PVR500, Sigmatel 9200, Dimension 9100: Keep losing sound.

[timm5]

Hi there,

I've been troubleshooting this one for around a month now!
Basically, I keep losing the sound on my onboard Sigmatel (STAC) 92xx (9200) HD High Definition Audio while using a Hauppauge PVR-500 (PVR500).

The short story: I believe the issue is between the HP PVR500 (even PVR150) drivers and the STAC9200.
Basically, from boot, sound working, open SageTV sound working, but if you change channels, or View Channels on Channel Setup, etc, eventually you would lose the sound.
The sound would be lost until you rebooted, or reinstalled the sound drivers.
I installed an old Creative SB128 for the time being, and no problems since.


It has be a very long arduous affair, so some of the things I tried may have been forgotten.
Nevertheless, for those who might be experiencing the same issue, or for those who have resolved similar HD Audio issues, here is the long story:

1) I think the issue first started happening with MediaPortal, so I switched to SageTV and bought the software b/c the issue went away.
2) Then the problem was occuring with SageTV.
3) Upgraded Sound, PVR500, Graphics, SageTV, BIOS, DirectX, etc: no joy.
4) Reseated PVR500, researched issue: no joy.
5) Nothing in Win Event or Application Logs to go for... which is interesting.
5) Tried different audio / video codecs / decoders: no joy.
6) Built a fresh WinXP O/S on another HDD, added video+sound drivers, then PVR500, SageTV, etc: same issue.
7) Went back to original O/S, tried older versions of Sound, PVR500: no joy.
8) Borrowed friend's PVR USB2: Sound remains when switching channels!
9) At this point I knew it was b/t the STAC 9200 and the PVR 500 so I added a PCI SB128: no more problems when using PVR500.
(Although if I had another "known good" PVR500 I would love to try it to see if the problem still exists or not).

- - - - -
But anyway, here are some of the errors I get as soon as the problem occurs:
A) On the SageTV GUI itself:
There was a Playback Error in playback. Details:
sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-5,0x80040256): There was a problem rendering the audio portion of the content for playback.
sage.PlaybackException: Error (-5,0x80040256)

B) (From the Sage debug console)
Fri 3/3 19:39:54.971 DShowPlayer setVideoRendererFilter0({CD8743A1-3736-11D0-9E69-00C04FD7C15B}) called
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.063 DShowPlayer setVideoDecoderFilter0(SageTV MPEG Video Decoder) called
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.352 WIN32 FAILURE HR=0x8000ffff FILE=.\PlaybackGraph.cpp LINE=79
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.352 WIN32 FAILURE HR=0x8000ffff FILE=.\PlaybackGraph.cpp LINE=91
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.353 DShowPlayer setAudioDecoderFilter0(SageTV MPEG Audio Decoder) called
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.372 DShowPlayer setTimeshift=1 buffer=16777216
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.408 NATIVE Loading the source file
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.409 NATIVE Setting up the MPEG demux
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.436 NATIVE RenderAudio called
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.436 NATIVE RenderAudio step 1
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.436 NATIVE RenderAudio step 2
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.436 NATIVE RenderAudio step 3
Fri 3/3 19:39:55.436 NATIVE RenderAudio step 4
[GC 28034K->25908K(34380K), 0.0063628 secs]
Fri 3/3 19:39:56.299 Exception from line: 579
Fri 3/3 19:39:56.300 VideFrame had an error loading the file. It must abort the
file load.

C) (After the issue occurs, using DxDiag to troubleshoot
DirectSound test results: Failure at step 3 (DirectSoundCreate): HRESULT = 0x8878000a (The request failed because DirectSound resources, such as the priority level, were already in use by another caller.)


SageTV: 4.1.10.81

O/S: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519)
Sys: Dell Dimension 9100
M/B: Dell 0x8582 (Intel 945P? Chipset ICH7R)
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A02
Proc: Pentium 4 - 3.00GHz (hyperthread)
Mem: 1 GB RAM
DirX: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
.NET: 2.0.50727
Java: 1.5.0_06

Video: ATI Radeon X850 Series (256 MB), driver 8.231-060221a1-030895C-ATI (Catalyst 6.3)

TV Card: Hauppauge PVR500 (Chipset 23559 rev D291), driver 2.0.35.23348
TV Card Drivers tested: 23074, 23258, 23285?, 23297?, among others...

Onboard Sound: Sigmatel STAC 9200 C-Major HD Audio,
Sound driver ver: 5.10.0.4823 (from Dell 16/11/2005) (also tested previous Dell 5.10.0.4568)
I also tested Intel driver 5.10.4866 (3/13/2006)
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scri...ng&prdmap=2063

More info:
http://www.sigmatel.com/products/pca...k/stac9200.asp
(same sound chip is used on new OptiPlex 210L)
To troubleshoot video/audio codecs, tried new O/S build on another HDD.

Hmm... thats about all I can think of for now... I'll edit this post if I think of anything overnight.

Any advice, or similar issues with High Def audio issues with either a PVR150 or PVR500 would be great.
So far it feels like I'm the only one! ;-)

Tim

[timm5]

The above was a nightmare.
I basically installed an old Creative SB card I had lying around to get me past it.
However, I thought I would follow up to say that I've recently reinstalled my O/S due to several combined issues.
So far I have SageTV working with the above setup, no CreativeSB added so far...
FYI. Not that anyone replied with same problem. Thus... may have been very obscure. :P

[timm5]

just logging on to research build3 of my PVR. :-/
almost forget how to do alot of this stuff now! ;-)
Just wanted to conclude that in the end the solution was to rebuild the O/S.
i was rebuilding it for other reasons, and noticed that it fixed the above issue with the built-in HDaudio chipset.
So, something, or I must have, screwed up the codecs somehow... which seems hard to fix, let alone understand! ;-)