Just started crashing on fresat

[Elmo Putney]

For some reason one of my tuners has just started crashing GBPVR. I have one of my 2 dvbs tuners on my 7010ix pointing at atlantic bird 3 and the other at astra for freesat, for no apparent reason the freesat tuner causes a microsoft crash dialog either HD or non HD.

I re-installed a previous known ok backup thinking this would fix it but nope it's still the same...which made me think it was hardware, so I tried DVBviewer and its all ok and GB does seem to record from the tuner ok..

Help, I need my HD goodness back.

[sub]

Does the crash message identify a specific module?

[Elmo Putney]

I'd love to tell you but for now I cant repeat the problem. Absolutley typical...it's been consistent for a week crashing within a minute of live TV, as soon as I post here it goes away......

Obviously I'll post if it comes back......

[imilne]

Hmm, that's very strange. I have the same tuner as you (working perfectly for ages in DVB-T only mode) and finally got a dish installed yesterday.

Couldn't tune without crashes, if I used an existing cache file I couldn't play a channel for more than 30s without a crash, etc. (tho it all worked fine in DVBDream).

Then tonight I come home and find it's all working. It's even just managed a full scan.

Spent ages today at work composing a massive message for sub to try and work to the bottom of it all. Now it looks like everything might be ok

[bgowland]

There are usually associated events logged in the Application event log you could check.

[imilne]

God knows what is going on. In the time since my last message it's stopped working again.

I don't see anything obvious in the logs, but maybe someone else will?

It's similar to last night though. It would play fine for about 20-30s then crash at the same time as the "SetRenderList creating new texture" entries would appear in the log. To complicate matters, even when it *was* crashing in pvrx2.exe I could view the channel in config.exe's little preview window thingy and it would play for as long as I could be bothered to leave it.

[imilne]

Figured I might as well post what I'd written earlier. It might help...



Firstly, apologies for the length, but I've tried to include as much information as possible...


System background:

My HTPC consists of an AMD 690G motherboard with a dual core 4000+ CPU, 1GB of memory, and an ATI HD4550 graphics card. All under 32bit Windows XP Pro SP3.

For TV tuning, the following hardware is installed:
- Pinnacle 7010ix (2x DVB-T and 2x DVB-S)
- Hauppauge USB2 Nova-T (1x DVB-T)

The Pinnacle is basically the same card as a Blackgold BGT3540 and shows up as such.

For the past three weeks, I've been using this configuration with DVB-T only. It's been working flawlessly. Prior to that, I had the 7010's little sister installed - the 3010ix - which just contains the twin DVB-T tuners. Both cards work from the same drivers. That configuration had been working perfectly with GB-PVR for almost a year with UK freeview stuff. (As a quick aside: my god, sub - it really is an impressive piece of software you've produced!)


The problem:

This week we finally got satellite installed and it gave me the chance to try the DVB-S tuners with the freesat channels. I have two problems:

1) I can't scan for any channels without config.exe crashing
2) If I use an existing cache file for the tuning, I can't watch any DVB-S channel for more than 20 seconds without a crash.

Problem 1 doesn't bother me too much; I'm happy to use existing cache files from other people to get the tuning information I need. I can also get the information from DVBDream which can scan and play all the DVB-S channels fine. I only installed this to test DVB-S and as everything seems ok with I don't think the problem is a hardware fault. Signal strengths and quality indicators all look good and it's a new satellite install.

Problem 2 happens when attempting to watch DVB-S channels (I haven't tried recording yet). Consistently after about 20 seconds of viewing, GB-PVR will exit with the message "PVRX2 has encountered a problem and needs to close." There are no .NET exception messages.

Now for some good news. Returning to the config application and the use of pre-existing cache files, if I select a channel from the list and allow it to play in the little preview window it works perfectly. It'll play for as long as I can be bothered leaving it. This suggests to me that GB-PVR is happy enough with the Pinnacle card so it's probably not a driver issue. This also gives me a lot of hope that the channels can somehow be made to work in the main GB-PVR executable too :-)

I have attached three sets of log files.

- scancrash.zip is an attempt to scan for DVB-S channels (resulting in a crash)
- logs.zip is GB-PVR attempting to play DVB-S channels (resulting in a crash) (same file as earlier post)
- working.zip is config.exe playing channel previews using an existing cache file (resulting in no crash)


Other info that might help:

Codec-wise the machine only contains: nVidia PureVideo, AC3Filter, xvid, Cyberlink SD and HD (both from PowerDVD 7.3), Haali Media Splitter, and ATI avivo so I can use the ATI muxiplexer.

While testing this, I was using windowed VMR9 custom mode. Ordinarily I'd be FSE full screen but it makes no difference for this problem. Video decoding is being handled by PureVideo and audio by AC3Filter. The only thing I've noticed about these that may be relevant is that the PureVideo tray application IS visible when GB-PVR is tuned into a channel, but it is NOT visible when config.exe is previewing a channel. The logs do seem to show it being used in both cases though.

These logs show everything attempted via the first DVB-S tuner on the card. I get the same results using the second tuner too.

[Elmo Putney]

I've never had any scanning problems with this card, and the other dvb-s tuner on the card (not freesat) did not show the same issue.

Still no crash tonight which is amazing considering how repeatable it was....:confused:

If it does it again I'll swap the dishes over to the opposite tuners to see if it follows the feed or the tuner

[shadowze]

I had similar problems with 1.3.11 on my media PC

I wiped it , fresh re-installed XP and started with version 1.1.05
I had to update windows BUT did NOT install that huge 3.5 .NET framework update , installed wmp11 ( used the dvb.fix on it - or SAT not work at all )

Configured it and then ran a suite of tests trying different things ( testing software for over 6 years comes in handy sometimes)

Codecs used , ffdshow , coreavc (with Haali - used this for TS ) , flac codec , power dvd dvd codec from klite pack

Then I began to work through each version running full suite of tests

Version GBPVR10213.msi was the most consistant and stable (baring not liking mp3's with embeded cover art )

Currently testing latest version with patches ( haali TS reader not liking the TS recorded files , but if I use internal TS reader I get the PVR crashing thing again )

[Pob]

The dvbfix, as mentioned by shadowse, is what sorted a similar problem I was getting sporadically;
http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/genera...s-xp-6344/
The most frustrating thing was how the crash-after-a-few-seconds-of-watching problem seemed to come and go without any obvious cause, often resulting in all sorts of fruitless work trying to resolve it, but I have not had any crashes myself since applying the fix.
The fix itself it compulsory for users of that other program - and it is only needed when multiple tuners are installed, which seems to be the catalyst of the problem.