No Audio for some recordings

[dlee65]

tipster - I have three PCI Slots and an AGP Slot.
PCI 1 is my wireless NIC card
PCI 2 is open
PCI 3 is the Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150

I have not tried moving the 150 to slot 2, but at this stage of testing I think I will leave it in slot 3 so that I can try to eliminate variables one stage at a time. Also, after my successful tests with WinTV2000 I am less inclined to think this is a hardware issue.

[dlee65]

I am including an AIDA32 report of my multimedia settings. See the attached file.

[capone]

Still early, but we have another suspect: DScaler

On a hunch, I tuned off most filters it was applying (I had about 10+ things checked between deinterlace and picture). Now, GB goes from guide to tv (all this is timeshift) in a fraction of the time. In fact, I could change channels in timeshft w/o a problem.

The only thing I have been able to do so far (stress testing) is tie it up is going quickly from guide to timeshift over and over. When it bombs now it just sits waiting to go to TS, and the HD light shows it's trying. You need to ctrl+alt+del out, but it's possible it would work it out in time.

Again, this is early, but it's the biggest and most obvious improvement so far. Now since ffdshow comes w/ parts of Dscaler, it's possible there is a connection there. Or, it could be certain HW combos (maybe nvidia) reacts very poorly to a filter or how an app handles it.

Dlee, let me know if no ffdshow helps. Or, if you use, try turning off "use ffdshow in post processing".

I'll come back w/ more results. Not trying to blog this topic. I'm hoping it may be helping someone else, or will at some point.

[capone]

I can try that, but I'm also trying not to conflict w/ ffdshow, which I like for most stuff. I use dscaler because I want it to handle mpeg. If I let ffdshow do, it treats resize/aspect the same for everything. So I either end up w/ streched out xvids, or letterboxed tv.

Maybe I'll make a resotre point and try. I want to see where I sit w/ recent changes. I appreciate the endorsement, and I was going to ask if I intended to switch.

[capone]

I am one of those that can't get the sharpness change to fix, and dsclaer has been the only one to create a decrent sharpness fix that stands. If you know a way to make it stick, let me know. It's also been good at cleaning up the line nosie w/ the sharpness.

I haven't tried that yet, but it looks fantastic. I'm still playing to much to change look yet. It has a little of the Meedio look to it, but way more robust. When I get settled, I'd like to give it a try.

[dlee65]

I tried reinstalling GBPVR and I have done something wrong. I am getting an error message when trying to start LiveTV stating "Error: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it". I have reinstalled twice.

I tried searching for "no connection" AND "actively refused" but did not turn up any results. Reinstalling the app did not fix it.

[dlee65]

I am actually getting errors with the recording engine.

At this time I am going to have to give up. I wish my experience setting up a PVR was as good as a friend of mine - he just installed and everything worked. I have been trying for weeks to get the system to run reliably.

I did not run the registry cleaner - I guess I will try that tonight after work and reinstall once again.

[capone]

Well, it seemed turning off thr Dscaler stuff was the trick, but after a restart, it's back to the same.

For a while there, it seemed like things were being written to HD in a fraction of the time, cutting back the studder, and solving the problem. So, it means something does fix this, but I can't think what else I did (intentionally). Unfortuately, I don't have a restore point from then.

I'm still getting more ram to see if it helps.

[capone]

newegg is waiting on the ram. I've been playing since, and have had some luck going back to using the guide for channel changes, and turning down the bitrate/audio just a notch. It still chugs getting a new file going, but sound has held since. haven't tested hard yet, either.

I played w/ some other settings I want to post to the general thread about tweaks. I upped the desktop heap a little, and a few other things. When I get back to town, I plan to play more.

[capone]

I came back and did a reinstall last night. This time, I avoided all the tweaking apps (cacheman, ramidle, etc), and just put in wintv stuff, gb, dscaler, ffdshow, diskeeper (used to set up mfts), and moved the cache to d:.

W/ the minimal amount of adjustments to the color, pic, contrastm, et al, it looks better than it ever has. There is still a a little studder on start, but at a tv program time change, there is a pause, a start, a pause, and it continues to next block. No more dramatic studder/thrashing.

Still early as usual, but so far the lesson is less is more, and it is, if nothing else, more behaved. Have not had a volume cutout yet.

There are two tweaks I am going to look at, still wanted to do as little as possible. One is adjusting the desktop heap, and the bytes locked for i/o. I ordered the new 512 ram, so I'm going to wait till I have a surpluss of physical mem before playing w/.

For anyone w/ problems like this, esp if it's a pvr-only box, my advice so far is to go back to basics, and keep it there. Do as little as possible to get gb running, and see how it performs. Then, tweak up from there, making restore points. Rule of thumb should be, if it ain't broke, just sit, watch, and enjoy.