Problems with IR remote and multiple Hauppauge cards

[fbures]

I have been trying to solve this problem since my HVR-1600 went dead and I had to install an old PVR-350 into my machine to keep it going while the HVR-1600 is shipped for repair/replacement to Hauppauge.

Setup: PVR-500 and PVR-350, WinXP Pro, SageTV 6.0.19

Problem: IR does not work, IR restart returns "Failed to initialize infrared remote hardware".

Details: When PVR-350 is installed alone, or when both PVR-350 and PVR-500 are physically in the machine but PVR-500 does not have its drivers installed, the IR remote works. As soon as I install PVR-500 driver the IR remote cease to work. I tried clean installations in various sequences, doing HCWclear in between and such. All in vain. The only action the IR remote requires to work is to uninstall PVR-500 driver. Even reboot is not necessary. It does not matter if the drivers are on separate or shared IRQ's. The sole existence of an PVR-500 driver disables IR remote on PVR-350.

Versions: IR remote: both 32_245 and 32_251 behave the same
PVR-350 driver 250_118_23257
PVR-500 driver 150_27

There are no files missing as the only change required to make IR remote work is to remove PVR-500 driver.

I am at the end of my wits. I just connected a wireless mouse to the machine so that I can control SageTV from my chair while watching recordings. I can live with it I suppose till the HVR-1600 comes back but the problem still boggles the mind.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Frank

[Opus4]

The Hauppauge IR software can't tell that the PVR-500 has no IR port and keeps trying to use it. There is no good solution; see this thread for more of the discussion w/some possible work-arounds near the end.

- Andy

[Narflex]

This is a total guess but I'd try switching the slots the two cards are in. It may cause the devices to get enumerated in a different order. But they probably thought of this already in that thread.

[fbures]

Actually, I slept on it and the same solution occurred to me in the morning :-).
I put the PVR-350 in the first PCI slot, installed just PVR-350, verified that IR worked and then installed just drivers for PVR-500. IR is now up and running.

Thanks for your thoughts anyway.

Cheers
Frank

[Opus4]

The strange thing is, others have tried moving the cards & it didn't seem to help. I'm glad you got lucky.

- Andy

[hemicuda]

Now that I have a USB2 online, IR seems to work just fine. Guess it gets detected last in the sequence.

[dvd_maniac]

I really wish Hauppauge would fix this issue. I have one PVR-500 and a few USB2 tuners and it obviously doesn't matter which slot the 500 uses, I can't get the IR software to find the usb device first.
Everytime I reboot I have to go Shutdown Sage,go into the Device Manager, disable the 2 tuners on the 500, restart the IR program, re-enable the 2 tuners on the 500 and finally startup Sage again.
I guess I could write a startup script to automate this but I'd rather make sure the tuners are truely enabled and recognized by Sage

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

I have one PVR-500 and a few USB2 tuners and it obviously doesn't matter which slot the 500 uses, I can't get the IR software to find the usb device first.

I'm reluctant to ask this because I think we've had this conversation before... You'e tried the registry setting to tell the IR software to prefer the PVR-USB2, right?

Edit: Oh yeah, here's one prior time, but I don't see a respnonse about whether it worked. That probably wasn't the first time either.

- Andy

[fbures]

Originally Posted by Opus4

The strange thing is, others have tried moving the cards & it didn't seem to help. I'm glad you got lucky.

- Andy

Well, I was too hasty in celebrating. After reboot the IR was gone again. I had to go through the same disable-enable procedure as the DVD_Maniac. It is one major PITA if you ask me.
BTW, I contacted Hauppauge support about it I will report here if they come up with a solution.

Frank

[dvd_maniac]

Hi Andy,

Yes I tried the registry change and it did not work.
I also contacted Hauppauge on the matter as well and they said they are working on it but they are not sure if it will ever be fixed in future driver releases.(That was a while ago though)
Maybe it is only a problem for a small percentage of us...
But it's a BIG problem for a small percentage of us...

Maybe we should all call Hauppauge 3x a day for a week and pretend to be different people with this problem. Maybe then they would think that IT IS a problem and fix it?

[fbures]

This is the official response to my query from Hauppauge:

"Well our software doesn't support dual IR's. not sure if any others will
either. There is no way in the registry to tell it which card to
change...since all the signals are related to keyboard functions"

That about concludes the debate, doesn't it?

Frank

[Opus4]

For the simple case of having multiple IR ports active, you can do trial and error to determine which IR receiver is active. So, the issue isn't having dual IR ports so much as that their drivers aren't able to differentiate between cards that have the IR port and those that don't, or those that have an IR blaster port & those that have just an IR receiver. But, I've talked to developers there in the past & they know that this is the real issue. I don't know what the underlying issue is in the driver, but they don't seem to have a way around it so far.

- Andy

[JUC]

This is what i did to get it working...same/similar as DVD maniac however it will still work for me on reboots....

This is with PVR-150 and Roslyn

-Installed PVR-150 drivers. Verify blaster was working
-Installed Roslyn drivers (could be other 150/350 combo too). This automatically removed the IR blaster capabilities of the 150
-Disabled all Roslyn drivers (i think there were 4).
-This still wouldn't release the 150's blaster
-Disable the 150 drivers-i think this may be important
Reenable the 150 drivers. Blaster now worked!
Reenabled all Roslyn drivers...blaster still worked!

Juc

[dvd_maniac]

I think the best way to automate this is to use timeout.exe and devcon.exe from Microsoft.

Look at this thread here:
Multi Hauppauge tuners remote fix.

I am thinking of tackling it this weekend.