*EDIT* Note in my latest post below that I realized it has nothing to do with VMR9... I switched to Overlay and had the same thing happen to a third card
Ok so I finally noticed that this probelm is since PVRX2. I had set up first PowerCinema originally, then GBPVR on my HTPC set up in my living room. I started with a ATI 9250XT 128M and the system worked great for 2 years straight.
This configuration had the SVIDEO out to the TV and the VGA plugged into an Epson PJ
Somewhere after PVRX2, my ATI card started acting funny and it seemed like a heating issue, as it would go away if the machine was off for a while, only to return in an hour or two. Eventuall, the 9250XT overcooked and had to be replaced.
Being an AGP bus I had an extra Nvidia Ti4200 VIVO, I swapped the cards and the system worked well. The Ti didn't do overlay on both monitors so I stopped using the TV and opted to only use the projector. After about four months, the Ti4200 cooked so bad it wouldn't display output video. When I took the card out the fan and heatshield were literally melted.
I found this odd, because the Ti4200 was a really reliable card. I pushed the hell out of that card when I used it in my main machine, and it took the heat fine (running 3d games at 92fps at 1280x1024).
So I had a problem. My HTPC, which only runs TV and is actually not in use most of the time, was blowing cards like it went out of style. Now this happened during a cold winter, and I dont keep the heat cranked. Actually the Ti4200 blew when for a spell I didnt have natural gas because it was disconnected (dont ask, some girls are just better left a mystery, lets put it that way) and the house was regularly at 6 degrees C.
Upon doing some thinking back I realize that I had upgraded everything to the VMR9 renderer along with the recent PVRX2 upgrade, I had a bit of a choppy video problem since I upgraded to the new one. Since then 2 vid cards.
I put in a third card, a ATI Radeon 9600SE, which is what is in there now. Because I'm only using the projector, and its bright sunshine outside, I was remotely installing the driver. Either due to a driver bug, or quirk with the card, I could now not see any PVRX2 output using LogMeIn. I could before. But I noticed that the CPU load was at 100%. Thinking it was a glitch with PVRX2 after swapping vid cards, I killed it and tried Overlay. This, when idle, had the CPU at a much nicer 1% load including all background services.
This got me to thinking - was it my switch to VMR9, with the machine running 24/7 sitting on a VMR9 screen, even when idle, that was cooking my cards?
An expensive experiment might tell the tale. I am on my third vidcard in this box in the past 9 months now, so I'm not about to try it again to find out.
Don't know if anyone else has encountered this, but my HTPC has been going to sleep while defragging the HDD. I have it set up in task manager to run a weekly defrag overnight on Mondays.
It seems like it has never worked well because Vista goes to sleep in the middle of any task that does not put much of a strain on the system. I use the MCE Standby Tool and it hasn't caught it either. Apparently the issue is that Vista wakes up in unattended mode.
I also tried fullresume.exe but it crashed my system.
I'm having a small, not critical issue with playing videos.
Here is my setup:
Dell Laptop with Vizio LCD HD TV connected via VGA out to TV RGB in
Using Windows Media Center remote v.2 with HIP to control GB-PVR (current version)
GB-PVR is set to default play full screen on the second monitor (my TV)
Situation:
When I select the video to play, the remote is no longer responsive. I have to make GB-PVR the selected program (focused) in order to make it work again.
Is this happening for anyone else?
Luckily, I have the Green button set to launch GB-PVR so I can press it again to regain the focus to GB-PVR and use the remote. It seems like that shouldn't be necessary though.
I have 2 tuners.
1. A Twinhan 1022a DVB-s (just setup and causing the problem)
2. A Hauappage DVB-T
The Hauappage runs absolutely fine. I use it for DVB and sVid (inputs from a Sat box). The Twinhan does not.
The Twinhan 1022a has BDA drivers, is scanned and working in config under map channels. In PVRX2 though when calling up any channel played via the Twinhan it will play for a moment, maybe two and then PVRX2 will crash. The recording will continue in the background.
The solutions on these posts seemed to be either:
1. uncheck the 'ignore PMT CRC errors always' checkbox
Done and makes no difference.
2. Don't use 'Live TV mode'.
Tried and it works.... GREAT.... But if I don't use Live TV mode I can't get sVid to work on my Hauappage card. When selecting a channel it just says 'There is not card.... etc..'. Put live TV back on and svid works again.
I have tried various combinations of decoders, and renderers and it makes no difference and I am starting to run out of ideas.
I can't post any logs for the crash as there aren't any I'm afraid. But if anyone has any ideas its much appreciated.
I am finding that several digital channels are getting messed up when mapped. I did a scan (I have an HVR 1600 card) and then I viewed the channel in the preview window and then selected that channel in the drop down box to map it to a channel.
When I did some recordings I found several channels where recording or watching live are the wrong content. For instance, ABC Family content was appearing on FS Sports channel and vice versa. (I found out when my Bridge to Terabitha recording was a Bowling Tournament...)
I scanned again and carefully mapped them again. Same thing. About 80% of the channels are right, but others display no channel or the wrong one.
How could the preview window show one thing and then the actual recording or live display another?
I was convinced that all shows in HD was transmitted using H264 codec, but when I accidently converted a 50 min show from Nat.geo HD to H264 it shrunk from 8 gig to 3 gig (and yes, it took forever to convert :o). Could this mean that it is mpeg on DVB-C? (I know that the modulation is QAM256 so the bitrate is quite high).
