HD-PVR Stops Responding ~Once/Day

[sportera]

Interesting, but now I'm getting confused again. Look at the specs below on my new system. The upgrade didn't improve upon the occasional lock up schedule I had with my old Pentium at all, but......

With the summer starting to hit us here in the south, I'm starting to get more and more lock ups again. that for lack of any other reason I'm thinking "heat". Haven't changed locations or anything since winter.

Did anyone ever come up with a good recommended mod of the HDPVR to keep it cooler? Anybody try removing as much of the enclosure as possible to let the components get some circulated air?

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by sportera

Did anyone ever come up with a good recommended mod of the HDPVR to keep it cooler? Anybody try removing as much of the enclosure as possible to let the components get some circulated air?

http://blog.arogan.com/2008/06/haupp...odel-1212.html
This is the fan mod I had until they added the slots in the bottom, now mine sit on top of a laptop cooler without any mods.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by sportera

Did anyone ever come up with a good recommended mod of the HDPVR to keep it cooler? Anybody try removing as much of the enclosure as possible to let the components get some circulated air?

I have the same revision E1 HD-PVR you have. I also had a very similar CPU/MB setup as you.

I spent many months doing all of the things listed here including sacrificing an artificial chicken to no avail. I was getting skips in my HD-PVR recordings and the Red Icon HD PVR stopped producing data every blue moon. My HD-PVR would also stop recording for ~1 sec anytime I hit STOP while watching a recording. Extremely annoying.

A few weeks ago, I upgraded my PVR (see sig) and now I have ZERO PROBLEMS with my HD-PVR since then.

Now, I CANNOT get the HD-PVR to FAIL no matter how many things I run on the PVR. I tried running several concurrent things, including 10 ShowAnalyzers doing ~280MB per second and the HD-PVR is now rock solid.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by joe123

I have the same revision E1 HD-PVR you have. I also had a very similar CPU/MB setup as you.

I spent many months doing all of the things listed here including sacrificing an artificial chicken to no avail. I was getting skips in my HD-PVR recordings and the Red Icon HD PVR stopped producing data every blue moon. My HD-PVR would also stop recording for ~1 sec anytime I hit STOP while watching a recording. Extremely annoying.

A few weeks ago, I upgraded my PVR (see sig) and now I have ZERO PROBLEMS with my HD-PVR since then.

Now, I CANNOT get the HD-PVR to FAIL no matter how many things I run on the PVR. I tried running several concurrent things, including 10 ShowAnalyzers doing ~280MB per second and the HD-PVR is now rock solid.

My experience with intel ICH9R and ICH10R USB controllers was that they don't work well with the HDPVR. Most likely your new motherboard has a very solid USB controller.

But the artificial chicken has a delay before it kicks in, so it still might be the chicken which fixed it...

[joe123]

Originally Posted by jerryt

My experience with intel ICH9R and ICH10R USB controllers was that they don't work well with the HDPVR. Most likely your new motherboard has a very solid USB controller.

But the artificial chicken has a delay before it kicks in, so it still might be the chicken which fixed it...

I almost want to cry everytime I see how stable my PVR is now. Amazing, truly amazing how much I went through with my old hardware.

My new motherboard supports USB 3.0. I know the HD-PVR does not do 3.0, but maybe that helps too. Whatever it is, I honestly cannot get the HD-PVR to fail by taxing my system to the max.

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by joe123

I almost want to cry everytime I see how stable my PVR is now. Amazing, truly amazing how much I went through with my old hardware.

My new motherboard supports USB 3.0. I know the HD-PVR does not do 3.0, but maybe that helps too. Whatever it is, I honestly cannot get the HD-PVR to fail by taxing my system to the max.

Does your hd pvr fail, if you put a big file (e.g. a video) on an usb stick and copy that one to your hard disk while recording?
Mine is also pretty stable, but it failed recently while doing exactly this. Obviously not a big problem, but it just shows (again) that the usb connection can indeed be a problem.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Rico66

Does your hd pvr fail, if you put a big file (e.g. a video) on an usb stick and copy that one to your hard disk while recording?
Mine is also pretty stable, but it failed recently while doing exactly this. Obviously not a big problem, but it just shows (again) that the usb connection can indeed be a problem.

Have not tried that. Will do when I have time as a test and report back.

With my old setup, I bought the recommended USB PCI card and had the HD-PVR solely on the USB PCI card and that did NOT fix the HD-PVR problems.

I think it's more on how fast the motherboard can handle context switching.

NO dought that the HD-PVR is demanding, I would guess that the HD-PVR has a small buffer and if that buffer is not emptyed quickly and regularly, the HD-PVR locks happen.

Now with my new PVR, I really cannot get the damn HD-PVR to fail or stop producing data no matter how many things I have running on the PVR. Amazing, just amazing.

Also, the frucking Circle of Death has basically gone away - very little now. The COD went from ~60 seconds to ~5. In most cases, no circle of death at all (very rarely now).

[bsung]

Originally Posted by joe123

I think it's more on how fast the motherboard can handle context switching.

I wish the answer were as simple as speed. I have i7 2.66 and still get the occassional lock up. It's only about once every week or two though. Using a separate card for usb and dropping down to the lower driver version seems to have improved the system's ability to recover. I usually only find a green exclamation mark in system messages instead of the dreaded red so that makes it manageable.

I sure hope for your sake that saying NOTHING can stop the HD PVR doesn't bring you any bad luck.

