Lockups with 2.2 and a WinTV 350

[ViriiGuy]

Hello all,

I am really really new at this, only got my system working today.
But as a little background, I am Senior Technician for a computer
company in Nova Scotia.

Ok for my system, I am uning a ASUS S-Presso barebones, with a
3.0 P4, 2x512 Kingston PC3200 Ram, an 80 gig SATA Western Digital
hard drive, The WinTV PVR 350, and a 9200 SE 128 meg video card.
The video card is soon to be removed, and I will use in onboard Intel
Extreme 2.

I VERY often have lockups with the system while watching tv.
The picture will just hang up, and the audio goes silent. Sometimes
I can change channels a few times and get it back. Sometimes, I
actually have to close and reopen the program.

General rule of thumb, if I can access the menu, then changing
channels will fix the problem. If not, it truely is locked up.

My system temp is a fairly constant 48 degrees c and the CPU is
50 degrees c. So I do not think it is an overheating problem.
The OS is windows XP Pro with all the express install updates. I
have installed the latest video and wintv drivers. The only other
software running ont he system is the control panel for the video
card, the control software for the front panel of the S-Presso
case, (Boy how I wish someone made a plugin for Sage to use the
front buttons) and the WinTV IR software. And of coarse Sage TV.

Does anyone have any idea why I keep locking up?

Thank you,

Viriiiguy

[laurenglenn]

I used to remember my system locking up with the PVR350 due to heat issues on the PVR card itself.

One way to solve that was to lie it on its site as if it were a desktop case and to leave the lid off.

Mine used to always lockup in the summer. I can't tell you how many times I would get home from work in the summer and see a dialog box on the screen saying that the video card stopped sending data, or it would work until I was playing video for 30 seconds after I got home....

Either leave the lid off or get a very good case fan to blow cool air on the PVR 350....

Lauren

[ViriiGuy]

Thanks for the reply,
I will take a couple fans home with me today and try that.

I think I can hook up a nice heatsink and an 80MM fan to the side
of the PVR card. That should cool it right down.

Thank you,
Randy

[1972]

I experienced the same problem a you have (350, SageTV 2.2.7, SageMC as STV) and I have a cooler (40 mm) mounted on the Hauppauge but that did not solve this....

[Crashless]

A system temp of 48C is kinda high. You should look into getting some more ventillation to your case.

The 350 chip runs VERY hot, and there seems to be a 'critical temp' where things get really crappy. My case temps used to be like yours, and I added a couple of PCI slot coolers (one directly over the hauppauge card) and I stopped having mid-show lockups. Now I only get End-of-file lockups, which can be avoided with a quick finger on the pause button.

Try getting a slot cooler and putting it on the 350, that should kill 2 birds with one fan.

[ViriiGuy]

Ok,

Well I have added a chipset cooler to the 350, as the S-Presso does not leave hardly ANY room for anything else. I have checked and the 350 is not even warm to the touch.

I took the system to my shop today so I could monitor everything closely...

Here are the results,
I ran the system for 8 hours, no tv output as I do not have a tv at the shop, so instead I full screened it on a LCD monitor. The system ran without a single hitch, no hang ups no glitches. I even very quickly scan thru the channels and no lockups.

I bring it home, plug in the tv, power up the system and start to watch the simpsons. BAM 10 minutes in the video hangs again and the audio cuts out.
So I rip the system apart and check the 350, nope it is cool as a cucumber.

The chipset on the motherboard is a little warm, the exact temp is 49 degrees C. But while at the shop Without the TV out hooked up, the chipset reached a temp of 54 degrees and never once locked up.

I do intend on on adding a chipset cooler tomorrow, but I cannot for the life of me understand why the chipset could run a full 5 degrees higher and not lockup. So I really do not think the Chipset is the problem. IT has to be in the PVR card. however, like I said the PVR is now running very very cool.

GRRRR This is frustrating, and to think I was actually considering selling these systems out of my shop. If I cannot solve this problem there is no way on EARTH I would attach my name to such a product.

Anyone have any other ideas? I see 1972 has the same problem and cooling did not fix his either.

Frustrated, upset and disappointed

ViriiGuy

[Crashless]

When you were running it at work, was the 350 out turned on?

if you were just using the GFX card out, that isn't using the 350's h/w decoder, which is the source of your problems.

I'm not familiar with the s-presso, what chipset does it use?

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but in my un-scientific poll of my memory, people with intel setups have had much worse luck than those with AMDs....

Sage is especially stable when using only the GFX card. The 350 is the source of your problems, not Sage in particular. It's actually fairly well discussed on these forums, so please do no think you're alone. It's just unfortunate that such a great decoder card has such major problems for some people. If you're thinking of selling Sage boxes, I gotta recommend you make them without the 350 for now, and go with either 250s or 500s. The 350 is just not ready for prime-time yet, but there are people working on it, I assure you.

[cummings66]

The trouble is the PVR-350 is not, nor will it ever be a completely stable card for all users. There are maybe one or two lucky dogs that actually run it with absolutely no problems, but most of us experience trouble.

