Crash on playback/fast forward

[tsangc]

Hi folks,

I'm hoping maybe you guys can help me. I was one of the folks who early on had an eHome Wonder installed in a EPIA 800Mhz board. I think I helped supply some of the GraphEdit links for the ATI board, as it was pretty new.

Anyways, I'm really happy to see GBPVR now has support for the eHome configuration, but after finally fixing up my hardware, I've found the eHome isn't giving me any trouble, it's the rest of the system

The configuration:

Intel D810E2CA3 motherboard w/P3 733Mhz CPU
256MB RAM (PC133)
ATI Rage Pro PCI w/Video Out (Onboard video disabled)
ATI eHome Wonder
Maxtor 20GB 7200 RPM disk
Windows XP Pro, with .NET runtime, DirectX 9C

I understand this is a minimal configuration, but my goal is to be able to record and playback like a glorified VCR. A remotely settable, 20 hours at low quality, networkable VCR. The PVR features (pausing live TV, rewinding live TV) aren't really important for me right now.

The system seems to download the EPG without problem, and record just fine. In fact, this works perfectly. CPU load while recording is roughly 5-8% and the files can be viewed on another computer.

With no activity, the system has about 67MB free physical memory.

The problem is playing video back. When I playback a TV show, it plays for a few seconds, but the minute I wiggle the mouse, it seems to crash (Windows reports GBPVR is trying to shutdown and I get a dialog).

I'm using the Cyberlink 5.0 decoder. Using Cyberlink itself is no problem, it plays back the record show files without trouble. With GBPVR off, the playback CPU utilization is 60-70% and there's no trouble.

The video card is a PCI Rage Pro with has a video output. It is using the stock embedded Microsoft Rage Pro driver for XP, which is recommended by ATI.

I've tried a few settings, including the using VMR9 and Overlay for playback.

Any ideas as to why the program is crashing? Is it the old video card? Lack of CPU power? Misconfiguration?

Thanks for your help in advance!

Calum

[Huw]

Any chance you can increase the amount of ram, this could be your problem, because GBPVR is .Net based, it can consume large amounts of memory. for just recording/viewing recordings your processor should be able to cope, it is only really LiveTV that requires a bit more oomph.

[tsangc]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your notes. The drive is an 8MB cache version, so while small, it's the same family as the 60 or 80's (just less platters).

As for RAM, there are two DIMM slots on the board. I'll have to do some digging for some higher density DIMMs.

Do you folks think the unit is running out of memory, while fast forwarding?

Calum

[hvcpvr]

I would say the video card is your biggest problem. When I first used gbpvr I had an athlon 750 with a TNT2 video card. When I updated the video to a radeon 7000 the system was much improved. Your system is borderline for running gbpvr. You need more power and ram for this program when watching video.

[tsangc]

So I played with some MPEG2 DVD software decoders with varying success: It seems the program only borks when I fast forward. Actual playback works fine, I watched my show for a good 10-15 minutes. I will try adding some more memory.

[tsangc]

I doubled the RAM to 512MB but the same error occurs. Now I'm suspecting the video card, but I'm running out of ideas. Maybe I should just buy a Hauppauge 350 and be done with it?

[tsangc]

I replaced the video card and motherboard with borrowed equipment. An AIW128 AGP went in place of the RagePro and now fast forwarding works fine, albeit it stutters a bit due to lack of CPU (I had to use a slower CPU/Motherboard combination--only 400 Mhz)

I guess my next purchase is really a PVR350 or a faster motherboard/CPU used somewhere. Is the PVR350 the preferred way to go for playback?