HAUPPAUGE hvr 1600 playback choppy

[dc9mm]

New here just installed trial version of sagetv. PC is windows xp pro service pack 3 P4 3.0 1 gig ram 2 120 gig hard drives.

Have 2 hauppauge hvr 1600 cards and one pvr150 card installed. Both live tv and recorded play back on the HDTV channels is choppy like its losing frames. Iam using an antenna so its ATSC over the air HDTV. Playback direct through my TV its perfect so its not an issue with my signal strength.

I know there are choices for decoders and such BUT what works best with the Hauppauge 1600 card using ATSC ????

Live TV for the analog cable is fine, nice and smooth so its a digital HDTV problem only. Or is it related to the bda multiplexer setting. Not even sure what that is. Iam kinda new to this stuff.

[Opus4]

One of the first things to check for stuttering playback is to make sure the drive where recordings are saved has been formatted using the recommended 64K clusters.

- Andy

[dc9mm]

Ok but i get this choppy play in live TV mode. Is Sagetv using the hard drive at this point. If i paused live tv of course it would be recording to hard drive but in livetv mode without pausing the show is Sagetv recording to hard drive?

[Opus4]

Live TV is simply a currently recording show that you happen to be playing. BTW: This is covered in the Watching Live TV portion of the SageTV Quick Start Guide, found in chapter 2 of the PDF manual.

- Andy

[dc9mm]

I think my problem is solved. I was having choppy play in GBPVR also only on over the air HDTV plus in SageTV. I did a search on google for choppy play with 1600 card and found on beyondtv forum another guy who solved the choppy play by getting a new decoder called NVIDIA® PureVideo. I have a nvidia geforce 6200 card on this PC. Well that fixed it. To bad i have to pay 20 bucks for it. on 30 day trial now. Should come with the video card but doesnt. I did try all the available decoder choices under the detailed setup in SageTV but non gave smooth play with the HDTV except this nvidia one.

Unless someone here knows about another decoder thats free i guess i gota cough up another $20. Plus its only sold to US people so if your outside the US you cant get it. There was a discusion about that on another forum.

I didnt realize there was a pdf manual. I have sagetv on a computer hooked only to my tv (has internet too but its not comfortable to use for that) and i use another PC to go online to this forum and try and find answers on my questions. I have to transfer that pdf to this computer and read it. Thanks.