Problem using 350+250 with SageTV

[sudipto]

I just setup a new machine with SageTV and am using a 350 and a 250 card in it. The multi-tuner setup doesn't seem to be working right and I was wondering if anyone here had any information on what might be wrong.

Before going ahead, here is the configuration of the machine I am using

- Athlon XP 2000
- ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
- 512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
- GeForce3 Ti200 w/64MB DDR VRAM
- 2 x WD200GB HDD
- WinTV PVR 350 with driver ver 1.17.350.2183 (latest from Hauppauge)
- WinTV PVR 250 with driver ver 1.17.350.2183 (latest from Hauppauge)
- I Have NOT installed WinTV2000 app, but I have WinDVD 5, nvDVD 2.55 installed. I also have installed the latest Hauppauge software MPEG2 decoders.
- SageTV version 1.4.10
- Windows XP Pro with SP1A
- DirectX 9.0b


With this setup, I can view live TV and record fine thru the 350 card; however, both live and recorded TV thru the 250 is completely messed up. The video is extremely blocky, full of stutters and there are a bunch of green and red lines at the bottom of the screen. However, this happens ONLY when the 250 is used IN CONJUNCTION with the 350. If I remove the 350 card out of the system, the video (both live and recorded TV) thru the 250 is perfect.

I have used a bunch of different recording settings (between 1.5GB per hr to 5.4GB per hr) and that seems to make no difference at all.

I see a special "Sage.jar" file mentioned in the troubleshooting section which is supposed to fix some multi-tuner issues. Anyone tried this yet ? I have already e-mail "support", but if anyone knows where to get this updated file, I might try it out sooner.

Thanks for any feedback about this problem !

[sudipto]

Anyone ?

I would really really like to know if this is a known problem, and if so what the solution is before the Thanksgiving weekend starts ... so that I can finish setting up my system, and actually start using it

[mikejaner]

I think it has to do with the drivers you are using. Ever since I upgraded from the 21177 drivers to the 2183 I started getting those same blocks etc on my networked client, which worked fine with the previously mentioned ones. I noticed with both cards in the system and with both separated across the network, even if the interface to sage crashes, they still both record, so you can wait till you aren't recording shows to restart it. Hopefully all of this gets fixed in SageTv 2.0

mikejaner

[sudipto]

mikejaner: Thanks very much for your reply and suggestion ! Do you know where I can find the 21177 drivers ? Or if you have the drivers with you, could you please e-mail me a copy ?

I picked up the drivers from SHSPVR here (direct link to drivers) which I *thought* was the 21177 versions, but when I went ahead and installed them, they still show up as driver versions 1.7.390.2183 under device manager !

At one point I did install the drivers from the Hauppauge CDs. I did try uninstalling them and re-installing the 21177 drivers, but that is not working for some reason

Can someone please suggest me a step-by-step way to get the 21177 drivers installed.

[mikejaner]

Run HWClear.exe from the install cd, to take out the old drivers etc.
Then install the 2177 drivers and apps from the cd etc...
mikejaner

[sudipto]

Thanks Mike ! I have followed the driver removal instructions at SHSPVR and have now successfully installed the 21177 drivers (device manager reports driver version 1.17.270.21176 dated 6/25/2003).

However, my main problem is still not solved As long as the 350 is present in the system, the output of 250 is EXTREMELY blocky and the bottom part of the screen shows green noise

If I remove the 350 from the system, the 250 works just fine. I have tried various combinations of PCI slots and nothing helps.

Now, I must mention that this is NOT the fault of SageTV in anyway. I see the exact same problem if I run the Hauppauge WinTV2000 application as well.

If anyone else here is successfully running a ver 16 250 card with a ver 15 350 card, I would be VERY interested in hearing from you.

[sudipto]

This same discussion is going on in my other thread titled "Where can I find the Hauppauge 1.7.21177 drivers for 250/350 ?" and I have posted some detailed information there, but since the title of this thread is more appropriate for this problem, I will post a quick update here.

After following the manual initialization steps mentioned by carlgar in his post "Possible initialization problem with multi-tuner cards", the problem with the 250 output is fixed temporarily ... i.e. until the next reboot.

[sudipto]

I tried the custom INF file sent by SHS and unfortunately that didn't fix this problem ! I still see the blocky video and noise at the bottom of the screen from the 250 output

However, the initialization method suggested by carlgar still works; so if I first set the recording quality to 0.75GB/hr and then restart SageTV and set the recordong quality back to 5.6GB/hr, then the output from both 250 and 350 are fine ... until the reboot of the machine.

Guess I'll have to live with this until Sage works this out with Hauppauge and comes out with a solution

[dkardatzke]

I've been working with Hauppauge on the problems a few of you have been experiencing running a PVR-350 with a PVR-250. Were still working on some of the issues but here's a temporary workaround if you experience any problems with the video output disappearing from the PVR-350:

Disable SageTV starting in Full Screen mode on Startup and shut down SageTV. Go into Device Manager, right click on the listing for the 350 (Encoder/Decoder) and hit uninstall and then reboot the system. When Windows redetects the card and reloads the driver it brings back the video out option. Then you can restart SageTV and the output should be back.

[carlgar]

This work around did nothing for me. I always use the "Do not load at startup" option. I first tried this using the 1.17.390.21283 drivers from Hauppauge. After rebooting and reinstalling the 350 driver and starting SageTV I started my standard recording of 3 programs to check quality. The 250 cards were still problems as I expected. I still had no TV out from the 350. I then decided to try to disable the TV out option and then reenable. After the disable I restarted SageTV and attempted to view one of the programs being record. SageTV went into 99% CPU usage for at least 10 mins. before I killed it. I restarted and tried again, same thing. I then reinstalled the shspvr drivers and retried the above patch again no effect seen. I did reenable the TV out option. The only sign of life I see is when Sage is coming up the color bars appear on the TV. The above work around does not address the issue that win2000 outputs to the TV just fine. I saw that today with both versions of the drivers I have tried. When I get another block of time I will do more testing but do not have much hope for above work around. Would like to know if anyone sees a correction from the work around.

[sudipto]

Call me a coward but it seemed too risky to me to go ahead and use the v.15 350 + v.16 250 solution given so many problems. I still had the 350 under return with full refund period, so I didn't chance it and went ahead and returned it and got a second v.16 250. I should receive the 250 sometime today and will try out the v.16 250 + v.16 250 solution this evening.

I am really sorry for those of you still seeing this problem, and having gone thru this situation myself I perfectly understand how frustrating this can be. I really wish Sage works out this problem with Hauppauge and a solution is found soon.

[bboldschool]

I too have had this problem..but I am using a Haup. usb2 for my second tuner...and works fine...but I am wondering if using a different brand of tuners..such as provideo or adaptec will help solve this problem in the meantime...anyone have experience with these two other tuners..sorry I posted this question over the holidays but got no response so brought it back to life tonight..in another post....