Colossus with HVR cards - not really a support issue - Common Decoders?

[PatM]

I tried a Colossus with an HVR-2250 and I couldn't even get WinTV to work with the combo. It would show the colossus output but if I tried the 2250 WinTV would just lock up. This despite using HCWclear and re-installing everything.

I then tried with the 1800/1850 (Forget which one I have exactly) and WinTV worked perfectly but NPVR was black with no Audio from the 1800 while the colossus worked (one issue which I think is a timing issue but that's for the support forum).

The wife was about to decapitate me so I couldn't experiment further last night but I realized later that it might be that the Arcsoft decoder (which I had set for the colossus) may not be compatible with the 1800's output. If I'd had time I would have tried the Hauppauge decoders.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has tried getting the Colossus to work with a second non-Colossus card and had success? If so, what setup did you use?

[mulletback]

I use a 2250 with a Colossus, no problem. The only trick was installing the Colossus driver last, so the Colossus IR services were used. I use LAV audio decoder, the MS DTV video decoder for non-h.264 ts, and arcsoft video decoder for h.264 ts. I'm running win7 now, but this setup also worked on xpsp3 (arcsoft video decoder was exclusively on xp).

[sub]

The wife was about to decapitate me so I couldn't experiment further last night but I realized later that it might be that the Arcsoft decoder (which I had set for the colossus) may not be compatible with the 1800's output. If I'd had time I would have tried the Hauppauge decoders.

This wont be the issue. The 1800 and Colossus use different decoders, since the 1800 puts out MPEG2, while the Colossus puts out H.264.

[PatM]

So you do what order? 2250 drivers, WinTV, Colossus Drivers? Or both drivers, colossus second, then wintv?

[mulletback]

So you do what order? 2250 drivers, WinTV, Colossus Drivers? Or both drivers, colossus second, then wintv?

2250, then colossus. I don't install wintv.

[PatM]

Well I got fed up and bought a new box for the server running win7 home. I installed the colossus, 1850, and 2250 then SageTV and everything appears to work without any fuss at all. I haven't actually tried the 2250 yet as I need another cable splitter (The first two cards are from STBs while the 2250 will be fed regular cable).

SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed) is at the end of her patience as I've caused her to miss almost two weeks of Coronation Street so I'm leaving it as is until the weekend when I'll see if I can get sound out of the Colossus with SPDIF input. Couldn't before but I spent hardly any time on researching it. Probably it was something dumb like a default mute setting on the input mixer software.

Once all that is working I'll install NPVR again and see if everything cooperates still - don't see why not.