Avermedia M780 Analog tune crash FIXED!

[Graygeek]

Looks like Qian at Sage has worked magic! My M780 now tunes analog cable without crashing SAGE. Tuning seems much faster and has been flawless for last few days.

He has asked I post the fix for users here until next beta release.

Shut down Sage then rename the MPEG2DUMP.ax to MPEG2DUMP.ax.old to keep copy of original just in case, unzip the attatchment file and put the new modified MPEG2DUMP.ax in the SageTV/Common folder.

[kricker]

Qian sure can do wonders! I wonder what this does for QAM captures if anything?

[sundansx]

graygeek,
with what m780 drivers are you using this file? I am going to try the .29 drivers from the Avermedia site...
thanks.

[Graygeek]

currently running .19 drivers, this seems to be a good solid driver fro ATSC & NTSC. I tried .29 beta but went back to .19 .... overall I've found .19 to be very stable.

[sundansx]

I guessing that this fix did not make it into the 6.4 release?

[donkey]

not in 6.4 release, it will be in the next beta.

[SJL]

This is fantastic! Thanks Graygeek, this should be the last piece I needed to get my Server 100%. Everything works really well, but I did have the occasional crash and hang when viewing through my Extender. Logging into the server showed there was a crash and that Sage was restarted, but it happened just enough to lower the WAF. IMHO, the m780 has a far better analog picture that the Hauppauge 250 or 1600 that I used, I'll have to link to my post about my build with two of the m780s. If things work flawlessly now, I'll add another extender and a 3rd m780.

[Graygeek]

SJL,
Looking forward to your post. My M780 has been perfect on analog with this patch.... am currently playing with a second M780 in my server. I agree it is an excellent card for analog. And is as good as my Fusion5 for ATSC. Keep us posted on how things go with two M780's! Are you leaving your server on 24/7? I'm trying to run with S3 sleep when idle. Had a few bumps but it seems to be smoothing out.

[BFisher]

I don't use M780 analog tuner... I use the digital tuner and the SVideo input (DirecTV STB) on both of my M780s (using v19 driver). This fix appears to have fixed the same issue I had with the SVideo occasionally causing Sage to crash. I've only been running it for 2 days, but so far, no issues! (to be fair, it was only an issue maybe once a week or less... but the good news is that it hasn't broken anything else and appears to be working right... for anyone on the fence about trying this).

[chums]

The fix worked great on my system. I don't see the SageTV send crash report when checking on my server. Keep up the good work.

chums

[SJL]

Hey Greygeek,
Sorry I never saw your reply, my son arrived only a few days after this post, so I've been a little swamped... Now that we've reached the "sleeping all the way through the night" stage, a few things can return a little to normal (at least until teething ). I linked to this thread from my original server post of my build, I have had both cards running using both tuners 24x7 (while I want to save electricity I didn't think I'd gain too much vs WAF and stability trying to suspend the server), all has been extremely stable. I did see a new driver was released via Windows update for the m780 as well, hesitantly I allowed the update and while I didn't see any improvements, the system remains rock solid.

[kricker]

Originally Posted by SJL

Hey Greygeek,
Sorry I never saw your reply, my son arrived only a few days after this post, so I've been a little swamped... Now that we've reached the "sleeping all the way through the night" stage, a few things can return a little to normal (at least until teething ). I linked to this thread from my original server post of my build, I have had both cards running using both tuners 24x7 (while I want to save electricity I didn't think I'd gain too much vs WAF and stability trying to suspend the server), all has been extremely stable. I did see a new driver was released via Windows update for the m780 as well, hesitantly I allowed the update and while I didn't see any improvements, the system remains rock solid.

What version are the drivers from the update? Are they for Vista or XP?

[SJL]

For Vista, Device Manager reports 2.5.0.29, they must have gone from beta to release.

[kricker]

Yeah, Felix at Avermedia told me those would release. On the Avermedia ftp site though they have a folder called "BSOD fix" and the drivers in it are .30. they are the ones I am currently using (at least partially).

[Graygeek]

I tried to install the partial "BSOD Fix" version (.30 drivers) like Kricker, but I got careless and fully installed the .30 beta drivers under XP Pro. They seem to run fine and I've had them running for better than a month. One diff between my setup and Kricker's is that I'm running Over the air ATSC and he is doing QAM, maybe that accounts for my ability to run the full .30 under XP. I do still have an occasional JAVA error when the system resumes from S3 sleep to record ... Sage Service simply restarts immediatly and all is well. I had this issue even with the .19 drivers.

UPDATED: Once I updated to SAGETV 6.5.3 the JAVA error went away! Now the M780 runs flawless!

[SJL]

...The other issue I posted in my Vista build but doesn't have anything to do with Vista specifically is the PCIe bus speed. When I first installed this card, As soon as I went into Sage to configure it, Sage would immediately crash. Searching the web, I came across a post somewhere (can't find where or I'd give credit where it was due) that mentioned the m780s were extremely particular about the PCIe bus speed. My BIOS had a default setting of "Auto", which was for the board to try and overclock it if it thought it could. After changing this setting to 100 Mhz (the default bus speed), the card was accessible in Sage and I just had the issue with this card that this thread resolves.

[BFisher]

I'm still running .19. I see the Avermedia downloads section has .26... but I see .30 mentioned here

In XP, using OTA antenna - is it worth upgrading to .26? or go to .3? And if it's .3, where do I get it from?

My issue with the M780 is that if I'm recording both digital (OTA) and analog (via DirecTV STB) on the same card at the same time, the analog recording gets partially scrambled. It sometimes fixes itself after a minute, and sometimes it doesn't... The Avermedia site doesn't give much detail about what the improvements are...

Thanks!

[doncote0]

The other issue I posted in my Vista build but doesn't have anything to do with Vista specifically is the PCIe bus speed. When I first installed this card, As soon as I went into Sage to configure it, Sage would immediately crash. Searching the web, I came across a post somewhere (can't find where or I'd give credit where it was due) that mentioned the m780s were extremely particular about the PCIe bus speed. My BIOS had a default setting of "Auto", which was for the board to try and overclock it if it thought it could. After changing this setting to 100 Mhz (the default bus speed), the card was accessible in Sage

I am glad that worked for you, but it should not have. Unless you are under some weird overclock motherboard setting that I do not know about, motherboards try to set the PCI-E to the default or (AUTO) setting of 100 (or approximately 100).

Expensive SSD's can be physically damaged from straying too far from the default (AUTO) setting, so I doubt that a motherboard manufacturer would allow the PCI-E to automatically overclock.