Hauppauge HD-PVR support

[Wolfie351]

Against my better judgement, I updated to the latest Hauppauge drivers and I've been lockup free for 48 hours, we'll see if it continues.

[Terminal]

I switched to a 3A PS. I have not been having any significant amount of lockups, only 1 in the last 2 or three weeks, but I was back looking at it last night and noticed the PS I was using was a 2A. My original HDPVR died about 6 months or so ago and I bought a new one, I did not switch out the PS, just used the one that was already connected. Didn't want to dig through everything and pull it out and didn't figure there was a difference, I could just save the new one in case the first PS ever died. I had put the old HDPVR in the new box and I dug it out and looked and the new PS was a 3A, so I swapped them. Don't know if it will make a difference but I figured it couldn't hurt.

[RiderFan]

I started having trouble with my first HD-PVR. I was getting recycled errors, and my recordings looked awful. I unplugged the HD-PVR, and when I plugged it back in, windows xp wouldn't recognize the device anymore. I thought my HD-PVR had just died. I plugged in the power cord from my second HD-PVR, and the first one started working again. I dug through my "box-o-crap" and I found a 2.5A power supply with the wrong end. I made a "franken-cable" by splicing the ends, and double checked the polarity with my meter (good thing I did this, because my first attempt was wrong and I could have fried it for real". This has seemed to correct my issues, and I am back to trouble free, HD-PVR recordings once again.

[Terminal]

Originally Posted by Terminal

I switched to a 3A PS. I have not been having any significant amount of lockups, only 1 in the last 2 or three weeks, but I was back looking at it last night and noticed the PS I was using was a 2A. My original HDPVR died about 6 months or so ago and I bought a new one, I did not switch out the PS, just used the one that was already connected. Didn't want to dig through everything and pull it out and didn't figure there was a difference, I could just save the new one in case the first PS ever died. I had put the old HDPVR in the new box and I dug it out and looked and the new PS was a 3A, so I swapped them. Don't know if it will make a difference but I figured it couldn't hurt.

So I get a lockup today.

[Terminal]

Originally Posted by Terminal

I switched to a 3A PS. I have not been having any significant amount of lockups, only 1 in the last 2 or three weeks, but I was back looking at it last night and noticed the PS I was using was a 2A. My original HDPVR died about 6 months or so ago and I bought a new one, I did not switch out the PS, just used the one that was already connected. Didn't want to dig through everything and pull it out and didn't figure there was a difference, I could just save the new one in case the first PS ever died. I had put the old HDPVR in the new box and I dug it out and looked and the new PS was a 3A, so I swapped them. Don't know if it will make a difference but I figured it couldn't hurt.

Apparently it can hurt, I have had three lockups since swapping out the PS on my HDPVR. Last night it recorded one show and then on a second it stopped with 10 minutes left. I have not had it do that in I can't remember when. When I get home tonight I am going to put the 2A supply back on and see it that is the problem.

[lsrracer]

My lockups have come back with a vengeance. I had four yesterday alone. Grrr.

That's always been the nature of this issue. It'll be fine for awhile and then it comes back.

The 3A wall wart that came with the box is not well regulated. I have an open voltage of about 5.3V and a steady state operating voltage of about 5.1V. I can imagine that a current spike, like what probably happens when starting or stopping a capture, pulls that voltage well below 5V.

I ordered a couple more power supplies off ebay ... a 3A switching version and a 6A linear. They're not wall warts, they're inline, and larger. Gotta try something.

[Terminal]

I put the 2 amp back on last night and things went well last night, recorded about 6 or 7 hours of shows. It bombed every day I had the 3 amp on. I will let it go a day or two more, but it looks like it may just be the quality of the supply you get.

[lschroeder]

Originally Posted by NickHark

I had this same problem with the version 1.5.7.0 drivers. So far so good with the 1.6..29333 drivers. I think that problem relates to the HD-PVR drivers.

I have drivers 1.5.6.0 dated 4/1/2009. I have the original device. Must be first revision (cannot remember letter/number - preorder it - think it is probably C1) modified with a fan and plastic grill top I installed. The fan is connected to the original internal power supply. I have it connected to a monster power strip I bought years ago at Target on clearance.

http://blog.arogan.com/2008/06/haupp...odel-1212.html

How I use it to place shift my cable box to BTV Link system in my living room and recorded one-time only ondemand shows I start from the web inteface. If I use it for normal shows I have to power-off and power-on after every show. I sometimes have to do this for my current use also. Do you guys recommend a good quality 3A power supply and current driver for me? Do you think there is any hope for getting original to work more consistently if I make these changes? Do you have a listing for a good quality 3A supply?

