Lockup watching NZ TV (DVB-T)

[gavo]

Hi,

Tonight I installed GBPVR on my XP SP3 box with a Hauppage WinTV TD-500 Dual DVB-T tuner. Install and config went great (and smooth), but when going to watch TV GBPVR crashes on C4 (NZ Freeview). Sometimes it immediately reports "No signal" and then locks up and sometimes it will play a few seconds and then report the same error.

This box was actually just running Media Portal, I disabled the MP services etc and after playing with GBPVR, re-enabled and it plays C4 fine (but gives me different kind of grief).

Anyway, I'm now suspecting there is something up with my rig that is contributing to my problems, specifically the Hauppage tuner - but I'm not really sure.

Attached are the logs from GBPVR from tonight - if anyone is able to shed some light on where I should start looking (based on the logs) I'd really appreciate it.

Cheers,

[Graham]

You have device lost errors in the PVRX2 native log ...

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...evice+lost

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...t=88760868

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...evice+lost

[gavo]

You have device lost errors in the PVRX2 native log ...

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...evice+lost

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...t=88760868

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...evice+lost

Thanks Graham,

I've updated my video drivers to the latest available (ATI Catalyst 10.2 now, my card is a on board x1250) and installed the lastest DirectX9 update (Feb 2010). After doing this the behaviour was unfortuantely the same. I then un-installed ffdshow but no change.

Interestingly enough the "device lost" errors seem to have gone away (but I still have the problem) - also interesting is that this mainly seems to happen on the "C4" channel.

Any other thoughts?

Cheers,

[Graham]

the PVRX2 native log has this ...

2010-03-20 11:46:38.765 VERBOSE locked=0 present=0 strength=0 quality=-100

which usually indicates a signal reception problem. What happens if you remove all splitters and check all connectors on the ariel coax?

[sub]

First thing you should do set your decoders to something other than 'system default'. You'd be better off explicitly telling the system exactly which decoders you want to use.

I'm guessing the problem is caused by the CoreAVC that Window's ends up picking as the system default H.264 decoder. Its known to have various problems for use with DVB tv.

[Graham]

Sub

Is the signal = quality= message in the log a simple print of what the tuner driver is reporting or do the signal and quality values get manipulated between tuner and log? I know that some drivers tell lies (or fail to provide useful values)!

Thanks

[sub]

Sub

Is the signal = quality= message in the log a simple print of what the tuner driver is reporting or do the signal and quality values get manipulated between tuner and log? I know that some drivers tell lies (or fail to provide useful values)!

Thanks

Yes, they're the exact values the driver reports, but they cant always be relied upon. Some drivers report hardcoded values, some report no values (zero), some use an synchronous signal locking model and the values wouldnt be correct until checked longer after tuning.

[gavo]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I reinstalled the latest version of ffdshow that I could find and specifically set all my decoders to ffdshow - including the H.264 one. Unfortunately the behaviour was the same.

I did have a splitter in my system - to split the cable to the PC and TV, so I removed that and just had the cable directly attached to the PC - no change.

Interestingly, on the playback tab I noticed you could choose the renderer - choosing EVR actually makes quite an improvement - with the default renderer, C4 will stop within 30 seconds - with EVR it went for quite a few minutes, but then the video stopped but the audio kept going.

I dont know too much about how the signal stuff works, but you know, it does act like (visually anyway) a signal issue - but only for C4 - TV3 is in the same "scanning group", and plays fine (TV3 is a 1080i HD channel and C4 is a SD channel).

The other thing that nags at me about this being a signal issue is that I've had this setup for well over 12 months using media portal (to be fair the TD500 is only about two months old, but prior to that I was using a HVR-1300 DVB-T tuner) and never had any signal issues before, and in fact I've still got media portal on this box, and switching back to it C4 plays with no problems - same codecs etc as well.

I do suspect something underlying in my system, but I've got no clue what - maybe its time for a rebuild <shudder>.

Unless theres anything else you guys think I can/should check?

Cheers,

[Graham]

I would not expect a channel to work and then to not work if it was a signal problem ... but ... this is much used for testing signal issues ...

http://nate.dynalias.net/dev/scanchannelsbda.rails

[sub]

Thanks for the responses guys.

I reinstalled the latest version of ffdshow that I could find and specifically set all my decoders to ffdshow - including the H.264 one. Unfortunately the behaviour was the same.

Unfortunately ffmpeg also doesnt work, so it was probably falling back to using the coreavc decoder, resulting in exactly the same behaviour. (I'd be able to tell if you post the pvrx2.exe-native.log after trying the ffdshow decoder)

Sadly, the H.264 decoders arent as interchangeable as MPEG2 decoders, since nearly every manufacturer implementents their directshow filters a different way.

Most people here are using the ArcSoft H.264 decoder or the Cyberlink H.264 decoder. The ArcSoft H.264 decoder is included on the CD with Hauppauge devices sold with WinTV7 CD.