WinTV HVR 1600 dual record problem not QAM

[malore]

I'm having trouble with my hvr-1600 recording analog (cable) and digital (OTA) at the same time. When I manually tested it, everything worked great. It wasn't until the new season started that I noticed there was a problem. It appears that when the analog tuner is being used, either starting at the same time or already in use, the digital tuner doesn't start/work correctly. A file gets created at the correct start time but it's a zero length file and after a few minutes a new file is created and the show records fine from that point on, but I've missed the start of the show. I caught it doing this and played the show in SageTV Recordings at which point it immediately tuned in and started working, but the first part was still missed. I have another analog tuner, so my quick fix was to change the tuner merit so that both of the hvr-1600's tuners are less likely to be used at the same time. When the schedule allows, I could also try padding digital recordings to start early to see if that helps. Anyone else have this problem or know of a solution?

[impro]

I think I have the same problem.
When I change a channel from svideo to a digital I get a black screen.

[malore]

It's pretty obvious when it's not recording since the file size stays zero and something seems to catch it within a few minutes. Any ideas of a sage.properties setting to make it catch the problem sooner?

[jjstok]

I'm getting a similar problem but none of my analog channels will tune. They did before on my previous card and the digital signals tune properly. I just get black static on the analog tuner.

[waynedunham]

This doesn't sound good. I was just looking to see if the HVR could record analog and digital simultaneously.
I rarely have overlaps/conflicts that my 6 tuners (2 PVR-500's and an HDHR for QAM) can't resolve. Then I have to lose the padding on some recordings in order to have enough tuners, which means I miss the beginning/end of some programs since the networks haven't figured out how to tell time yet.

[malore]

Further testing seems to indicate the problem is caused by my HDTV Wonder and not by recording analog and digital at the same time on the 1600. The key to getting them both to record at the same time seems to be to have the HDTV Wonder start recording before the HVR-1600 starts recording.

[kdeaton]

Malore,

I'm having this same issue, and I only have 2 HVR1600's. No other tuners. Problem seems to be only w/ one of the 2 HVR's.

[malore]

Originally Posted by kdeaton

I'm having this same issue, and I only have 2 HVR1600's. No other tuners. Problem seems to be only w/ one of the 2 HVR's.

Sorry to hear that. I've had some of the worst luck with multiple tuners. I bought 2 pvr-250s a week apart and ended up with 2 different hardware versions, which I found out from personal experience and the forums are difficult to get to work together. Hauppauge's tech support helpfully let me know that they didn't support the use of multiple tuners in a single computer. I eventually got them both to work only to have one of the tuners die a year later. A while later I added a ATI HDTV Wonder without too much trouble. But then I bought an ATI TV Wonder 650 and of course couldn't get it to work with the HDTV Wonder. ATI's tech support gave me the expected zero help, because they don't recommend using the two cards together. So that card went back to the store. I had been amazed at how smooth installing the PVR-1600 had went and all the initial testing worked. It wasn't until the new season started that I found out that once again I had a problem. The good news for me is that taking a little bit of care with the scheduling seems to solve my latest problem.

[jjstok]

kdeaton - When I set up my two 1600s, I assumed one would share the incoming signal with the other. Obviosly they didn't so I had to split and run a coax to each cards digital input. Not sure if this pertains to your situation.

I read one post where someone was trying to daisy chain them thinking the top plug was a pass-through and connected it to the other.

[kdeaton]

Do you think the problem w/ missing the 3 minutes is driver or Sage related? There's an entry in the sage.properties that I'm wonder if it would fix the issue. Something about max encoder time out (sorry, I'm at work, so I can't look it up)?

[kdeaton]

jjstok- I've got it wired correctly and it works. Just seems to get confused when trying to use the analog and OTA tuners at the same time. The issue is exactly like Malore described in the original post. Also, I know its not a problem w/ HDD throughput since I've got four SATA II's and I've forced each tuner to write to its own HDD.

[mikehender]

I am having the same problem. I can't record analog with the hvr-1600. I have a PVR-150 that works great on both of my STBs but for some reason I can't even get the HVR-1600 to give a preview image on setup. The QAM portion works fine by itself of if I have both tuners installed. If I remove both sources from the card in sage and add just the analog I still can't see anything. I am submitting a service ticket with sage support. This is driving me nuts. I have never had problems with my PVR-150 and have been using it for 2 years.

Any Ideas. I am about to send this card back to Sage.

[Djc208]

My HVR-1600 never set up well, especially the digital QAM setup. Getting the channel to appear was slow at best and other times just didn't work. But after setup I had no issues.
Most times I don't need the setup window, but with QAM I was trying to determine which digital channel mapped to what cable guide channel. It took a little while but once through setup it records flawlessly.

You might try finishing the setup as is and see if you can watch video normally. You can always make a list of the channels and map them later.

[Lathe]

I am having a similar problem to what is described by some folks here. I installed a Hauppauge HVR-1600 in a new build. I have the QAM working fairly well (although I may have some performance tweeking to do on recording and playback.) However, it is the analog tuner where I have trouble. Every once in a while I can get the analog to work ok briefly, but it always starts getting worse when I use it and change channels, and especially after switching back and forth between analog an digital tuners.

I had a PVR-150 MCE that was working fine for analog tuning in a different box. I tried taking that and installing it in the new build as well, removing the analog tuner on the 1600 as a source in Sage, and using the 150 there instead. However, I am having the same problem with that setup.

I'm trying the free trial of Sage right now ... it would be a lot more appealing if I could get things working better.

Additional info: I also have trouble tuning analog on this box using the Hauppage Win-TV software, and Windows Media Center.
This new box is running Vista 64 bit.
Other devices tuning analog from the same cable are fine.

If anyone has any ideas what to look at/tweek/test/whatever to get past this, I'd appreciate it.

I've been reading through older posts on this forum, as this is my first visit, and will continue to look, but this is the first one I've found that has seemed relevant to my problem.

Thanks for any ideas.