HDPVR Setup Help

[Ron]

I'm continuing to have weird issues with the HDPVR and Sage. I'm able to do channel preview, when going to setup sources screens in Sage. I can select any channel, and the preview window pops up and plays from the HDPVR. But when I try to go to the program guide, and select a channel to Watch Now, I'm getting a playback exception error.

I've had sporadic problems before, and it seems to be hit and miss. Is there any kind of simple, step by step, HDPVR setup guide that I can use. This tuner is very frustrating, at times.

Thanks,

[SWKerr]

Do you have any problems recording or playing back recording or is it just the live playback that is the problem?

Also: What is the Video card, OS, etc and have you set the Arcsoft codes in the detailed setup?

[Ron]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

Do you have any problems recording or playing back recording or is it just the live playback that is the problem?

Also: What is the Video card, OS, etc and have you set the Arcsoft codes in the detailed setup?

I'm totally reinstalling Sage, so I haven't gotten to playback of previous recordings yet. When I try to watch tv, I get Error(-3,0x800700005).

O/S is Vista Ultimate 64 bit. Video card is GeForce 8600 GTS. For the HDPVR, I'm still using driver 1.0.5.301, as I previously had problems with the latest drivers. In detailed setup the H.264 Video Decoder Filter is set for the ArcSoft Video Decoder.

I'll try a system reboot after sending this reply, and see if that's of any help.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Ron

I'm continuing to have weird issues with the HDPVR and Sage. I'm able to do channel preview, when going to setup sources screens in Sage. I can select any channel, and the preview window pops up and plays from the HDPVR. But when I try to go to the program guide, and select a channel to Watch Now, I'm getting a playback exception error.

I've had sporadic problems before, and it seems to be hit and miss. Is there any kind of simple, step by step, HDPVR setup guide that I can use. This tuner is very frustrating, at times.

Thanks,

It could be the video card in the computer. I tried swapping my "Gigabyte GV-NX85T512HP GeoForce 8500GT120 PCI Exp" card with an old cheap Matrox video card and ended up with nothing but playback exception errors, even though I am using extenders. I swapped the cheap Matrox card back to the Gigabyte GeoForce 8500GT, and the playback exception errors were gone.

If you are not using the 6.2, then you should try upgrading. The "H.264 Video Decoder Filter" option is not there in older versions.

Also, check "Setup", "Detailed Setup", "Video/Audio", "H.264 Video Decoder Filter" - make sure it is set to "ArcSoft Video Decoder".


Dave

[Ron]

Now I can't even channel preview through Sage. I must be missing something stupid.

The only playback I can get is through TME. Just can't get it through Sage.

I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks,

[SWKerr]

Do you have any codec packs etc installed?

Do the Arcsoft update. Are you using the latest version of Sage?

Change the Audio in sage to use to the Arcsoft HD as well.

For starters I would use overlay. Test EVR after you see it work with Overlay.

Also download graphstudio and drag a HD-PVR recording over to it and see what the default Directshow filters are.


I just installed a Vista64 setup without any problems but I am only using the client and have the ATI 790GX video. I have to turn off the the Hardware decoding in the Arcsoft options in order to get smooth playback. This may not be an issue with nVidia. I have two Nvida cards of that vintage that work fine but they are on Vista32 and WHS.

Hint:
One thing I always do is go into the "C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV" directory and change the security to allow full rights for all users. This probalby will have no affect on you problem but it will allow you to keep all the properties files in the sage folder instead of the windows virtual store. (It is a pain that Vista 64 will not let you change things in the Program files directory.)

[Ron]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

Do you have any codec packs etc installed?

Do the Arcsoft update. Are you using the latest version of Sage?

Change the Audio in sage to use to the Arcsoft HD as well.

For starters I would use overlay. Test EVR after you see it work with Overlay.

Also download graphstudio and drag a HD-PVR recording over to it and see what the default Directshow filters are.


