Long time gbpvr, new to npvr

[treads6464]

Logs attached.

It seems to be when multiple things are recording at the same time.

The attached logs have an example of 2 items which coincide. Here are their details:

1-22-2011 8-9pm America's Most Wanted: America Fight's back
-video is pixelated and skips first8 minutes then plays

1-22-2011 8-9pm Law & Order: Los Angeles
-video is pixelated, skips around, whole recording is messed up.

I looked at a few things that were recorded isolated and they appeared to record and play back fine.

[johnsonx42]

everything looks ok in the logs. I was thinking maybe it was failing to hook up the hardware encoder and was failing back to software encoding, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

I see it also recorded The Mentalist at the same time as the other 2 shows. Is that recording ok?

[treads6464]

My wife deleted the mentalist before I could check it. Sorry.

Any ideas as to things I should try?

[johnsonx42]

I guess I would want to try to determine whether the problem is per tuner. You could try changing the tuner order in Devices, restart the recording service, and then record one show for a few minutes, see if it's OK. Then repeat, making sure each of your 4 tuners is brought to the top of the list, and thus that you get a recording from each tuner operating alone.

If that all checks out, I'd then want to try recording 2 shows at the same time, then 3. Are all simultaneous recordings bad, or is the first of the group (the one your wife deleted) ok, but the others are bad? Just try to get an exact set of symptoms.

[treads6464]

ok, I formatted my box, loaded win7 and npvr totally fresh. I went through setup and the very first thing I did after setup was switch on live TV. Works great. Then I go to change the channel. Box freezes. I have to ctrl alt del to close her down and open again.

I saw a post called "I'll give up" and agreed with it. NPVR is just not functioning how it should for people who have used gbpvr for years. I want to use it, it is great looking but I need it to work and I need it to work easily just as gbpvr did.

I attached the logs. Please let me know if you see my problem. As this is my last day on medical leave from surgery I want to get this to work or I will go back to old reliable. Thanks for any help you can provide. Sorry, its just very frustrating.

[johnsonx42]

I understand your frustration, but for a large portion of us NPVR works as well as or better than GB-PVR ever did (I'm squarely in the better camp).

I advise you to try a different Mpeg-2 Video decoder. It looks like you're using the MainConcept decoder. Try the Microsoft DTV-DVD Decoder, or if you have an ATI card, download/install the AVIVO pack and use the ATI MPEG-2 decoder. I find both work pretty much perfectly.

Also, set your AC3 audio decoder to disabled. For analog, you only need the Mpeg-1 Layer-2 audio decoder set.

edit: you can also go with Hoborg's SAF 5 - see the sticky in the Wishlist forum. He's spent a good bit of time tuning his filter pack and it seems to work well for many.

[treads6464]

I tried the other decoders and even tried the filter pack. On a good note, I test recorded 3 things at the same time and the video all turned out fine. Unfortunately I still freeze up when I try to change channel.

Any ideas?

I am wondering if it is a matter of horsepower because up to now this machine has been running xp and I just loaded win7. It is an older machine so I am wondering if just the resource hogging of win7 is what is stalling things.

Thanks for your help and understanding. I appreciate the help....if the channels would change I think I'd be set. Its gotta be perfect for the wife.

[Reddwarf]

I tried the other decoders and even tried the filter pack. On a good note, I test recorded 3 things at the same time and the video all turned out fine. Unfortunately I still freeze up when I try to change channel.

Any ideas?

I am wondering if it is a matter of horsepower because up to now this machine has been running xp and I just loaded win7. It is an older machine so I am wondering if just the resource hogging of win7 is what is stalling things.

Thanks for your help and understanding. I appreciate the help....if the channels would change I think I'd be set. Its gotta be perfect for the wife.

Exactly what cpu/ram are you running?

[treads6464]

Just to note, if I hit back, the program (shown as not responding) in task manager will eventually go back to the main menu. Ususally takes about a minute. Its like its hanging up on something to change the channel.

[treads6464]

Athlon 64 4000+ 2.41 Ghz
2 GB ram