MVP Hangs during live TV

[mvallevand]

I've really had nothing but positive experiences with Vista so far and GBPVR has been incredibly stable and fast. For the first time since I've used Windows I haven't had to worry about tweaks and hunting done drivers, everything just works. It's been nice concentrating on the applications instead of the OS.

I remember that many people didn't like the transition from Windows 4 (9x/NT) to 5 (2000/XP/2003) and now that Windows 6 is out I'm sure we are in for years of this debate.

Martin

[B1ackh013]

I don't mind the visual changes...in fact, it's a little frustrating going back to the old (longer) way of doing things. But, when I rutinely have to put my password into a black screen so that I get logged into Windows far enough that it will recover from a video driver crash, it becomes an issue. I had no problem buying a new printer, my old on was, well....old anyway. It's a little frustrating that they took away the ability to connect to a VPN which uses MSChap-v1 due to security reasons even though they left in the completely unencrypted PAP et al. But not recovering from dropped packets until they've been missing for 30 seconds (this should happen in the sub-second range) is just pathetic.

[Lindsay]

But not recovering from dropped packets until they've been missing for 30 seconds (this should happen in the sub-second range) is just pathetic.

Can you provide a reference for this? I presume you are implying that Vista's tcp performance is bad? Vista's TCP is much improved as can readily be determined from several references. Here is one study's findings- http://tinyurl.com/3andy4

My experience is that Vista boosts my connection to the Internet by quite a margin compared with an XP machine (avg 2.4mbs vs 1.8mbs on a 2mbs account!). TCP auto-tuning is one big factor. There is just no way Vista and server2008 were built to perform worse.

[B1ackh013]

You can read a little bit about it here: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthre...stcount=23. There was another thread where they linked to some Microsoft pages documenting the "issue" and explaining that it was designed to be that way, but I can't find it right off. Also, if you take a large file (1GB+) and transfer it from one drive to another in Vista, and transfer the same file from one drive to another in an earlier version of Windows, you will see that Vista takes significantly longer. That is even after the patch that came out the other day which significantly improved the file copy functionality.

[B1ackh013]

By the way, to those of you who are getting ready to jump all over me because that link is to a Sage forum and Sage uses a different dongle, so you can't compare the two, this is not a dongle problem. TCP is handled by the OS. The MediaMVP runs a Linux OS, regardless of the dongle, and in that respect, it doesn't matter whether you are running GBPVR, Sage or the Hauppauge software. If the server (Vista in this case) doesn't retransmit a lost packet for 30 seconds, that means that the MVP is going to have to wait 30 seconds for the information, which is going to cause it to hang...unless it has cached more than 30 seconds which is a little crazy.

[B1ackh013]

Okay, I found some of the others.

This is the thread where the person was told that it was designed to work that way: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/communi...sloc=en-us

Here is another person who captured the problem with a sniffer: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-rep...20119.html

[mvallevand]

I would consider the source. There are a few "experts" on this forum that offer tips that are just out to lunch when it comes to networking but that doesn't stop them from posting. The problem with the MediaMVP is the network card not linux or not Vista. Even though it's spec'd 100 Mbs not having a PCI bus kills throughput. In mvpmc I offloaded the problem to the OS by changing the OS defaults, it frees the CPU but this does also limit throughput. I'm sure it could be better. For six months the Myth guys blamed performance issues on the revision h dongles on the machine and then they realised that changing NFS from udp to tcp fixed everything.

For the 30 second timeout do you have any idea which parameter is involved. My bet is it is one that the tcp spec says is 30 seconds.

Martin

[B1ackh013]

I'm not sure which "experts" you were referring to, but so far (well up to your last post) everything that was posted here made perfect sense.

Could you please explain what you are talking about? If the MediaMVP didn't have a bus, then it wouldn't do anything, because you couldn't get information from the Nic to the processor. If you are saying that its too slow to be a PCI bus, then it must be an ISA bus, which still runs at 16MBps (that mega-bytes, not bits) which is plenty fast to run a 100Mbps (bits per second) Nic. Resending lost packets (part of the handshake) is handled in the TCP stack (Transport layer of the OSI model) and therefore cannot be handled by the Nic (Physical Layer of the OSI model). This is all handled by the OS...since the Vista box is the one that didn't resend the packets after failing to receive the correct ACK, Vista is the one with the TCP problem.


All of this is besides the fact that changing to Windows 2000 fixed the issue...

[mvallevand]

I'm not sure which "experts" you were referring to, but so far (well up to your last post) everything that was posted here made perfect sense..

I wasn't talking about you.

Could you please explain what you are talking about? If the MediaMVP didn't have a bus, then it wouldn't do anything, because you couldn't get information from the Nic to the processor. If you are saying that its too slow to be a PCI bus, then it must be an ISA bus, which still runs at 16MBps (that mega-bytes, not bits) which is plenty fast to run a 100Mbps (bits per second) Nic.

The ethernet controller is it the SMC 91C1x if you want to research it.

Resending lost packets (part of the handshake) is handled in the TCP stack

Your opinion is that it is Vista and mine is that it the MediaMVP. The fact that Vista uses tcpip standard defaults pleases me but upsets others. I'm just happy that my Vista network now runs as fast as my Linux boxes and it is isn't chugging along at XP speeds.

All of this is besides the fact that changing to Windows 2000 fixed the issue...

And for me mvpmc solved the problem We can debate the merits of Vista vs Win 5 forever. I'm glad we both have working solutions.

Martin