Connection Drops

[tysontune]

I am having frequest connection drops from my MVP. When I start up the MVP, everything connects and seems fine, the menu pops up and I can move between the options. However, when I try to select Recordings, the connection drops. After a few seconds, the connection picks back up and I am at the recordings menu. When I select a set of recordings, I have no problems getting to the list of recorded shows. Likewise, selecting a show brings up the summary and play/delete/back options without a problem. Selecting play brings up a black screen, but no play icon. No show starts. Hitting the pause button pulls up the time display and the summary for the show. Hitting play or pause does nothing.

I am running gbpvr off a PC, but I am using Apple hardware to do the networking. I have an 802.11g wireless router connecting to another 802.11g wireless node that has a direct ethernet connection to the my MVP. The Huppage software rund without a hitch for me.

On occasion, everything works fine. Gbpvr shows up and I have full functionality. This seems to happen more often if I delete shows from the drive via the PC. This is a 250 gig drive though, and it only has around 40 gigs of space being used.

Any ideas?

[LilY0da]

I think there's a thread somewhere about MVP and wireless... It seems to be a tricky business... Use the search function to try to find it

[tysontune]

LilY0da,
I've gone through a lot of the forums trying different wireless solutions, but none of them have worked. Most of what I ofund indicated that the wireless connections might be to slow, but 802.11g setups seem to be ok.

Since it works on occasion, I'm thinking that it might have to do with a delay in the network, but everything else, including the MVp software itself, seems fine.

[fhmanas]

Am using 2 Linksys WRT54G routers, one acting as a regular router and the other as a bridge. Followed exactly the procedures from the wiki and am very happy with the results, no video stuttering and response time is slightly slow but I don't think this is a result of the wireless connection. MVP drop happens but so is it with wired connections.

[groover km]

A 'quirk' of the MVP is it expects a continuous network connection and if it receives no reponse or update after ~7secs it drops back to contacting servers. The scenario you describe, where it is connected and you select recordings - it drops out - then comes back, sounds typical. I sometimes get the same thing when I open the tv guide the first time (I have developed the habit of counting seconds from when I press the button - I can pretty much predict when it is going to drop to contacting servers)

You might want to look at if it hangs consistently at the same point (such as recordings) what might be causing it to timeout - lots of scheduled recordings, lots of 'ready' recordings, etc.

Then again, I could be wrong

[haripj]

1. Make sure you have the latest version of GB-PVR - it has a different dongle.bin than previous (I think) which seems to work better.
2. Also, although GB-PVR needs .Net 1.1, I also installed 2.0 release, and since then the connection drops have minimized. I don't know why.
3. Make sure you do not have other interference inbetween the 2 routers like a microwave oven, or a cordless phone (2.8 MHz).
4. I use the Apple airport express too and loveit - hides behind my AV setup and works seamlessly with a Belkin 54G router as an access point.

[tysontune]

1. Make sure you have the latest version of GB-PVR - it has a different dongle.bin than previous (I think) which seems to work better.
2. Also, although GB-PVR needs .Net 1.1, I also installed 2.0 release, and since then the connection drops have minimized. I don't know why.
3. Make sure you do not have other interference inbetween the 2 routers like a microwave oven, or a cordless phone (2.8 MHz).
4. I use the Apple airport express too and loveit - hides behind my AV setup and works seamlessly with a Belkin 54G router as an access point.

1. I reistalled GBPVR last night. Of course I didn't watch my files as they deleted and I lost all my current recording info. Oh well, all in the service of perfect PVR right.

2. I'm putting the new .NET framework in now, I'll see how that works.

3. There isn't any interference besides the microwave, but we rarely use that
there is a neighbors G network floating around, I wonder if that might cause a problem.

4. Gotta love the airport express.

I'm wondering what too many ready recordings might be. I've got a fair amount ongoing, but to me that's the point of a pvr.
Right now I have no ready recordings due to the reistall, so I'm recording a few minutes of live TV to give it a try.

So far with the fresh install I have good access to library shows, good live TV and less connection drops in the menus.

[tysontune]

After a reinstall of GBPVR, and installing the 2.0 .NET framework. Now everything seems a little better. I've still had a couple of connection drops, but I can watch recorded shows now!

Is having to many shows in your recordings really a performance killer. If just concerned that once I get 20 or 30 shows again, it won't work anymore.