Pausing Live TV causes reboots

[groo1887]

Wow I am very impressed with gbpvr. I have built a complete system in about 2 nights worth of work. Everything works except for pausing live TV

Here is my problem:
I hit the pause button on the remote control and the following message apears:
"Starting timeshift mode TV. Please wait."
So far looks normal. It stays like that for about 1 minute then my system reboots. No error messages nothing.

Here is my guess as to whats going on. gbpvr does not support the mpeg2 decoder on the VIA shipset (feature request as a result I am using software to decode. This boggs down the wimpy CPU. Pausing live TV requires simultanious recording and decoding which is too much for the CPU to handle. At some point something goes wrong and poof reboot. Any ideas?

Here is my setup
VIA SP1300
PVR-150
80W fanless power supply
160 Gig Seagate

[stefan]

I don't know what's causing your problems, but I have a comment anyway :-) The VIA does not have an mpeg2 decoder. It has an mpeg2 accelerator, which means that if you have a software decoder that supports the accelerator, the accelerator can help offload the cpu somewhat, not entirely, though. Maybe 10-20%. The cyberlink decoder is one that does.

[stefan]

This boggs down the wimpy CPU. Pausing live TV requires simultanious recording and decoding which is too much for the CPU to handle.

Here is my setup
VIA SP1300

No, your cpu is fine for this (I assume you mean sp13000 ). I have a VIA M10000, and it handles this scenario perfectly.

[capone]

There may be a real simple setting you have wrong, but in case that isn't it:

There are some VIA and MPEG conflicts. Read here near bottom of the page:
http://www.hauppage.com/pages/support/su....html#tips

Make sure you defrag, too. For laughs, you can also grab a free RAM tester and run it, and maybe run a HD surface scan. If you had a flaw in either (esp a glitch in ram), it would reboot unexpectedly.

Wait.....80w power supply? In case that's a typo, I'll say regardless that if you don't have enough power, a sudden spike in system activity would reboot you. I had a 230W supply on my 1st system. It was sensitive to power, and couldn't even handle the switch to a UPS if the TV was playing (and it's a plenty powerful unit). My new system has a 350 or 400, and it fixed all those problems.

[groo1887]

Thanks for the responses. I do have an 80W supply not a typo. I wanted to go for a silent system so I used a single voltage AC/DC adaptor (like the kind you would use for a laptop) and a DC voltage regulation board to generate the 12, 5 , 3.3...etc voltages. The board is made by Migrus. After taking a closer look I noticed that the AC adaptor is only rated at 60W yet the DC regulator board is rated to 80W. 60W does sound a little iffy to me.

I set up the system with a 200W supply 1U form factor ATX supply before I left for work and left it on for the day. I'll let you know if it reboots when I get back from work.

About the Via mpeg accelerator, I tried installing the Cyberlink codec (got it from the klite mega codec pack) but I could not get it to be default codec for mpeg2. I know this because every time i tried playing a recording using windows media player it complained about not having the codec. I ended up using a different codec (I think it was called Stinkys?) which came with an installer that set it as default. How do I change the default mpeg2 decoder so I can use the Cyberlink?

Thanks
Amir

[stefan]

After being installed, it should show up in the list of installed software decoders in gbpvr's config utility. I don't know anything about the klite, though. I use the one shipped with powerDVD...

[groo1887]

Ok I figured it out. After trying new power supplies, mpeg2 decoders, reinstalling windows, installing linux and mythtv (never got it to work quite right there isn't much support for the CN400 chipset yet) I figured out that it was the PCI riser card I was using. ARRRRRRR needless to say I smashed it with a hammer. I was using a Casetronic JM171 (ver 1.0) card.

After reinstalling windows and installing the WinTV software I noticed that the machine would still randomly reboot while using WinTV much like it did in GB-PVR. I took out the card and connected the tuner straight to the mobo and BOOM it worked like a charm, live TV pausing and no more random reboots.

Thank you GB-PVR, thumbs down to Casetronic.