PVR350 owner that gets system lockup?

[jsouza]

Update: I installed driver version 22266 last night, but this made no difference. Computer still locks up about 1/3 of the time when exiting live TV or completing a recording.

[Huw]

jsouza,

what processor and how much ram is in your machine ?

[jsouza]

AMD Athlon 1.4GHz, 320M RAM (384M minus 64M for onboard shared memory video adapter)

I don't see how this should really matter, though. This to me is clearly a bug in the driver for the PVR-350, and not anything to do with the hardware specifics of the host machine.

[Huw]

I am using a PVR-350, on my current set up I get no lockups whatsoever, so don't see it as being a driver issue, when putting tegether my htpc, I tried 5 different motherboard/CPU combos, any CPU I tried that was 1.3Ghz or less had the same problems you are getting, the ones I tried that were over 2GHz worked flawlessly, I didn't try anything between 1.3 and 2, but my conclusion was the lower power cpu's just couldn't hack it with the pvr-350, they all crashed either when exiting LiveTV or when changing channels. Those were my conclusions anyway

[jsouza]

I don't think that's it. When I had the 22170 driver installed, my machine would lock up at random times several times per day. I then installed driver 22254, and that problem was solved. So that was definitely a driver issue. Now, my machine still locks up occasionally, but only when exiting live TV or completing a recording. I think this is one more driver issue that they have yet to fix.

If it were really a speed-related issue with the host computer, I would think that I would experience things like choppy sound or video when watching live TV or playing back a recording. That is not the case. The card functions very well in the machine. I just have this one remaining lockup problem that I wish Hauppauge would fix. I wonder if Hauppauge even reads this board?

[sub]

jsouza is correct.

[Huw]

The behaviour does not necesarily imply that it is a bug in the hauppage drivers, it could be and is more likely a conflict with something else on your system. Have you tried using a seperate video card, most of the problems I have read about with the 350 were generally related to conflicts with onboard graphics chipsets or 3rd party codecs, or maybe try a different version of your onboard vga drivers.

Why should Hauppage read this board ?
Have you filed a bug report with Hauppage directly?

[sub]

Yes, it is a bug in a driver. I've used a system debugger to break into a system when it has the problem. It's stuck in middle of the driver code which deals with OSD.

I've talked informally with Hauppauge about the problem. The Sage guys have also talked to them about it. Unfortunately this was nearly eight months ago, but I dont think the hardware decoder is top of their priority list. Remember, the decoder was only used in one product (PVR350), and has been dropped from all the products that came after it.

Hauppauge dont use the PVR350's OSD so have not come across the problem. Its only really GB-PVR and SageTV which really see the problem, but I dont think either of us have a relationship with Conexant who supply the drivers and originally wrote the decoder and OSD drivers.

[Guest]

What about this? Suppose I accept that I can't use gbpvr for live/paused tv (for now, until I get around to buy a new mobo). Could I use a hybrid setup? For example use wintv2000 to watch live tv, but use gbpvr to record shows? What I want is the xmltv-style of programming recordings. It would be a lot easier/more fun than using the stupid scheduler from hauppauge.

What troubles can I expect? Can I run recordingservice at the same time wintv2000 runs? For now I can live with not being able to use IR with gbpvr, would I just have to make sure wintv2000 starts before recordingservice to ensure that gbpvr doesn't hog the remote? =)

Is there a command line option to start gbpvr in the program guide mode, so that I never see any of the other stuff? I'm viusalizing a shortcut on the desktop saying "record show" or something, that would take me to the part where I can program a recording...

Hope I'm making sense.

[sub]

GB-PVR doesn't use the remote, so you wont have a problem with that.

You can use the -tvguide command line parameter to go straight to the tv guide.

If WinTV2000 is running when GB-PVR needs to perform a recording then the recording will fail, so you'll need to be careful to only run wintv2000 when no recordings are due.