HD-PVR Stops Responding ~Once/Day

[Skirge01]

My 2 HD-PVRs are hooked up to an Intel ESB2 South Bridge, which I believe is where the USB controller lies. Both have been working flawlessly for several months now.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by jerryt

I agree, but have not been able to reproduce lockup.

There are a few people here who can reproduce lockups by either opening the Arcsoft application and viewing video or by recording multiple channels and accessing the sage GUI.

So maybe the people who can reproduce these lockup could write a detailed process on duplicating the lockups. Then other people can help with the troubleshooting, like me...

By the way by my HD-PVR is on it's own enhanced USB controller !!!

I'm using a Starchoice DSR505 sat receiver (Motorola) via what appears to be a dedicated USB port (the only other thing in a USB port is a mouse). I can't crash the system on command, but if I open the Arcsoft app, and just view video, the system will eventually lock up, usually with a black screen inside the Arcsoft window.
It doesn't matter if the input audio was RCA or spdif. So in my opinion, Sage's software and the audio inputs don't appear to matter. However, the service dude at Hauppauge pointed his finger towards input signals to the HD-PVR as possible reasons.
That seems like bad design. Why not just have a buffer ram that soaks up bad video/audio for a few milliseconds until a stable signal hits?

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

I'm not buying the USB controller theory.

1) Rebooting the PC (without power cycling the HD-PVR) won't get the HD-PVR working again. You have to power cycle the HD-PVR.
2) Power-cycling the HD-PVR without rebooting *will* get things working again.

Some crazy interaction between the HD-PVR and USB controller = possible but not likely.

agreed . . . I have to power-cycle HD-PVR and then re-start Sage / Arcsoft to be able to record again. I don't have to re-boot the PC.

[tvmaster2]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

Then someone please stop sticking pins into a doll of my WHS/Sage server.

good one

[martin]

I tried jerryt's idea of clamping some split ferrite beads to the USB cables to filter out electromagnetic interference. Radio Shack sells them, but they don't have a store near me. I couldn't find any regular USB cables with a USB-A to Type B plugs in local stores that had ferrite beads, but I have lots of USB-A to Mini-B USB cables that have them. I pried the split ferrite beads off and put them on the Type B cables close the HD-PVR end. I wasn't able to loop the cable once through ferrite bead like the original USB cables they came from so I just let the wires go straight through (how much difference does this make?). I used duct tape to thicken the wire and prevent the bead from sliding.


I fired up my 2 HD-PVRs and 2 PVR-500 tuners to record all at once and one of the HD-PVRs got a halt error within two minutes. I seem to be able to record without problems using the two HD-PVRs concurrently, but if I record using all four tuners at once I get a halt within minutes. I simply unplugged the USB cable of the locked HD-PVR and plugged it back in to another port to get it working again. The HD-PVR recovered without cycling the power and continued recording the same program as when it failed.

The list of failed fixes continues to grow:

1. Do a clean install of the drivers
2. Revert to 1.0.5.301 drivers after using hwclear
3. Keep the HD-PVR cool
4. Don’t use SPDIF for audio, use RCA
5. Don’t use hardware versions earlier than E1
6. Defragment your hard drives
7. Lock component output to 720p
8. Use a NEC PCIe USB card
9. Filter power through a UPS
10. Increase Java memory
11. Isolate the HDPVR on its own physical controller
12. Use ferrite beads on the USB cables

[martin]

I forgot I also tried gplasky's firmware upgrade tip:

1. Do a clean install of the drivers
2. Revert to 1.0.5.301 drivers after using hwclear
3. Keep the HD-PVR cool
4. Don’t use SPDIF for audio, use RCA
5. Don’t use hardware versions earlier than E1
6. Defragment your hard drives
7. Lock component output to 720p
8. Use a NEC PCIe USB card
9. Filter power through a UPS
10. Increase Java memory
11. Isolate the HDPVR on its own physical controller
12. Use ferrite beads on the USB cables
13. Upgrade firmware running HcwDriverInstall.exe separately for each HD-PVR

[briands]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

My 2 HD-PVRs are hooked up to an Intel ESB2 South Bridge, which I believe is where the USB controller lies. Both have been working flawlessly for several months now.

You Fool!!! You have just tempted the VooDoo god of HDPVR... your setup will certainly fail soon.

[dead_ferrets]

Originally Posted by briands

You Fool!!! You have just tempted the VooDoo god of HDPVR... your setup will certainly fail soon.

ROFL. This made my morning...

