TV/recording freezing, driving me crazy!

[Talkie Toaster]

Hey everyone

Been using NextPVR and various others for a long time now, recently bought a Hauppauge WinTV Dual HD tuner and ever since I have been losing my mind.

No matter what back end or front end I use, the TV or recording, or both, will just freeze - when this happens my mouse will also freeze for about 2 seconds, when it unfreezes I can navigate the menus and EPG just fine but I have to restart the app to get it working again. I am on a legit current build of Windows 10 (10.0.15063 build 15063), I have even reinstalled Windows 10 (10.0.15063 build 15063) and made sure all drivers and software installed are totally up to date, I have disabled selective powering off of USB, disabled sleep and whatever else in the Windows Power Profile options, not running any firewall/AV software either. This happens with NextPVR, WinTV 8/8.5, Plex, Kodi and anything else I have tried.

5930k
MSI X99A SLI Plus - all up to date
16GB DDR4
GTX 970 SLI - up to date drivers
SSD and a couple of HDD's - tried installing and setting buffer to all drives, no success.

If someone could help I'd appreciate it, I'll try to keep the logs updated as and when it crashes.



Cheers

[Talkie Toaster]

I forgot to add I have tried 4 different aerials, all high up, in and outside of the window facing the huge tower about 2 miles away, where all the other house aerials are pointing - signal seems strong with little to no artifacts the majority of the time so I'd be surprised if it was signal related.

[gEd]

Hi there and welcome.

Sounds to me like some sort of interrupt conflict.
can you move the tuner to a different slot?
Do you really have 2 x 970's in SLI? If so, maybe take one out to help isolate the problem.
check the windows event log when it next happens, just in case.

You say "little to no artifacts the majority of the time", which is not the same as no noticeable artifacts ever. Are you sure you have a good connection from the cable to the tuner? Cheapo Y splitters can also be problematic if they don't provide a tight hold on the connector as can sharing the aerial between multiple devices.

[Talkie Toaster]

Thanks for the reply, it does indeed seem like some kind of interrupt - I was running the windows performance recorder to try and match up a process with the timestamp of the TV crash but so far have been unsuccessful.

The tuner is USB, I have tried in all slots with no success, I have also updated the USB and motherboard chipset drivers to no avail.

Yes, a pair of 970's in SLI but in applications such as this only one card is ever utilised - I can definitely try disabling SLI though and remove a card for the purpose of testing.

Yeah some channels are better than others, but the vast majority of the time the picture was clear and all seemed to be well tuned in at the time of the crashes. Are you aware of any signal strength monitors I could try? I downloaded one from the Hauppauge website but it says it can't find a device when I try to launch it.

[scJohn]

Do you have the same problem when running the WinTV program? Just trying to isolate the problem (software or hardware).

Is this plugged into a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port?

In the past with USB tuners, not enough power to the port and/or the USB device overheating have been problem areas.

You might also want to look at any USB related settings in the BIOS settings or available updates for BIOS.

[gEd]

Yep, the op says it happens with wintv as well so it's not a nextpvr issue. I never had much luck with USB tuners so gave up on them years ago but I believe that others run them fine.

Maybe sent it back and get a pcix card if you have a spare slot?