GB-PVR shows 1 or 2 frames, LiveTV, then screen goes black & GBPVR stops responding!

[Jlm96007]

System specs:
Athlon 64 3500+
ASUS A8V-E Deluxe motherboard
1G DDR RAM, 80GB IDE, 160GB SATA
ATI X700 PCIe graphics card
Powercolor PCIe theater 550 pro TV tuner card

LiveTV no longer displays anything but a blank screen (playing back a previously recorded MPEG file works fine). I think the problem started when I upgraded to GBPVR09905 and/or ATI catalyst driver version 7.1. I was able to watch LiveTV for a while then the screen would just freeze. When I stop GBPVR and start it again, I'd get the "Error: Object reference not set....." message but if I restarted the computer that would allow me to watch TV for while until the next freeze.
Because of another sound problem I was having, I re-installed windows from scratch, with the latest programs and drivers. This time LiveTV would freeze after the 1st or 2nd frame and GBPVR would stop responding (tried different MPEG decoders, Cyberlink PDVD6, Dscalar, but same result). When I tried Cyberlink PDVD7 MPEG-2 decoder, no frames showed up, the screen was blank from the get go and GBPVR did not freeze up this time, but when I viewed lastgraph with graphedit there was no decoder after the MPEG-2 Demultiplexer (could this mean the MPEG decoders are the problem?). Right now I have the version 6.5 drivers (did not install catalyst control center) for my display adapter (X700) and the 7.1 version for my theater 550 pro Tuner card. I tried using older version of the TV tuner driver but kept getting "Failed to find TV Tuner device" type of messages. Even tried previous versions of GBPVR and same result. Now, only when I install the latest driver does the TV tuner card gets recognized and the channels even show up OK for a while when I use tuning assistant, but only for a few channels then it freezes and every channel after that get 'found'.
I've tried numerous things and can't get it to work again, pleeesse help. Also, I have Grisoft AVG antivirus and antispyware running, along with Zonealarm. Only the antispyware is new. Hope this description of my problem is enough. hope you'll had a great weekend!

[sub]

01:41:29.937 VERBOSE Graph contains the following filters:
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - Default DirectSound Device
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - Video Renderer
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - ffdshow Audio Decoder 0002
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - DScaler Mpeg2 Video Decoder
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - AC3Filter
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - ffdshow Audio Decoder
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - MPEG-2 Demultiplexer
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - Encoder
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - Capture
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - ATI AVStream Analog Xbar
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - TV Audio
01:41:29.937 VERBOSE - TV Tuner

Each of those items highlighted above have been known to cause problem for some users - so I'd selective try to remove them first and replace with other decoders to see if the problem goes away.

[Jlm96007]

Thanks for responding so quickly. I tried using different decoders and the same thing happened. I've attached another zip of the log directory. Does GBPVR uses the same MPEG-2 decoders it uses for LiveTV for playback of previously recorded videos?

[sub]

I cant see anything obvious in the logs. Does changing the video renderer help? ie, try Overlay instead of VMR9 Custom.

Is the capture card working in other software you've got installed on your machine?

[Jlm96007]

I tried using VMR9, VMR9 Custom and overlay manager (upgraded to 0.99.12) and this time I don't see any frames just a black screen. and then GBPVR stops responding. I also went back to the power cinema 4.0 that came with the card and also tried a trial version of power cinema 5.0 and they both did not display anything when I tried to watch Live TV. I also tried the radio feature of the card with power cinema and it said that there was no such device and/or feature. I'm at a lost here, the card shows up fine in device manager (no conflicts) and I tried reseating it before and that didn't seem to do anything. I just hope its not broken, it's not even been a year since I bought this card :-(

[sub]

Sorry, I dont really know.

Given its not working in power cinema either, it does sounds like the card or its drivers are misbehaving.

[Jlm96007]

Could my problem be the MPEG2 demultiplexer? I 've attached a copy of 'lastgraph' and a graphedit file I created, 'graphtest'. When I 'play the graph' for 'lastgraph', the channel shows up fine for a couple seconds then freeze. I have to restart my computer after every freeze or error.
Some good new :-)
I've gotten the channels to work fine if I use 'lastgraph' or 'graphtest' but I have to put a video and audio renderer at the "ATI Video Capture Output" and "ATI Audio Capture Output" of the "ATI AVStream Analog Capture" filter. Hence my question above. In my 'graphtest' the only MPEG2 demux on the filters list doesn't have any outputs, so I couldn't fully test the graph I created. For 'lastgraph', I also had to set "tuning space" in the analog tuner properties to 0 for the channel to show up OK ??? Are there other MPEG2 demultipliers that you would recommend?

[sub]

I've never seen any problems with the Microsoft MPEG2 Demultiplexer before, so I'd doubt that is the cause.

[Jlm96007]

My mistake, the previous test that I said worked, did not. It ran longer before freezing but it did freeze, so you're right it's probably not the MPEG2 Demultiplexer (didn't realize I was typing multipliers in the previous post :-) ). I guess I'll have to contact powercolor and find out if this is a sign that the card is bad/getting bad (don't have another PC to test this theory).