Micro Pauses in LiveTV and Playback

[mruane]

Hi

I have an irritating problem that someone may be able to help with. Its not a show stopper, but if someone has a solution that would be great.

I have recently installed a Hauppauge PVR500 removing the original PVR150. Now whenever I watch either LiveTV or a recorded program I experience a very slight pause in playback that occurs roughly every 5 seconds. Its just a very small pause then the program continues for another 5 seconds. This behaviour was not evident with the original PVR150 on this box.

Playback of live tv in Wintv2000 and recorded programs through Windows Media Player on the same machine is normal with no micro pauses and playback on another Client Mode PC (either LiveTV or recorded program) is normal also. Its just on the one machine (that is acting as the GBPVR server) that experiences the problem.

The server box is an AMD4200 with 2 x 250GB disks in a RAID0 config. I have updated the Hauppauge and NVidia drivers but no improvement. The log files all look normal with no Error messages present. I have monitored the Task Manager and other than a second copy of GBPVR.EXE in the mix, I cannot see evidence of any other program running that could be getting in the way.

Has anyone else experienced micro pauses at regular period like this and found a solution?

Cheers Mike

[martint123]

Have you any MVP's?
I ask because I had fractional pauses every 5 seconds whilst watching on the server PC.
It turned out to be the "next recording" display on the MVP causing the hickup.

Martin

[albumleaf]

I've noticed this with my PVR-350/AMD 4000+ machine and the only solution I've found was restarting GB-PVR using a remote shortcut :/.

[gEd]

do the client and server both have the same decoder?

why do you have 2 copies of gbpvr.exe running - is this an mvp thing?

as above, I find that gbpvr goes funny when you come out of standby/hibernate and needs restarting.

[martint123]

Does it still do it when the client(s) are off.
That 5 seconds, still strikes me as the time between updates to the 'next recording' on the main menu. I tweaked my skin to stop doing it and the problem went away.

[sub]

do the client and server both have the same decoder?

That would be my question.

Also try setting the 'auto start MVP servers' to zero if you havnt already.

[mruane]

Hi

Great feedback thanks.

Setting the Auto Start MVP Servers to zero appears to have fixed the problem. Now Recordings and LiveTV play perfectly. Great suggestion - thanks Sub...

The earlier comment from Martint123 regarding the "Next Recording" was also pertinent because the pause matched the Next Recording screen update almost perfectly (in terms of the pause frequency). However, setting the auto start MVP servers fixed the problem.

PS Yes the client and server both use Cyberlink Video/SP Decoder.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I am a happy camper once more!

Cheers Mike

[mruane]

Ah, unfortunately I no longer have MediaMVP. So there is a defintely link between the presence of the MediaMVP server and the micro pause. Without the MVP server running playback on the server is smooth, with it running, there is a pause, so perhaps the suggestion of the Next Recording update on the MVP is more relevant.

How can I get rid off the "Next Recording" screen update on both the server and the MVP? A different skin perhaps or a config setting?

PS I use the Basic skin with a theme applied.

Cheers Mike

[sub]

First check you have <MvpHighPriority>false</MvpHighPriority> in config.xml

[mruane]

Changing the MVPHighPriority swith to False did improve things a little but did not fix the problem. There is clearly a connection between the Next Recording screen update message and the micro pause.

Is there any way to disable the Next Recording message in the user interface to prove this?

Cheers Mike