I set the quality for HD PVR recoring using the web interface to highest possible for fixed rate. I have comcast set to 1080i for output. Is there any problem with this using the new dirvers?

I use VideoRedo TVSuite to edit the padding from my on demand recordings. I play them back with BTV Link, WDTV Live, and Plex on my Google TVs, a 40 in Sony GTV and 46 in Sony XBR6 connected by Logitech Revue. I have the Plex server running on the BTV server as well. I have several other sets connected with BTV Link.

[ijourneaux]

After a couple of months of relatively good behavior of my HDPVR with BTV, My key issue has come back with a vengance; btvscheduler service hangs. When this happens, I end up with many btvscheduler service entries in taskmanger. That in itself isn't to bad but when it happens, my computer and all usb devices needs to be powered down and restarted. If I don't power everything down, I get a page fault error when I reboot. It won't go away until everything has been powered down.

Boys would I love to narrow this down.

Ian

[Zogg]

Originally Posted by ijourneaux

After a couple of months of relatively good behavior of my HDPVR with BTV, My key issue has come back with a vengance; btvscheduler service hangs. When this happens, I end up with many btvscheduler service entries in taskmanger. That in itself isn't to bad but when it happens, my computer and all usb devices needs to be powered down and restarted. If I don't power everything down, I get a page fault error when I reboot. It won't go away until everything has been powered down.

Boys would I love to narrow this down.

Ian

Last year my BTV setup of many years running on XP just got so flaky that I couldn't take it any more. Even with nightly reboots it was still hanging quite a bit. I used all my PC problem-solving skills and still couldn't solve it. I finally bit the bullet and reloaded from scratch, and switched from XP to WHS v1 (WHS v2 is 64-bit only so you can't get firewire STB control).

I'd encourage you to bite the bullet and just reload from scratch. And trust me I have a lot of side processes that I had to make work with all the added security that WHS gets from it's Server 2003 roots. Some of it still isn't quite right, but BTV works like a champ.

And with the HDPVR error log checker that cycles the power on the HDPVR's upon an error, the system even fixes itself almost every time. I even stopped my nightly reboot and it's still holding up.

Not meaning to brag here. Just had similar recurring catastrophic failures, finally got fed up, rebuilt, and I'm a whole lot happier.

P.S. And both my HDPVR's are on non-original power supplies.

[ijourneaux]

The couple of months of good behavior were after a fresh rebuild. I have an image from a couple of months ago that I am planning to go back to as bebuilding from scratch is a real pain. I wish there was a way to figure out what has changed.

[Terminal]

Since going back to my original wall wart my unit is back to normal. Apparently getting the 3A from Hauppauge will not necessarily fix your issue.

[lsrracer]

I'm 48 hours into using this power supply:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200717727146

With no lock-ups yet.

But I won't even begin to get optimistic until it's been at least a month.

[Terminal]

Originally Posted by lsrracer

I'm 48 hours into using this power supply:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/200717727146

With no lock-ups yet.

But I won't even begin to get optimistic until it's been at least a month.

Keep us posted.

[cosiz]

I had my HD-PVR running for a couple of years with only a lockup here and there. Usually after switching between HD and SD channels a few times, or maybe several back-to-back recordings. I found that powering off the HD-PVR and back on periodically seemed to pre-empt the lockups. So that just became part of a routine and all was well. I was using driver v1.0.5.3.

Not too long ago my BTV server starting having issues and I did a clean install, and later I ended up building a new server. I had issues with getting HD-PVR set up and operating smoothly all along the way. Uninstalling and reinstalling with different driver versions, etc. (note: signature below is not yet updated as of date of this post)

After a quite a number of attempts with different drivers, periods of time where it worked but with more lockups and system hangs, and returning again to drivers that had previously worked in my setup, I finally got things working better than ever with no problems. Knock on wood. I haven't rebooted the HD-PVR for two weeks and have recorded back-to-back-to-back, back-to-back on different channels, HD -> SD -> HD, and no lockups or errors.

I've always thought the HD-PVR drivers were suspect, but now I'm wondering if sometimes the problem is actually with the Hauppauge driver installer. So many installs failed with the same driver I had been using as well as with the one that seems to be working so well now.

I have another computer with a Hauppauge Colossus card that worked great the first time I installed and set it up. But then I forgot the "rule" about needing to reboot between WinTV and Windows Media Center sessions and I have yet to get it working again. The driver installs seem to be failing and I have tried multiple times without success.

Anyway, I'm now using the v1.6.29277 driver for the HD-PVR in my BTV box. It's working very well and I am not going to touch anything for as long as I can go.

Cheers,
Bryan