The card simply put is an engineering disaster and the manufacturer owes us a fix. Call them up and explain the problem.

For what it's worth, I had lockups as you did, the fan pretty much fixed them, but I have other issues with it as well. Knowing what I know now, I would have never got this card and should have went for the 250 or 150 instead.

Do yourself a favor, do not bundle the 350 with any product you sell.

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by Crashless

I hate to be the one to tell you this, but in my un-scientific poll of my memory, people with intel setups have had much worse luck than those with AMDs....

I believe this statement is incorrect. I don't believe any intel setups encounter the end of Program problem. I believe that problem is only on AMD setups. Last year when I first got this Intel system I did encounter the end of program problem which I did report to Frey. At that time I was told it would be fixed in the Sage 2.0 release. When Sage 2.0 was released it did not correct the problem but a new driver release did correct the issue for my system. That was about the time I noticed that AMD users started have the end of program problem.

It may turn out that the current problem this thread is discussing may only be an intel setup issue. I do encounter the problem but can usually correct it within 5 minutes just by sleeping sage TV and then waking it up. I do not believe it is heat related but I cannot rule it out. I will probably have more to say about this problem at a later time. I am waiting to encounter the problem now to get my facts correct.

[ViriiGuy]

I have to finally agree with you guys, the 350 Sucks!

I went to my shop and picked up 2 80 MM fans, 2 more chipset fans. My system is now running at 31 degrees and there is no way the 350 can be over heating. I think it is just a lousy POS.

So you say the 250 is a better card? Does it perform well with recording?
I just hate to think that the card which has been touted as the best in the marketplace is this lousy!?!?!?!?

I have used a few of the USB winTV's in the past and never once had problems like this.

*Sigh* Live and learn I suppose. And no I won't be bundleing this lousy card with my systems. Unfortunately I have less than 2 weeks b efore the local tradeshow to get this working, or scrap it all together.

When I was running it at the shop, no the tvout was not on, so I suppose it is the hardware encoder. Which is the EXACT reason I chose this card. It was supposed to have such a great encoder. GRRRRRR.

Oh yea as for the chipset on the board, The northbridge is an Intel 865G and the southbridge is an ICH5.

Guess it is time to do more research,
thanks guys, this is just sooooooo bloody frustrating.

Randy

P.S. Sorry for my typing, I am a Tech not a Secretary

[ViriiGuy]

Just thought I would post this for all,

So far I have had the system running for 45 minutes now without problem.
What did I do? Did I change cards? Nope.

I disabled Hyperthreading in the bios.
So far so good. May not be the best fix, but we shall see how it works.
So for those of you dealing with these troublesome cards, you might wanna try disableing your hyperthreading as well.

Randy

[glbrown]

Originally Posted by ViriiGuy

Oh yea as for the chipset on the board, The northbridge is an Intel 865G and the southbridge is an ICH5.

Another data point. I have the same Intel chipset, 250 and an adaptec VideOh capture cards with a 9200 video card. No 350.

I had constant ff/rw and eof lockups just like you guys until 2.2 and now I don't get either problem now.

A few days ago, I changed from Intervideo to Sonic decoder and within 10 minutes, I was locked up. Back to Intervideo and no lockups.

I know I don't have a 350 but the decoder may play a part in your problems.

-gary-

[jphhughes]

As I recall Carlgar first reported the Hyperthreading problem. I suspect now that you have turned it off things may improve. Good Luck. I love the 350 the picture quality is beyond compare.

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by ViriiGuy

I disabled Hyperthreading in the bios.
So far so good. May not be the best fix, but we shall see how it works.
So for those of you dealing with these troublesome cards, you might wanna try disableing your hyperthreading as well.

While I expect this will reduce the problems I do not expect it to eliminate them. I could sometime run a couple of days without see the problem. I am still running SageTV 1.4 so you may have different results but I see is the following:
The TVout to my TV freezes, a moment later SageTV on my monitor also freezes but the time counter continues. I then put SageTV in sleep mode.
I then wake up SageTV and try to view the program again. At this point I usually see the following error:

There was a problem with time control in DirectShow.
Failed Pausing the DirectShow filter graph
ErrCode=0x8007045d

I then select OK and put SageTV to sleep again, I repeat this loop until I no longer get the DirectShow error message and everything seems to be OK again. I can usually tell when the above message will go away because I see a hiccup in the colorbars on my TV from the 350. This is why I do not believe it is heat related, I believe the hiccup is caused by the card somehow is correcting itself.
The above sequence sometimes can take upto 5 minutes to correct the problem.

You may encounter another issue with HT disabled concern the system task. After you finish viewing a program, if SageTV appears to be hung, check and see if the system task is using 99% of the CPU. I will usually wait a few minutes to see if the system task completes. You can force SageTV back into control by raising its priority to above normal and then restoring it after you start viewing your next program. I have noticed that if the system task is running it can prevent SageTV from starting a scheduled program recording on time. This is the main problem for me when I am running with HT turned off.

