new PVR150/500 drivers available

[gomjabar]

does this driver update just include the base driver? and is that all I need?

[gomjabar]

btw just installing the new driver(base) and I was getting audio syncing problems and a wierd double tap effect when I used my remote. This happened with both the menu and in livetv. Going back to the old drivers cured it.

[capone]

Before I follow up my report, I think I should at least be a voice in saying don't update unless you need to. There is no performance improvement I can see or read from the notes. There are only fixes for exisiting problems. Worse, fixes for items in other new drivers.

If everything works, ***leave it alone***. Seriously.

Anyway, that said, for those of us that did do it to get some fixes, it also seemed to fix a bug I had where after pausing for a long time (10-15min seems to be the threshold) it would "race" to catch up (play like FF was pressed). Pressing pause and then play again would fix it.

I just did a test, allowing it to pause for 10min, and run 5min into the next show. It unpaused and played fine. I am trying a new test w/ a 23 min pause. If that works, I'll feel initially that this was also addressed in my case.

Btw, results will vary, wildly as pointed out here. Sadly, Haup driver updates are not for the timid. So again, unless you really have a need to, or are just up for a mini-adventure to kill time around the holidays, don't bother. (I like to think of installing these drivers like that scene early in Indiana Jones and swapping the gold statue for the bag of sand....you'll be licking your lips for a day or two before you know if you've got a giant bolder on your hands )

[groover km]

(I like to think of installing these drivers like that scene early in Indiana Jones and swapping the gold statue for the bag of sand....you'll be licking your lips for a day or two before you know if you've got a giant bolder on your hands )

LOL... nicely put. Having swapped my bag of sand for the statue, my update is that everything 'seems' to be working fine and the 5 recordings I scheduled overnight (different channels, different durations, 2 back-to-back) all had the correct timestamps.... fingers crossed, but too soon to say for definite.

I'll keep testing....

[capone]

Well, true to my warnings, I have switched back. It did fix all that, except under one condidition. If you watch in timeshift, and your pause carries to the next timeslot, it will "ditch" to the next recording when you get to close to the end. It looks like a timeing issue. It's the only glitch I can find, but that was enough.

I went back to the hcw2_2_22301 set (which actually has the 11/11/2004,2.0.18.22316 150 drivers), and all is fine. Also, it seems like these slitghtly older drivers fixed my missing audio issue (turns out I was using the slightly newer 03/24/2005,2.0.30.23083 just before now...I had the losing remote issue w/ my old MB).

I knew the risks, lost, but gained in the reverting (again, so far). If you like morales to your stories, I think you can attach one here.

[Chris.Day]

Just a warning for PAL users using the tuner or composite (for any drivers after 23168). Hauppauge have turned off the comb filters completely for PAL which will result in a terrible blurry image (albeit without comb artifacts). If you want to turn it back on, you can use the reg files here:
http://www.dayc.vispa.com/faq/wintvpvr.htm

There are various thresholds available for the comb filters and it's down to the quality of the input to which one looks best. I like 0x2f even though it does give a little bit of dot crawl because it improves horizontal resolution considerably and removes horrible rainbow artifacts on white on black text.

Check line-in audio levels for distortion too if you're updating from a pre-23xxx driver because they've been messing with settings for the Wolfson WM8775 chip. They royally screwed it up 23123 onwards but I don't know if they've fixed it in this driver because no-one sent it to me before it appeared here (last driver I've seen is 23297 and it has crappy levels).

FYI, hcwclear is recommended before installing updated drivers. It's not so much of a problem for the PVR-150 as it only uses a single driver, but for the 88x cards it's essential due to dependencies between the various, and separate drivers.

[sub]

Just a warning for PAL users using the tuner or composite (for any drivers after 23168). Hauppauge have turned off the comb filters completely for PAL which will result in a terrible blurry image (albeit without comb artifacts). If you want to turn it back on, you can use the reg files here:
http://www.dayc.vispa.com/faq/wintvpvr.htm

There are various thresholds available for the comb filters and it's down to the quality of the input to which one looks best. I like 0x2f even though it does give a little bit of dot crawl because it improves horizontal resolution considerably and removes horrible rainbow artifacts on white on black text.

Cheers, thats good info that I'm sure a few users will find useful.

[reboot]

I'm still using a very old bag of sand. A firm believer in, "If it works, don't fix it". Finally got my Nvidia decoder working properly (no idea how though), and with the PVR-500, I don't seem to have any of the dotcrawl, or washed out whites (nor rainbow) that everyone seems to get with the 150's.

[velocityboy]

Capone, any chance of putting those drivers up? (the hcw2_2_22301 set?)
Thanks

[capone]

The enitre disk is 18Mb....I could post just the files portions w/ the empty subdirs for the components (wintv, ir32, etc), and you could populate those w/ versions you have or new ones from the haup site (they are all there buffet style).