Recording

[ken_dearden]

I use a Hauppauge WinTV HVR 1900 for recording terrestrial Freeview TV in the UK North West (transmitter Winter Hill).
 
I use NextPVR rather than Hauppauge WinTV8 since it has more and better facilities. The PC is a Dell XPS17 running Windows 11. Until recently, it has worked perfectly. A week or so ago, Next PVR recordings started to have a lot of green lines and shapes on most frames. Yesterday, I removed NextPVR and reinstalled the latest version. (As an aside I found it impossible to auto-map the channels to use Schedules Direct because it did not have the facility to match channels purely on channel number.) I tried another recording today (14th Feb 2025) and it had the same problem.

Recordings are saved using the default location.

Live TV works fine, with no interference. WinTV8 recordings also work properly, so I am reverting to that. I have to sue that anyway to record from my audio cassette player or my VHS player, using the AV interface on the WinTV HVR 1900 since WinTV cannot detect that input channel.

If anyone has a solution to this problem, I would appreciate knowing how to resolve it.

I must stress there is no problem with signal quality, no problem with the Hauppauge hardware or software and no problem with the PC as far as I, a retired IT and telecommunications consultant, can determine.

[sub]

A week or so ago, Next PVR recordings started to have a lot of green lines and shapes on most frames.

I must stress there is no problem with signal quality, no problem with the Hauppauge hardware or software and no problem with the PC as far as I

This is absolutely sounding like signal/reception issues.

If you can supply a sample recording, I will be able to tell. You'll need to put somewhere like onedrive/googledrive, and let me know the download link.

[ken_dearden]

A week or so ago, Next PVR recordings started to have a lot of green lines and shapes on most frames.

I must stress there is no problem with signal quality, no problem with the Hauppauge hardware or software and no problem with the PC as far as I

This is absolutely sounding like signal/reception issues.

If you can supply a sample recording, I will be able to tell. You'll need to put somewhere like onedrive/googledrive, and let me know the download link.

[ken_dearden]

I have tried another recording using WinTV8 and there is some similar interference but nowhere near as much as with NextPVR. All this has occurred suddenly and recently and I am still trying to diagnose the cause.

I am going to try another recording using WinTV8 on another, older laptop running Windows 7 to see if the problem persists. If it does then it is most likely a signal quality issue, which is strange since there is no noticeable interference with live TV. The coaxial signal comes from a two-way splitter, the other cable being attached to our lounge TV. The TV reception is fine. The aerial feeds an amplified splitter i the house loft with cables to several rooms. Three of the connections are in regular use and none show any signs of poor signal quality.

[sub]

TV's often have a better tuner than the tiny tuners included in the PC tv tuners, so often handle low signal better.

I wouldn't expect any difference between live tv and recordings - they're exactly the same thing. The one area you can get a difference, is when you have multiple tuners, since they choose the tuner in a different order, and you can sometimes get different results from different tuners. You're using a single tuner setup though.

Also, I was the author of WinTV7, and WinTV8 is just a slight evolution of that, so I know it pretty damn well. I wouldn't expect it to have any notable difference in results to NextPVR. They're both just telling the tuner to tune to a specific frequency, then capturing the output to disk.

[mvallevand]

Live TV works fine, with no interference. WinTV8 recordings also work properly, so I am reverting to that. I have to sue that anyway to record from my audio cassette player or my VHS player, using the AV interface on the WinTV HVR 1900 since WinTV cannot

Anytime you use the AV input in WinTV you will likely will need to reboot your PC.

Code:

(As an aside I found it impossible to auto-map the channels to use Schedules Direct because it did not have the facility to match channels purely on channel number.)

What is the specific issue with automapping  by the DVB channel number,  is the SD source wrong?  You might need to contact SD for that.

Martin

[ken_dearden]

I have made two recordings using a Windows 7 laptop and WinTV8. Both were fine. I tried using NextPVR and I managed to install and configure it. The problem with mapping channels with Schedules Direct was my mistake and, mostly, it worked. Some channels did not map because the names of those found differed slightly to those on the Freeview listing at Schedules Direct and I had to deal with those manually. A few did not match at all and I left those to scan the wavelengths. The web version of NextPVR seemed to be fine until I tried using the desktop version, which failed due to some obscure error. After that, the web version did not work either so I removed the software. Since then, Windows 7 (which I prefer to the later versions) has actually performed some updates so I shall give it another try when I have time. Meanwhile, I have moved the USB connection on the Windows 11 PC to a different input to see if that makes any difference. I was wondering whether the problem might be due to the speed with which the input stream is processed and I am currently thinking of connecting the Hauppauge tuner directly to a USB C port. I can't believe the Dell XPS17 laptop hardware isn't up to the task when an old Sony Vaio is. It could be Windows 10 though, which still has a lot of annoying little bugs in it.

[mvallevand]

USB A is fine for speed and the device won't operate at USB C speed anyway, but USB ports can have different characteristics. In WinTV on you Win11 box is fine, it is something else since the chain is the same. Removing and reinstalling NextPVR is not going to solve anything.

Otherwise no logs, no problems. There is no known "obscure" error in NextPVR.exe most likely the required LAV32 drivers were not installed. You could configure the same Hauppauge drivers in NextPVR that WinTV uses if you want a near match with WinTV.

Martin

[ken_dearden]

I have made a recording since connecting the Hauppauge tuner to a different USB connection on the Windows 11 Dell XPS 17 (the connection is actually to the Dell USB hub that plugs into a USB C port on the laptop, since the laptop has no USB A ports) and it seems to be fine.