New Hauppauge pre-release drivers

[groover km]

I've blown out the OS, re-formated the HDD and installed Windows XP Professional Media Center 2005 SP2. Took out all the PVR-150 cards out.
Made sure all the chipsets were current with drivers and AMD Processor driver for XP current, LAN also.

Wow. have you tried clicking your heels three times as well?

[chewy747]

Any reason in particular that you mentioned CBS? The reason I ask is that is the one channel that records the worst on my system. Both my GBPVR machine with the PVR150 via A/V cables from cable box, and my backup machine with the original WinTVPVR-PCI card as a tuner.

mine too! it also doesnt look the best on pbs and hbo, though all the others look great

[UncleJohnsBand]

Could it be some kind of PCI related thing, causing corrupt/truncated data to be received from the card? If the PCI bus is really slow (or saturated) you might be able to get a few of the transfers across complete, but the cumulative effect of each packet being delayed could possibly result in corruption if it goes on long enough? Just a theory.

If you experience it, can you please list:
1) What motherboard you are using
2) How many PVR-150 cards you are using
3) What other PCI cards you have installed
4) If you are using a SATA hard drive

That was my guess.....I noticed when I first installed the PVR-500 there was some sort of PCI Stearing driver installed...I assumed it has to do with the dual tunners on the PVR-500.

Here is the info you requested:

Motherboard Name MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (MS-7025)
1 PVR-150
1 PVR-500
No other PCI cards installed
Serial ATA Western Digital WD500JD

I am by no means a hardware egg-head.....but I am wondering if the way my cards are registered on the PCI bus may cause a delay which in turn causes an invalid internal timeline.

Attached is a shot of how my PVR150 and PVR500 show in my hardware manager. Notice that the PVR500 actually rides on top of the PCI bus that the PVR150 runs off of. Could the communication be experiencing a delay hoping from the PVR500 to the PVR150?

Also attached is a layout from my motherboard manual showing how the PCI bus and interupts are setup...currently I have my PVR150 in slot 5 and PVR500 in slot4. Could I benefit from moving the PVR500 to slot1 perhaps?

Attachment-1
Attachment-2

Any input or thoughts appreciated.

I wanted to supply an update.....I did move my tunners around and made sure my chipset drivers were up to date. I downgraded to older drivers (2305). Recording quality is better but I am still experieincing periodic invalid timelines.

Anyone have any ideas?

Here is some info from another post about timelines that I am logging in:

Glad it worked for you. mencoder is a real gem.

The 23035 drivers can be found over at shspvr.com. ftp://ftp.shspvr.com/download/wintv-pvr_150-500/inf/

I don't know when they were released but the time and date there shows Feb 8 2005. I've only had one problem with them. Just one channel has strange audio - voices sound kind of robotic. It's rare that I record from it though, and given I've never had a single timeline issue since I switched to these, the benefit far outweighs the annoyance.

Others have said that the 23025 drivers also work well, but I haven't tried them.

Thanks....I am going to give these a try and see what happens....

I recorded for 2 hours with all 3 tunners running with a total of 8 different shows and all recorded without a problem....no bad timeline....sound is fine and white balance is fine.

Update: I ran another 2 hour batch of recordings....two recodings ended up with a corrupt timeline. Interestingly they both had the exact same length of recording reported and they were both during the same timeslot......one was recorded on the 150 and the other was recorded on one of the PVR500 tunner. The other PVR500 tunner recorded its show during that timelost without issue.

[groover km]

Based on various suggestions and ideas from here and other posts, this afternoon I have rolled back to the 23025 drivers, moved the card to PCI slot 1, and crossed my fingers... we'll see.

[UncleJohnsBand]

Based on various suggestions and ideas from here and other posts, this afternoon I have rolled back to the 23025 drivers, moved the card to PCI slot 1, and crossed my fingers... we'll see.

I just loaded them as well....I'll see what happens. I belive that the 23025 drivers are 1 or 2 release ahead of what I had loaded when I first installed my PVR150's (prior to my PVR500) back in the begining of 2005. I know the orginal ones I have on CD are dated at 10/2004....this may or may not be the 22316 drivers that are available at the link....but looking at the contents they are dated 11/2004 so my original ones may be one more back then the 22316 drivers.

All I know is that I never had this problem with my original drivers and since I had to change drivers and add a PVR500 at the same time I need to keep trying to narrow the problem down to either being a driver or the introduction of the PVR500.

[groover km]

My typo: The drivers I have rolled back to are 23035, not 23025. Still, I'm gonna give 'em a whirl.

I agree with you, when I first installed the card in Dec 04, I just used the orange install disk and IIRC never had a problem with timelines at all. If the 23035 drivers suck as well, rolling back to these is my next plan.

After that, I might just buy a vcr - my blood pressure is beginning to demand it!

[groover km]

Regarding it being other than a driver issue, that's what I said in this thread:

http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php...#post82362

I don't know what drivers you are using - hauppauge's revision numbers are in the .35's; there are no .45 drivers for the PVR-150....?

Personally, call me old fashioned but I'm not willing to accept something that works 'some of the time'; why would you put up with it? Even if I was gonna tolerate it, my family won't. It's crap like this that keeps me in the office fixing files, reencoding, updating, yada yada yada.... instead of just using it and enjoying it.

I don't understand about building a new PC with loads of specs either.... what's that got to do with this thread?? If you have no working, reliable drivers, you can build PCs 'til the cows come home, and it isn't gonna make a bit of difference.

<I've been uninstalling, reinstalling, rebooting, trialling, all day. I am in a bad mood and my pvr-150 is top of the sh*t list>

[UncleJohnsBand]

Do you really think it's a driver issue? So much drivers out there none seems better then the last. With the driver dated 9/2005 2.45.2335 I think.. All I know picture quality is excellent, but now and then one or more recordings get timeline errors. I've tested 1 by-it-self no problems, with 2 timeline problem on a small scale. Say 5%, with 3 cards 10% and 4 cards 15%.

Right now building a brand new PC another AMD 64 overclocked will install MCE 2005 SP2, 60GB OS, 300GB DVR, 1GB DDRAM and all 4 PVR-150 cards with 500W PWR. I am going to stick with the 9/2005 drivers, update all VIA chipsets..

Could be that it simply has to do with the number of tunners and the number of things being recorded at once....this would lend to be along the lines of PCI bus congestion or even hard disk write congestion perhaps.

[sub]

If someone can produce a small clip less than 50MB that shows this problem, and PM me a download link, I'll see if I can find someone at Hauppauge to ask about it.

[groover km]

Tipstir - mebbe I didn't mean to direct my frustration directly at you. It's not gbpvr, either, as I am pretty sure that isn't causing the problem.

You know what I had installed last night? Moxi DVR from charter. Because my wife's shows keep screwing up - she says I am like a movie projectionist; she watches tv, I sit in the office with the pvr keeping everything going. I use gbpvr for movies, stuff like that - she uses it regularly for all her 'shows'. So the easiest solution was to give MORE bucks to charter so at least she has something reliable that's fit for the lounge.

All because - IMO - hauppauge can't get their sh*t together for long enough to produce drivers that give good video + good audio + correct time structure. That's all I want, but it seems to be I have to pick two.

And may I suggest the MVP was handled the same? If it wasn't for sub/ gbpvr releasing the full potential of it, THAT would probably be at the back of a closet somewhere. Think about it.

Hauppauge - you are officially off my christmas card list.