undocumented issues with multiple hvr-1600s?

[Ryokurin]

I have 3 hvr-1600s which are all of various vintage. Usually they ran without problem, with the exception of that if all three had shows scheduled at the same time one would always fail to record 5-7 minutes of the show. I had other issues over the summer of shows being skipped so I decided to step away during the summer break and try my system on windows 7 and mess with MCE. Now I'm back with sagetv but I think that I may have figured out a potential problem that people with multiple versions of the card may have, which may ultimately be the cause of the 5 minute problem in sage, and why some shows came out extremely corrupt in MCE.

When I formatted and reinstalled Vista I removed one of the hvr-1600s from the system and replaced it with a AVerMedia dual tuner, and used the windows update driver for the the two 1600s left. Usually the windows update driver works fine but I now recall that I tried it when it first was updated several months ago and had a problem with none of the tuners picking up any channels (resolved it by rolling back) Just like the last time none of the tuners worked, except now the new AverMedia card didn't work as well, so before I recalled the driver issues I had before I thought the new card was incompatible so I took it out and used a single tuner hauppauge card and for the heck of it format and try again. Same thing occurred, but this time, only the hvr-1600s didn't work. If I removed one of the 1600s then the new driver worked. To rule out the hard I had removed being bad I switched them out between the three I had, and they all worked fine, as long as they were the only one in the system. Put two, the 1600s stopped working. Three, all cards in the system stopped working.

This got me thinking, maybe hauppauge intentionally put in a limitation in the new driver on windows update to stop problems some people reported with corrupt/stalled recordings. Has anyone else experiences similar? I believe the windows update driver is from July if anyone wants to try it out.

[bcjenkins]

Just as an FYI - I run 3 cards in Linux no problem. Before you spend the money on new HW, you might consider a new SageTV license.

B

[doc]

I'm a bit sceptical about using windows update drivers as you never quite know what version you're going to get.

I'd go to the hauppauge website and use the latest drivers from there, and if windows update says theres a new driver I'd ignore it.

It might not make any difference but could be worth considering.

[Ryokurin]

I'm not trying to say its a license, or a problem with SageTV, It just occurred to me that if multiple people see that the latest driver prevents multiple tuners, then maybe it's due to some bug that Hauppauge found in the card, which may be the cause of corrupt/missing information that some of us see with this card.

If it is, then I'll just sell two of my old ones and get something else instead, or buy another license and build a system for someone else.

[Ryokurin]

Originally Posted by doc

I'm a bit sceptical about using windows update drivers as you never quite know what version you're going to get.

I'd go to the hauppauge website and use the latest drivers from there, and if windows update says theres a new driver I'd ignore it.

It might not make any difference but could be worth considering.

In general, they are the same driver. I'm not for sure off the top of my head if the current one is the one posted on the hauppauge site currently, but I do know that the older one that they had on windows update was the same driver on the hauppauge site a year or so ago. Again I'm just point something out that may be worth investigating.

[bcjenkins]

Sorry, I wasn't clearer. I am suggesting that prior to replacing hardware to get to the desired tuner level; a look at SageTV's Linux software might be in order. This would require a purchase of a separate/new license for the platform.

B

[Ryokurin]

Oh, that's cool. I wasn't trying to add more tuners, just replacing a card that had a loose atsc coax connector that I thought was causing a intermittent no signal problem I had recording some shows. I just stumbled into everything else after the replacement (which just happened to be a dual tuner card) failed in everything except its own software suite. I'm just not too worried about dropping all of the older 1600s since the AverMedia card is only around 60 bucks.