I suddenly started getting daily lockups... this after a new (and 'proper') WHS/Sage install. Power cycling my STB seems to have brought me some stability... In my case this would lend credence to the video input signal theory suggested by Hauppauge.

[ewelin]

I will bite and say it's voodoo.... I tried everything... Only change on my system was reverting back to 1.0.5.301 drivers, but note the first time I tried them, they failed. It's now been 4 days without a lockup.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by ewelin

I will bite and say it's voodoo.... I tried everything... Only change on my system was reverting back to 1.0.5.301 drivers, but note the first time I tried them, they failed. It's now been 4 days without a lockup.

#2 suggestion on Martin's list.

[ewelin]

but the first couple times I tried that driver it wouldn't work at all... i would get a major stutter, but for some reason it worked this time.

[Chriscic]

Originally Posted by dead_ferrets

ROFL. This made my morning...

I suddenly started getting daily lockups... this after a new (and 'proper') WHS/Sage install. Power cycling my STB seems to have brought me some stability... In my case this would lend credence to the video input signal theory suggested by Hauppauge.

Can you elaborate on what Hauppauge said and where/when? Not doubting you; just that Hauppauge has remained frustratingly silent as far as I've seen.

Update on my own system. I installed the latest drivers (I was running 1.5.6.0 beta before). The terrible audio lag problems instantly went away on both HD PVRs. However, I continued to get multiple lockups per day; always on unit 2 (my D1) although somehow that seemed to take over as the primary HD-PVR recording device (over my E1) so maybe that's why it was first to fail. Now I've taken the D1 offline for the time being to see what happens with the E1 by itself. We'll see if it remains stable. If it is, I'll put the D1 unit in there by itself and see what happens.

Guess if I do that I better reinstall the drivers on the D1 again. I'm unclear if both units get flashed when you update with both attached at the same time. They did both get the new driver.

Edit: I just saw tihs: from the latest driver release notes: "This driver fixes A/V sync issues with some Dish Network and FIOS set top boxes." Interesting since I'm using Dish. Funny thing is, I didn't have any sync issues to speak of for 6 months when things were stable, then it all went to heck all-of-a-sudden. This makes me think again that Dish changed something on a box update.

Edit #2: I just saw this on the Hauppauge site - FAQ for the HD-PVR.
"HD PVR may lockup and require a power cycle - If IR learning is performed with the audio mode set to SPDIF. Launch TME and set the audio mode to “RCA back or front” before attempting to learn IR codes using the supplied “BlastCfg.exe” tool."

That's not very helpful. I. using the USB-UIRT instead of the IR blaster, and regardless never learned any IR codes using BlastCfg.

[Chriscic]

Originally Posted by martin

I forgot I also tried gplasky's firmware upgrade tip:

1. Do a clean install of the drivers
2. Revert to 1.0.5.301 drivers after using hwclear
3. Keep the HD-PVR cool
4. Don’t use SPDIF for audio, use RCA
5. Don’t use hardware versions earlier than E1
6. Defragment your hard drives
7. Lock component output to 720p
8. Use a NEC PCIe USB card
9. Filter power through a UPS
10. Increase Java memory
11. Isolate the HDPVR on its own physical controller
12. Use ferrite beads on the USB cables
13. Upgrade firmware running HcwDriverInstall.exe separately for each HD-PVR

I'd add "try another unit that is working flawlessly for another user." I realize this is hard to do, but if the problems magically went away that would point the finger back at the hardware. Even then it wouldn't be a perfect test since these thing can run great for an extended period before crapping out (case in point me), but it would be pretty good.

[dead_ferrets]

Originally Posted by tvmaster2

...However, the service dude at Hauppauge pointed his finger towards input signals to the HD-PVR as possible reasons.
That seems like bad design. Why not just have a buffer ram that soaks up bad video/audio for a few milliseconds until a stable signal hits?

With reference to Hauppauge and video input, I was just lending credence to what TVmaster implied someone from Hauppauge had said (towards the top of this page).

[martin]

My system will keep recording indefinitely as long as I don't touch it. I have noticed sometimes when I power on an HD200 or start the SageTV Client, it will cause recording to halt. My HD-PVRs are very sensitive to resources, because I have noticed that using a client causes instability and halt errors. Last night I noticed a small hesitation in HD200 play back, and sure enough a recording halted at that moment. After rebooting the server and going to bed it recorded another dozen shows until I launched SageTV Client this morning, which immediately halted the one HD-PVR that was busy recording. This leads me to believe the problem is not just hardware related or caused by input signals.

