How do I: PVR 350 only...no sound card

[Deadbolt]

Please help me anyone who knows this problem...

I have a PVR 350 and no sound card. How do I get Sage 1.4 to not care if it doesn't find the audio decoder when playing live tv or a recorded show? All I want my vid card for is OSD...sound and video decoding will come only from 350.

Help much appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Deadbolt

[stanger89]

I think you just pick the 350 as the audio decoder in Detailed Setup -> Audio. I'm just guessing here though, I don't have a 350.

[Deadbolt]

There actually is no 350 audio decoder other than the "Intervideo non-CSS for Hauppauge" that comes with the PVR cards (I also have a 250 in the box). There is an audio render called "DirectSound Device" ... could this be it? I will try it.

Thanks again!
Deadbolt

[justme]

If that doesn't work, I wonder if you could install a false audio codec. One that says it accepts the encoded stream but fails to actually decode and pass it to an audio source. I'm not sure if such a faux audio codec exists but it should work. I know a similiar faux video codec has been talked about to get around a bug when just using the PVR350's video output.

You would think someone has done something like this before, and it should be very easy to prgram since you aren't actually rendering anything. You can't be the only person who doesn't have a sound card. In the end if no one on this board can help youi, you might want to contact Frey with a support request. I not sure this falls into that category but if all else fails it's worth a try.

Worse case, maybe you could go out to a used computer store and get the cheapest used card they have. You may never use it but it would be a reasonably priced workaround. I've seen them in boxes for as little as $1 at my local comp. store.

[phenixdragon]

I am running the 350 on my main TV and I tried both the CODECs you mentioned and they work flawlessly; they did not provide a difference to my ears.

Maybe you have an issue with your sound card and or driver. All my systems run the new ASUS Mini ATX board with the onboard RADEON 9200, so I am also running the drivers off of the CD for the onboard audio. Even the digital coax is sending out sound perfectly.

[justme]

How does that apply to his situation?
Quote from first post:

I have a PVR 350 and no sound card. How do I get Sage 1.4 to not care if it doesn't find the audio decoder when playing live tv or a recorded show?

[phenixdragon]

Hmm…..good point.

How about "Sounds like a CODEC problem or a driver problem to the 350 (ie the sound portion of the card)"

[phenixdragon]

Which OS are you running? What mobo are you using? How many free slots do you have?

Personally, I would try to reinstall the 350 drivers and SageTV. Maybe even go as far as to uninstall SageTV, reboot, uninstall 350, reboot, install the 350, reboot and then reinstall SageTV.

You might even have to swap to another PCI slot. I know some sound cards have issues with certain PCI slots. This happened to me when the SB AWE Gold the best card; it wouldn’t play sound on the lower PCI slots. It was something I never heard of so when I called Creative Labs they had me swap it to an upper one and it worked. The tech said that some mobos have issues with sound cards on the bottom slots. I would suspect this could be the same type of issue where another PCI slot will work.

You may want to even contact Hauppauge and maybe your mobo manufacture. They may be able to give you some ideas.

On a side note, DirectSound is a CODEC that comes with Windows.

[Deadbolt]

It plays fine out the soundcard or the 350 when a soundcard is installed...I get the error when I don't have a soundcard and try to play through the any shows. It won't even play just video (since no soundcard) through the video card. The 350 has nothing to do with it...if I take the 350 out and also leave out the soundcard I still can't play any shows through the video card.

Deadbolt

[phenixdragon]

Hmmmm…well this is different then what you first said. What type of video card? Which OS are you running? Have you tried to reinstall everything including all drivers?

[justme]

I wonder if Sage is even capable of what your ask in the first post. Since almost everyone has a soundcard and it is neccessary for certian SageTV features like DVD/Music playback, it's possible Jeff never anticipated someone wanting to do want you want. Many people run the audio output of their PVR350 into their soundcards audio input and then run their soundcard's audio out to their TV/Amp. Or simply just run the soundcards output to the TV/Amp and leave the 350's audio outputs unused. This setup is far more versatile(especially if you want DD5.1) but not what you want to do(if I understand your posts). If you just want to record and watch TV using the 350 you don't need all that.

You might want to contact Frey with a support request letting them know what you want to do. They could give you a definitive answer on whether it's possible and, if not, you could at least request that Sage2 allows this kind of setup. I see no reason(in principle) why Sage should try to stop you from doing this(as this error effectivelty does). It just shouldn't be the default setup. A setting could be added in the audio codec setup like suggested by one of the earlier posters.

Anyone out there with a PVR350 willing to pull there souncard to see if this is just the way SageTV is setup?

[wr202]

Take a look at my post from a month and a half ago:
"Is it possible to use the PVR-350 without a sound card?"
http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...&threadid=2369

I had the same question. Dan did respond and said that it should be possible, but I wasn't able to get it to work.

The problem is that Windows will give an error when no audio decoders are found. It does the same thing when you try to play an mpeg2 file in Windows Media Player. I don't think there's any requirement in the SageTV software itself to need an audio decoder. I tested SageRecorder and it can record (but not play) without a sound card. Since SageTV and SageRecorder work through Windows to play the audio, they need the audio decoder. I also posted my idea there about using a dummy audio decoder, but I haven't been able to figure that out yet.

If playback could be completely disabled on the monitor, then this wouldn't be a problem. Since SageTV 2 will do PVR-350 GUI OSD, I think this will be possible soon, so I'm not too worried about figuring it out now.

[Deadbolt]

Justme - exactly what I was thinking. I'll probably just use my soundcard for all....I just didn't want to if I didnt' have to because it uses a PCI slot that I would like to use for a NIC

wr202 - Wow! Exactly the same problem! I hope 2.0 addresses it.

Thanks again all, I'll let you know what I find out....
Deadbolt

[ErsatzTom]

I ran into this problem on my server a while back. Before I upgraded the MB I had no sound card. I don't watch tv from the server so it was no big deal but I wanted to be able to see the video while I was adjusting the capture/encoding parameters. It was a no-go for the reasons mentioned above.

t