Not getting picture with Live TV - Sound OK

[harker]

Hi,

I am going crazy here.

I had everything working on GBPVR for a while there.

I have a Dvico FusionHDTV (Dual Digital 4).
Sound Blaster Live! Value (CT4830) card
Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 Graphic Card
Celeron 2.4Ghz machine with 1 gig ram
Window XP Home with SP3

I converted to GB-PVR after months of using MythTV but having it stop working.

It's been a long journey of trials and tribulations getting AC3 Pass through to work on my sound card.

Anyway, now I cannot get a picture when playing live TV. I get sound and it tells me what channel I am not but no picture. I can get a picture and sound with the FusionHDTV application just not with GB-PVR.

So some things I have done which may affect it.

I had trouble with teh creative drivers not detecting my card. So to rule out any error witht he PC (which is a bit old) I swapped slots with the tv card. This didn't work. It turns out the sound card had some wired in settings that meant it could only work with special OEM drivers.

So anyway, I swapped them back just to see if that was what caused the problem.

I have uninstalled that drivers, reinstalled them. Uninstalled the the FusionHDTV program jsut in case it was intefering with GB-PVR. Nothing seems to work.

I also played around with some video rendering settings in GB-PVR and kinda can admit I didn't really know what they were.

So here's my current settings

PVRX2 Video Renderer: VMR9 Fullscreen Exclusive
GBPVR Video Renderer: Overlay Manager

Mpeg-2 Playback
Video Decoder: System Default
Audio Decoder: AC3 Filter (only way to have pass through work)
Audio Renderer: System Default

Advanced Codecs
H.264 Decoder: System Default
AAC Decoder: System Default
HE-AAV Decoder: System Default

Aspect Ratio Control
Telivision Shape: 16x9

Live TV:
LiveTV pre-play delay 500 ms

This is the only section I have changed.

In the hope of restoring defaults I uninstalled and then reinstalled GB-PVR but it seemed to have the same settings.

Any help would be appreciated.

If you need more information let me know.

harker

[psycik]

Do recordings work? or are they similar?

It sounds like you're missing a video decoder at this point, an mpeg2 decoder

[harker]

I haven't gotten as far as doing a recoding.

Now that I have tried it my system locks up.

However there is no problem recoding using the Fusion HDTV application.

Gee if I could get the fusionhdtv system to import XML TV data i'd just use that. Seems no PVR is quite ready yet. Or maybe I just have a difficult TV Card for people to program for. Eh.

If you have any other pointers I would appreciate it.

[fuzzweed]

I vote for changing the video decoder too. Download this http://www.free-codecs.com/download/MPV_Decoder.htm
extract the .ax file from the release unicode folder somewhere sensible (e.g. c:\windows) and register it (run -> regsvr32 MPeg2decfilter.ax). If you put it somewhere other than the windows folder you'll need the full path though.
Change the video decoder from system default to MPV and give it a try.

[harker]

Ok so I think I was flying off the handle.

Currently I think an unrelated problem is occuring.

Trying to get my sound card and tuner card to work properly has had me install, remove reinstall, try other drivers etc so many times that XP doesn't like me any more. It was showing signs that it was getting... well confused.

As the OS is only newly installed I am going to start from scratch. Knowing what I need to get things going this should be cleaner. This way any lock ups can be truly attributes to hardware/software issues rather than driver craziness.

Will let you know if I solve the problem

will also use the codecs you suggest.

Cheers

harker

[sub]

I'd also suggest the video decoder. If a user ever has video related problems, then best first suggestion is to make sure they using a good video decoder (not "system default" and not a decoder that has been known to cause problems in the past).

Now that I have tried it my system locks up.

However there is no problem recoding using the Fusion HDTV application.

Gee if I could get the fusionhdtv system to import XML TV data i'd just use that. Seems no PVR is quite ready yet. Or maybe I just have a difficult TV Card for people to program for. Eh.

Its not so much that PVR software isnt there, its more that the fusion devices have crappy drivers. GB-PVR treats every DVB-T devices the same, regardless of the manufacturer, and the vast majority work flawlessly. If the device works well in the fusion app, but not other apps, then they've probably coded their app around the quirks in their drivers, rather than making rock solid drivers.

If the machine locks up, this is also a very good sign a driver somewhere in the system is at fault (waiting for a spinlock of similar). It may or may not be your fusion drivers though, could be sound card or other device.

[harker]

Yeah I definitely think there's sound card issue.

It worked in linux but I think there's some crazy stuff they do to the cards to block out certain functionality.Especiall this one, got it second hand but the more I read about it the more I realise it was meant for a compaq machine specifically. Seems Creative do some actual hardware encoding for the different models. May be causing the clash. Going to see if I can get a cheap second hand audigy instead. One that hopefully wasn't originally OEM. It's a bit frustrating because I don't see the point in paying $150 for a new one when all I want it to do is pass through the AC3 signal directly to my home theatre receiver.

Thanks will let you know how I go

harker

[harker]

Ok so I re installed the OS. Bought a cheap VIA Envy24 Sound Card with digital out. This was because the live card is seriously screwed in Windows.

Using the codecs you recommended things seem to be ok now. Besides a small sound issue where only DTS is being passed through. Dolby Digital is being downmixed.

Thanks for you help

harke