[gateslinger]

I've been having the HD-PVR halt detected in recording errors consistently for a while, but I've narrowed the HD-PVR failures to occur when the system is idle (no live or recorded TV being watched) and a show is setup to record off the HD-PVR.

However, if I'm watching live TV or recorded TV and a show from the STB channel space is set to record starts, the HD-PVR works flawlessly and records it without issues. I can go from watched TV to live TV on the HD-PVR and it's fine as well, just as long as I've been doing something on the system.

If I have the system idle (not watching live or recorded TV) with a show from the STB channel space set to record thru the HD-PVR, I will get the error consistently. Usually it's within the first 1 to 2 minutes of recording the show. I don't get this error with the other tuners (HDHR or the 250 card). I pretty much have to have the SageTV screen saver active in order for the failure to occur.

I've set the USB power management boxes to be unchecked such that WindowsXP doesn't turn off the USB ports, that was the first place I looked.

My setup: XP SP3, latest Java 1.6.0_17, latest SageTV 6.6.2.218, NEC USB driver board, an HDHomeRun, a Hauppauge 250 card (using the IR receiver) and a USBUIRT to drive my Explorer 4250 cable box (Cox). HD-PVR is E1 revision using the 1.6.5.1 driver. Electrical tape over the HD-PVR receiver, using analog audio inputs on the HD-PVR. Using the NEC USB driver card doesn't help the situation, I get the same errors with the motherboard ports. Went back to HD-PVR driver rev 1.0.5.301, same issue.

To be honest, I really started getting these messages with the last version of SageTV. I originally thought it was the HD-PVR box (I had one of the original C2 boxes and got it upgraded to an E1). However, the errors are consistent with both box versions.

I've been trading emails with Sage support on this, but so far getting nowhere. Thoughts or suggestions?

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by gateslinger

Thoughts or suggestions?

Disable the Sage screen saver.

Revert back to an earlier version of Sage.

Set the STB to output a fixed 720p.

Only use the version of Java which comes with Sage, never update.

Try disabling the Hauppauge 250 card in device manager.

Install the Java heap monitor.

What are the spec's of the server? Power save? sleep?

[Chriscic]

Originally Posted by gateslinger

I've been trading emails with Sage support on this, but so far getting nowhere. Thoughts or suggestions?

What is Sage saying so far? I'm going to go to Sage support on this too. I also sent an email to Hauppauge.

I'm hardly optimistic but we'll see what info. (if any) I get.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by briands

You Fool!!! You have just tempted the VooDoo god of HDPVR... your setup will certainly fail soon.

I damn near spit out the iced tea was drinking as I read that! That was priceless!

But, I have to admit that since I made that post, I have had the following problems pop up:

1. HD-PVR #1 is recording just fine
2. HD-PVR #2 is recording just fine
3. DirecTV STB #1 is working just fine
4. DirecTV STB #2 is working just fine
5. Channel changing via serial is working just fine
6. WHS server is working just fine
7. SageTV is working just fine

Damn... guess I don't have any problems. Sorry, couldn't resist.

Can we get everyone to list out every single piece of hardware they're using, including cables & lengths, hubs, power brick part #'s, etc? I'm going to do the same in the near future, even though mine is still working, but I'm hoping that something will stick out as a possible culprit.

[gateslinger]

To my original post:

Sage support hasn't been that helpful in this situation. In the past, they're pretty good about looking into the bugs. However, the only response was "uncheck the power management box in the USB root devices" so far. Apparently they must be hit with a lot of HD-PVR box issues.

My STB is set to fixed 720p. I disabled the screen saver, but I still get the bouncing SageTV icon. Go figure.

This evening I happened onto an odd situation which leads me to think the Nvidia driver, 7950GT card, or display driver is causing the grief. Pretty much every failure has been when I'm not watching live or recorded TV. By accident, I stopped playback and left the TV on and walked away to go fix a code bug (ya get distracted, doh!). Came back to to turn off the TV 6 hours later, and the SageTV screen saver icon was bouncing around the display (eventhough it is set to disable). However, the HD-PVR red light was on and it was happily recording an hour-long show (it was about half-way thru recording).

To make it more interesting, I shut off the TV and walked away for 20 minutes. Went back to the family room and noticed that the red light was off. As soon as I turned on the receiver, the HD-PVR recording red light came right back on!

I'm switching the video signal (DVI to HDMI) from the PC thru the receiver to my Mitsu TV. So this makes me wonder if the Nvidia 7950GT/driver is seeing the Pioneer VSX92-TXH receiver go away and then do something stupid.

Anyone got ideas on what to debug on the display-side next?