I have just started testing again with HT enabled, I have not seen the system task problem yet (only about 3 days testing so far). However, it does seem that I encounter the 350 stop issue more often and it seems more difficult to correct the problem. I have encountered this condition 3 times in about 4 hours tonight.

I do agree that this is probably just poor programing and should have been fixed a long time ago. Hauppauge has made progress with the 350 driver issues but the progress is much too slow. I have been fighting 350 related issues since Oct of 2003.

[ViriiGuy]

Aye,

It may not solve the problems, but so far it is working pretty well.
I ran the tv all night last night, and all day today with no lockups. But I am seeing a problem with the Audio synching. But my wife tells me that problem existed before I turned off HT.

I have as of yet found anyway to correct the audio synching errors. If I adjust the delay, it seems to do no good. It will synch up for a few minutes,
but then it is right back to being out of synch.

I am going to keep testing the system to see how long it takes for the system to crash, and when it does I will let you all know.

But so far so good. Now jsut to fix this bloody audio.

[cummings66]

When you're using the TV out on the 350 it's a complete hardware solution, the delay adjustment is for the software decoder and will not change a thing. You have run into the problem I have, and there is NO fix. NOTHING will cure this problem. I even swapped cards with Hauppauge and it didn't change a thing. I asked them if they knew of a motherboard that actually worked fine with it and they would not tell me one, I suspect there are no motherboards that are fine with it.

No, you have a problem card with the 350 that to my knowledge will never be fixed. Drivers can't fix a hardware design problem IMO. I own this POS card and I bought it for the reasons you did, the video output quality is outstanding, but on my Intel based system it's not very stable.

Personally, I think they owe us a new design for this card. How they can ignore the problems with it I do not know. As I said before, call them up and tell them the problems you have. PS, use the software they include because they won't do a thing for you otherwise, and the problem does exist with it as well. It's not Sage.

If you want a hardware only solution I suggest the 250 and maybe the X Card for output. Otherwise some of the newer NVidia cards are good for output, especially using DVI.
Is what you get trying to fix it. Here's what you can do to solve the problem. PVR-350

[ckron]

I can promise you that most of your problems are because of the Intel chipset. This is a well documented problem that has been discussed over and over in these forums. Most people with a newer Intel chipset have had problems like this. There are entire threads dedicated to compiling a list of chipsets that work with the PVR-350. I chose to buy a motherboard with an ATI chipset because Mike Janer had great results with it.Since switching to this chipset, I have had the same great results. If you really want to make the 350 work, you should switch motherboards.

Good luck!!

[dadams]

I have a 350 and never had the EOF lockups until my last upgrade to 2.2.7 I have a Chaintech NForce3 150 with AMD64 3200+, 1Gb of memory, and a 350. My card has been rock solid until now. The trouble is I was trying out the Sonic Codec via software encoding vs. the Hardware output of the 350 around the same time so I don't know if that had anything to do with it. The output of the 350 is definitely better on my system, but I wanted to watch my Divx videos without having to switch to a different input on the TV. The weird part is that if I wait the system will come back fine. In fact, if I hit the power button for Sage to go to sleep all I have to do is wait 30-40 seconds(which can seem like an eternity) then hit the power again and it's fine again with no problems. Does anyone have any guesses why the system slows to a crawl if I reach the end of a show? Like I said I have not had this problem at all in the past and have used the 350 for over a year.

[bartley9]

My 2 cents worth:

I have the lock ups but do not believe it is due to overheating. I can generate the problem repeatedly(Or rather my wife and children can!)

If you leave a video file to run to eof something goes into a loop. The CPU is being consumed by "System" task not Sage. If you leave it in a loop for too long it will lock up solid(Memory leak? who knows). I keep the task manager running minimised all the time and check it periodically. Normally I can clear the problem by just pressing "STOP" a few times. This causes the film to end and the cpu drops back to 5-10%. Sometimes it needs a power off and sometimes it just auto-reboots. Recording continues but it is choppy(due to sage being unable to get enough CPU to write all the data to disk, I think).

It just takes a bit of control, when the credits appear just hit "stop" and it should work fine. I have had my system running for upto 2 weeks until someone forgets...
I would rather it was fixed though seing as it is so repeatable.
PVR350 VIA EPIA1000M motherboard.

[mayamaniac]

another 350 thread...

A 350 owner here and probably went through every 350 thread and tried every solution on this forum and yet, my 350 still crashes. Can we make an end to all 350 questions thread and make it a sticky?

In my opinion, it is not a heat issue. If your system is extremly hot, then it just makes the problems worse. Cooling the system to normal temperature will reduce the problems, but it's still there. There were times where I left Live TV on for 24 hours and it ran without freezing at all. And to my knowledge, it never freezes when displaying the menu alone. All of the problems are caused by either skipping forward or backward and the end of file (EOF) bug. So basically, the 350 has problems handling skipping, especially rapid ones. Now whether this is due to intel/amd chipset or hyperthreading or not, I have no idea. Like most, I think the card wasn't designed or poorly designed and cannot handle the skipping.