Black Screen on Playback

[sub]

What's odd is that I understand power cycling the MVP is supposed to restart the servers, so why would that *not* work, but restarting things via the config app does work?

Have a look in the task manager process list. You should see some gbpvr.exe processes. When you press the green button on the MVP remote, do their procese IDs change? They should, as the process is killed and restarted.

[seaneys]

I have found that power cycling works - but it often takes several minutes (timeout). Forcing the servers to restart is a good trick for the impatient.

[seaneys]

I'll try to catch the PID. While adding the PID to my task list, I noticed that GBPVR.EXE was slowing gaining in memory usage. I hadn't used my MVP in several hours (or the recording service), and it was using about 80,000K. Does this see a little high?

[sorr]

I only logged on to see f anybody else was having the same issue as me, and guess what?

You all describe the exact problem I'm having too, On mine it's been getting worse and worse over the last few months, I restart the recording service and the MediaMVP server and it generally works. But it's really pissing me off now.

I can only think it's down to resources, My PC is on all the time and as already mentioned the longer I leave it idle the more chance I get a black screen on playback, in fact it's so bad I watched a recording and then went to watch another and bingo black screen. For me it all started to go pear shaped only when the PC was being used for playing games(for instance) and even after shutting down the game( the extra resource) it would go tits up.

I was going to try and increase the system memory, I'm sure it would help but guess this is only a work around.

Are we all running on low system memory or the same OS or What? I'm running XP SP2, with 384mb DRAM, GBPVR 09211.

Anyway this software is fantastic but would be perfect if we could sort out this issue, keep it running until we find a fix guys

[seaneys]

I think you may be correct. I noticed this evening that it worked correctly for the first time in Months. I dawned me that I also rebooted my computer late this afternoon.

I have XP Home Edition (up to date) with 1G of RAM.

[soccerdad]

I obviously have been having the problem for a while as well. I just added and additional 512meg of ram, getting me up to 1 gig. I am using xpsp2 home. I also have seen the ~80,000k gbpvr.exe. Lately it seems that my system is more stable, and I am not sure why. I have added the video archive plugin, but I don't know how that could have hleped. Unfortunately, I just started having the problems again. It seems to be OK if I shut the MVP off at night. That way it restarts the services in the morning when I start it up again. If I leave the MVP powered up, it is black screen city. Even with the gig of RAM. Last night I was watching a show live (MVP delayed) and needed to leave so I started it recording. I did not shut off the MVP, just the TV. This morning, I turned on the TV and the screen was black, with the recording status stripe at the bottom of the screen, telling me that it was still recording the show I started last night. It also thought the time was 9:16 PM. I hit the stop button and it went back to the menu. The TV guide was still showing the 9PM listings for last night. A power cylcle of the MVP got everything back up running. ODD. I still don't have answers, but I will be watching the system memory usage more carefully.

[sharky]

I have been doing some searching on my issue, and am pulling up this old thread...

I get the exact same issue usually once a day - I try to playback a recorded file and poof, black screen from the MVP. If I press the stop button I am back at the menu. I usually need to reboot the MVP service to get it back going.

I recently put in a larger hard-drive (i.e. more recordings), and now it seem I also have the issue that if I have too many recordings I also get a black screen. Cleaning out some of the recordings seems to fix the problem. I have also tried to reduce the guide data downloaded to see what that will do?

Does anyone know what is going wrong here? I don't have that many recordings (only a 300 GB drive, maybe 50 recordings at most!). It doesn't seem to effect LiveTV, Myvideos etc, just the recording playback.

I am using the standard GBPVR with no plugins - I am thinking about trying the video archiver plugin to fix the second problem?

[soccerdad]

My problem just went away when I did a full system reload, XP and all. I was never able to fix it until I did that. I have been running for at least 6 months without any problems. I know that is not the type of solution you want to hear, but it is what fixed it for me. Likely I had loaded something with a background conflict or some part of something was corrupted. Anyway, good luck. Sorry I can't help. I only have a 120 gig drive and it is about 80-90% full with about 40-50 recordings. I don't have any problems now.

[UKGuest44]

I'm still getting this nearly a year later, hehe.

As far as I can tell, the effect seems to suggest the mpeg-player part of the MVP just freezes. When this happens, it won't even attempt to play any mpg file that it's told to (No flashing play icon in the top corner, it just sits there with a black screen)

Additionally, I've seen it occur in a different way too. Sometimes when watching a file, it just freezes. It just stops playing the mpg in the middle of watching it. Pressing pause brings up the OSD and such, but the frame never moves on. If I go back to the menu and try to play another file, I just get the same stuck screen - the frame of the previous file, as if the mpeg-player just gave up. When this happens, instead of the black screen, it's the frozen frame, but the symptoms appear to be the same

The only sure ways I've found to fix it is to turn off the MVP, restart the MVP server, and then turn on the MVP, and unplugging the MVP and then plugging it back in. Both seem to work, but it's puzzling as to what's happening, and I'd appreciate a better solution, as I get it daily

-

Edit:

Seems I've found a quicker fix for it, if it helps anyone else with the problem. When it gives a blank screen, press pause then stop. The MVP's pause and stop icon should then show. This seems to reset it's mpeg playback, so the next time playing an mpeg, it works.

It also seems that the cause of it for me was the XDVD plugin, because the mpeg's VLC generates have weird timestamps, the MediaMVP doesn't stop properly at the end of the file, hence it gets stuck on the mpeg playback. The above fix seems to work quite well as a solution.