never goes out. THe recording that start is nt watchable and future recording don't start until the HD PVR is power cycled.

A couple of days ago, I moved my HD PVR to a separate USB interface. Haven't had it installed long enough to get an idea on if it had a positive impact.

[ijourneaux]

Things continue to be better than before. Moving the IR Blaster to my PVR-150 (that I am not using as a tuner) improved things. I am not sure moving the HD-PVR to a separate USB controller made things better but they certainly aren't worse. I can usually run a couple of days without a hang. Before it never lasted a day.

Now the hangs are different. They are mid recording and the problem seems to be closer to BeyondTV as, when it happens, I can't kill off BeyondTV and I can't restart it without power cycling the computer. I don't seem to have to power cycle the HD-PVR.

The HD PVR is recording an awful lot of shows. Although it doesn't seem to get overly hot, could it be heat? I am still using the 1.5.6.1 drivers. Perhaps I should move back to the 1.0.5.6 drivers?

I also noticed a problem that the HD PVR handles but BeyondTV doesn't. If the cable box is not powered on, and you try to make a recording, the HD PVR trys and gives up. Beyond TV doesn't respond to this correctly and trys to restart 3 times, failing each time and leaving a recording in progress. If you power on the stb, the next recording is good without having to powercycle the HD PVR.

[glyph]

have you opened the HDPVR case? I did that and it was one more thing that helped. It still freezes on recordings, but mostly stuff over an hour, sometimes hour long, too, though.

I haven't tried the old drivers.

My nightly power cycle via the $5 power timer from Home Depot has made the most improvement.

[ijourneaux]

Thanks for the comments. I haven't opened up the case yet. That is probably something else I can try.

I will probably try the power timner switch first.

I have been pretty disiplined about the changes on my system. what I find interesting is the total change in failure modes.

Has anyone asked SnapStream if they could place the BeyondTV specifications for the interface to tuners in the public domain so that we could optimize tuners and add new ones?

The rest of BeyondTV meets my needs well.