I just installed a Vista64 setup without any problems but I am only using the client and have the ATI 790GX video. I have to turn off the the Hardware decoding in the Arcsoft options in order to get smooth playback. This may not be an issue with nVidia. I have two Nvida cards of that vintage that work fine but they are on Vista32 and WHS.

Hint:
One thing I always do is go into the "C:\Program Files (x86)\SageTV" directory and change the security to allow full rights for all users. This probalby will have no affect on you problem but it will allow you to keep all the properties files in the sage folder instead of the windows virtual store. (It is a pain that Vista 64 will not let you change things in the Program files directory.)

I'll give it a whirl, and report back here. No codec packs installed that I'm aware of.

Thanks,

[Ron]

No luck. Applied the Arcsoft updates for TME and the driver, made the Sage settings you suggested, and still get that playback error. Can't even do a preview in the channel setup wizard. However, TME works just fine.

I don't get it.

[davephan]

Try deleting the HD-PVR, and set it up again, without the IR Blaster from the HD-PVR. If you have a USB-UIRT, or some other IR device, try using that instead. If you don't have another IR device, select no IR device - you won't be able to tune channels, but you can test to find out if it gets rid of the errors.

I have not been able to get the HD-PVR to function yet when I try setting it up with the IR Blaster that is included with the HD-PVR. When I try using the HD-PVR blaster, I get recording errors. To avoid the recording errors, I have to use my USB-UIRT device to have the HD-PVR change channels on my set top box.

Dave

[Ron]

This is getting ridiculous now. Yesterday, I tried all of your suggestions, to no avail. So out of frustration, I restored my system (via Acronis backup) to Sat. morning, which was before I started to tinker with my system. All my tuners, individually, worked in preview mode.

Now I can't get one tuner to work in either the preview window or through the program guide. My tuners are HDPVR, HDHR and R5000, on a separate server networked to the main server.

Since I restored to an earlier point, I'm not using the Arcsoft latest drivers or the latest TME. But I can't, for the life of me, figure out what action is causing it to not work. I guess, step by step, I'll undo the networked R5000 tuner, and try to troubleshoot one by one.

Very frustrating.

[mr_lore]

For me, when dealing with touchy hardware like the HD PVR the only way to fly is to start from scratch, format your box, remove all tuners, install windows updates, drivers, etc. Get a clean no tuners attatched base setup without sage or any codecs installed, image it, then start adding stuff, HD PVR first, then sage....etc...



But then again I'm the kind of geek that gets anxious if my machine hasnt been formatted in a while and starting from scratch and trying to get the perfect build is more fun than chore.

[Ron]

Problem solved. It was an advanced permission setting on Vista, in order to allow shared drives to both be read and written to. Having previously had my Sage server connected to an XP machine, I did not have to deal with the type of permission options available on Vista.

This took me many hours to diagnose, in that I restored my system back to the time I knew everything worked, and then methodically went step by step to determine at which point I was getting the capture error message. Turned out that the drive I was trying to write to only had read permission but not write.

[briands]

Originally Posted by Ron

Problem solved. It was an advanced permission setting on Vista, in order to allow shared drives to both be read and written to. Having previously had my Sage server connected to an XP machine, I did not have to deal with the type of permission options available on Vista.

This took me many hours to diagnose, in that I restored my system back to the time I knew everything worked, and then methodically went step by step to determine at which point I was getting the capture error message. Turned out that the drive I was trying to write to only had read permission but not write.

Well, I hoped this was my problem as well. I am trying to get the HDPVR working on my new WHS installation and keep getting errors when recording. Previously I was running Sage as a user named Sage with full permissions. I changed it to run as Administrator and I thought it was good to go, but after a short time the errors started flying again. Still working on it.

I'll post back if I ever get it working.

BTW, my ATSC110 and HD homerun work fine, so I guess it does not make sense that it is a file permission problem.