Problems with my brand new WinTV PVR 500 Rig

[ClamsTheCat]

I thought I had it working flawlessly, but it now seems that I only have one of the 2 tuners tuning. I will try to explain in as few words as possible, but I want to be complete in my information...

Ok I have the PC hooked up to the TV fine, and sound and ideo display on the TV/Reciever Speakers flawlesly. No problems on that end. Beyond TV 4.3 seems to be working great (I had a single tuner using the digital cable box in there before this card, since removed from the system along with it's drivers). I removed all the recording devices through the web interface.

I then installed the card and drivers (v3.1d). No problems there. Everything was recognized right away and there was no issues once again. Keep in mind I had already had the Firefly remote and USB-UIRT installed and both were and still are functioning correctly without incident.

Now here is the issue. When running the setup wizard to install the new recording devices, I have the Tuner #1 on the PVR 500 using the standard cable TV via the coax conenction on the main card itself. The setup wizard recogizes the video feed just great and I proceed to add the second device, the digital cable box.

Now the PVR 500 came with the card itself and a single daughter board with S-Video and Composite inputs on it (yellow video and red/white audio inputs). I plugged the output cables from the digital box into the inputs on the "daughter card". I then select Tuner #2 from the selection box and choose the composite choice with which to tune the cable box. When I do this, no video or audio appear in the test portion of the setup window. The USB-UIRT is functioning properly and changing the channels, and the cable box is definitely working as I plugged it into the tv just to make sure that it was working.

Now there are SEVERAL listings for composite inputs on the drop down selection box, and so I tried them all to make sure that maybe I didn't just choose the wrong one. None of them work at all for either the video or audio on capture card #2. I thought maybe I plugged the capture card into the wrong port on the main card (I had it plugged into slot #2 as per the instructions) and retried every possible composite input option again. Once again I had no video or audio on the test screen. Just to try it out, I tested the composite inputs on card #1 and plugged the cables into the main card. The digital cable then tuned just great (audio & video) in the test portion of the setup.

So it seems like for some reason the daughter board will not tune any video or audio, nor the second tuner in general. I have verified the jumpers as per the instructions, and so there are a few questions where I think a problem may lie:

1) The daughter board may be defective.
2) The daughter board is not plugged into the correct port on the card (the instructions from Hauppauge's website shows port 2 bring the one to plug it into)
3) The daughter card is perhaps grounded on the case somehow?
4) I am choosing something incorrect during the setup process of the second card?
5) I need the newest driver revision (I think v3.1e)?

If anyone can give me smoe pointers that I have not already mentioned I would be in their debt. I am thinking at this point that I should have just bought a pair of PVR 150s and I would have less issues.

P.S. I also did verify the jumpers are correct per the instructions from Hauppauge. I want to use a basic cable setup on card 1 and a digital cable setup on card 2. This also leaves me with questions on the lineup selection. Since I want the lower basic cable channels tuned first through the basic cable, I set that as card #1. Do I still set both the lineups in the guid to digital cable, or set one to standard and only the digital lineup to digital? I thought they may need to match.

Thanks!

[ClamsTheCat]

Wow I thought someone would have at least an idea for me to try...pleeeease!

I just hope I didn't get a bad card out of the box...

[Rich A]

Gee, I was all the way over in another part of the forum and felt a disturbance in the force as well as your pain.

Seriously, since no one has come forth I'll give this a try. Note, I have had a three tuner setup on my own PVR for some time. But all separate tuners. A PVR-350, 250 and an ATI HDTV Wonder. So I have no practical experience with the dual tuner 500 pvrs.

As I understand it you just can't get both tuners to work? You are using the daughter board's aux. input on one of the PVR-500's tuners?

A thought that comes to mind to me, is that perhaps you actually have both "tuners" enabled on the 500. As I understand it, (and I could be wrong here) you can have either the S-Video/compos. input OR the Tuner input, but not both at the same time. So if you wanted to use the Aux. input of one of the tuners, you'd have to NOT use it's corresponding tuner.

Anyway I think that would be an area to look at. I hope someone with real world hands-on experience with the PVR-500 pops up here. I plan to replace my two PVR-x50s with one PVR-500 myself. (PCI slots are becoming scarce with the newer main boards), and I want to eventually have 2 analog inputs and two digital inputs. Good luck.

[cfaslave]

Now the PVR 500 came with the card itself and a single daughter board with S-Video and Composite inputs on it (yellow video and red/white audio inputs). I plugged the output cables from the digital box into the inputs on the "daughter card". I then select Tuner #2 from the selection box and choose the composite choice with which to tune the cable box. When I do this, no video or audio appear in the test portion of the setup window. The USB-UIRT is functioning properly and changing the channels, and the cable box is definitely working as I plugged it into the tv just to make sure that it was working.

I think you would want to select standard cable for Tuner #2 also. The PVR 500 has the one coax input that feeds to both tuners. On my PVR500, I have the one coax in that tunes two separate tuners.

[jkirk]

i haven't messed with it much so i don't know a lot about it but i use a 500 on one of my systems. i was going to use it on my primary but when i installed the card my system refused to post( even with a 400w ps). so i installed it in a second board and she fired right up. found out later some motherboards don't like the 500's.

now as for your problem. it sounds like you hooked everything up right(to the best of my memory) but i agree with cfaslave you will want to set up the basic cable on the two tuners through the coax. but i would also say set up the single digital converter on both sets of rca jacks as well via an adapter. that way if btv happens to be using the tuner that is attached to the digital box it can fail to the other tuner and still record. it is possible the tuner you have set up might be the same one that views the second av cable set so it won't send any signal(just a guess.)

[btvfreak]

I have a PVR-500, but just use it with basic analog cable (only a single coax cable going into it). However, I always thought you could use it for both analog and digital (one coax and another RCA/composite cable set going into it).

Any reason you're using the daugher card. I always thought that was primarily needed if you wanted to have 2 STB's connected to the PVR-500. Since the composite connections on the card work have you tried removing the daughter card, and connect both the coax (analog cable) and composite (digital cable box) into the main PVR-500 card itself?

[ClamsTheCat]

Originally Posted by cfaslave

I think you would want to select standard cable for Tuner #2 also. The PVR 500 has the one coax input that feeds to both tuners. On my PVR500, I have the one coax in that tunes two separate tuners.

I am only using standard cable on one of the tuners. I am using digital cable on the other one (or trying...)

[ClamsTheCat]

Originally Posted by btvfreak

I have a PVR-500, but just use it with basic analog cable (only a single coax cable going into it). However, I always thought you could use it for both analog and digital (one coax and another RCA/composite cable set going into it).

Any reason you're using the daugher card. I always thought that was primarily needed if you wanted to have 2 STB's connected to the PVR-500. Since the composite connections on the card work have you tried removing the daughter card, and connect both the coax (analog cable) and composite (digital cable box) into the main PVR-500 card itself?

I did try this, and it will tune that way, but not on tuner #2. I think I have it narrowed down to the fact that tuner #2 on the card is just bad. I can not even get a single cox (normal cable) to work on both tuners at once. It works on tuner #1 but not #2.

#2 in the device manager shows no errors, and I am using the latest drivers. I am not sure I can think of any other ways to test the "bad #2 tuner" idea.

Is there any test application from hauppage that can just run a check on the chipsets on the boards? I don't want to have to mail this thing back, but I may have to.

[bnflaherty]

Originally Posted by btvfreak

I have a PVR-500, but just use it with basic analog cable (only a single coax cable going into it). However, I always thought you could use it for both analog and digital (one coax and another RCA/composite cable set going into it).

That is how my system is setup...

specifically I have the two tuners setup for analog cable --- then added the 3rd input to use the external inputs for the digital cable box. The lineup I use is a unified Digital Cable lineup - split in two --- hidden digital channels for the analog tuners -- and hidden analog channels for the digital input.


(ignore the WinTV tuner listed in my BTV box specs ... it has a defect -- and has since been disabled...)

[ClamsTheCat]

I would like to thank everyone who tried to help me on this one. I sent the bad PVR 500 card back and Snapstream has mailed me out a new one (before even getting mine!). I should receive it early next week. After extensive testing I am pretty positive that tuner#2 on the card itself was somehow defective. On 2 other machines I got intermittent issues in the device manager on tuner #2. I tried different drivers, removing all the unnesecary cards, a new windows install (for kicks) and about 50 other things to avoid mailing the card back for no reason. I still only got tuner #1 working the whole time, no matter what inputs were being used on th card & daughter board.

The good news is that even with only 1 tuner, BTV wa working awesome! I had to pull out the card though to send it in, so I am amped to get it back. I was so suprised that the Firefly, USB-UIRT, BeyondTV, and the capture card all set up and detected so easily. I got the cable box to tune with the USB-UIRT with almost no effort. As soon as the new hardware gets here I can put all my AV stuff in the closet and have just a TV controlled by only 1 remote. I am stoked.

Thanks for acting so swiftly Snapstream and forum users! It makes me feel good to know that everyone (Snapstream, Hauppauge) was willing to right this wrong so quickly since the card was DOA, and not dead after a period of use. It shows they are there for their customers, which is nice these days. Especially for an online business. I would rather buy my stuff here than from some snot faced kid at Best Buy even if it were cheaper there (which it certainly is NOT!)

Service DOES matter!

Thanks!