More than the new UI that's being developed, I'd love to see the HD PVR become stable through some sort of driver or even hardware upgrade. That's the achilles heal of my Sage system (yes, I know it's not Sage's fault and they seem to have done as well as they could with the hardware) but it is part of my setup.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by bsung

I wish the answer were as simple as speed. I have i7 2.66 and still get the occassional lock up. It's only about once every week or two though. Using a separate card for usb and dropping down to the lower driver version seems to have improved the system's ability to recover. I usually only find a green exclamation mark in system messages instead of the dreaded red so that makes it manageable.

I sure hope for your sake that saying NOTHING can stop the HD PVR doesn't bring you any bad luck.

More than the new UI that's being developed, I'd love to see the HD PVR become stable through some sort of driver or even hardware upgrade. That's the achilles heal of my Sage system (yes, I know it's not Sage's fault and they seem to have done as well as they could with the hardware) but it is part of my setup.

Sad to hear that you are experiencing problems with such a fast system.

As for bad luck: When I bought my new MB/CPU combo from Fry's, I have 15 days to try it out and return if not happy. I have tried and keep trying to make the damn thing fail becuase I really thought that upgrading was not the answer.

Now with my new setup, I really CANNOT get the PVR to Fail and I have tried everything short of pulling the power / usb cable from the HD-PVR. The setup is now rock solid. I am using the older HD-PVR 1.0.5.301 drivers.

For anyone seriously having issues with their HD-PVR and thiking of upgrading, I will be more than happy to let you VNC to my setup and see for yourself how stable it is while recording and taxing the system to the max. PM me if interested.

[sportera]

Originally Posted by joe123

A few weeks ago, I upgraded my PVR (see sig) and now I have ZERO PROBLEMS with my HD-PVR since then.

Now, I CANNOT get the HD-PVR to FAIL no matter how many things I run on the PVR. I tried running several concurrent things, including 10 ShowAnalyzers doing ~280MB per second and the HD-PVR is now rock solid.

This sounds great Joe, but before setting divorce proceedings in motion by spending another +$300 after just upgrading to a new Intel Quad system not more than a few months ago, I'd like to ask you a few questions:

1. Is your PVR a WHS system?
2. Was the new hardware(MB, CPU, memory) the ONLY thing you changed? (no other hardware, software upgrades, re-installs, new cabling, etc.???)
3. Did you have 4gb of memory on the last system?
4. Did the upgrade fix or improve any other issues you may have had at the networked clients?

Have to admit I'd spend the extra $300 in a heartbeat if I was certain it would fix my issues, but if I do...and it don't....this boy is gonna be in the doghouse or out the door. I can understand my wife's feelings as she sees it as "you could have just replaced the whole system twice already with Directv PVR's and be done with the aggrivation". Commercial skip and all the other bells and whistles don't do a thing for her. She just wants simple to use and consistent failure free operation.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by sportera

1. Is your PVR a WHS system?
2. Was the new hardware(MB, CPU, memory) the ONLY thing you changed? (no other hardware, software upgrades, re-installs, new cabling, etc.???)
3. Did you have 4gb of memory on the last system?
4. Did the upgrade fix or improve any other issues you may have had at the networked clients?

Have to admit I'd spend the extra $300 in a heartbeat if I was certain it would fix my issues, but if I do...and it don't....this boy is gonna be in the doghouse or out the door. I can understand my wife's feelings as she sees it as "you could have just replaced the whole system twice already with Directv PVR's and be done with the aggrivation". Commercial skip and all the other bells and whistles don't do a thing for her. She just wants simple to use and consistent failure free operation.

Trust me when I say I undertand the WOF ( Wife Approval Factor) or WDF ( Wife Divorce Factor). This is why I almost want to cry every time I stress my PVR to the max and cannot get the HD-PVR to fail.

I also spent far more than the $300 for the upgrade in tweakering and headaches trying to get my old PVR to be stable. As for your questions:

1) No, I am running XP Pro, 32bit.
2) Yes. Pretty much the only differences with the following execptions: Only have the HD-PVR and I think I went from java sub version 16 to 20. Software wise, all is the same. Hardware wise, all is the same - cables, power supply, etc. Only upgrades were MB/CPU/Memory and different OS drive (kept old one in case I had to revert back).
3) No. With my old setup the audio MB sofware did not work with 4GB of memory, it only worked with 2GB ( a bug). Since SageTV needs audio to work and I use SageTV once in a blue moon on the PVR to check things out (not to view), I needed the audio program to work and thus I kept it at 2GB of memory.

With my new PVR, all programs worked just fine at 4GB although it is known that XP 32bit can only use ~3.4GB out of the 4GB. Also, the old PVR had DDR2 and the new setup has DDR3.

4) Nothing changed as far as network issues that I can tell. The other BIG significant improvement for me was the freaking COD ( Circle of Death ) that has basically gone away. Before the upgrade, I would easily get ~60 seconds of COD on the PVR itself when I hit stop on a recording before SageTV would come back. Now, I don't have COD or on rare cases, it only lasts ~5 seconds at most.

Trust when I say I feel for you regarding the wife factor - same here.

If you have a Fry's close to you, they offer 15 days you can try it out and return it if it does not work for you. I am NOT one to easily upgrade, but in this case, the difference has been like day and night. If you have the time, it will cost very little to test a new setup - but you will have to spend the time. If it works, the time you spend will be well worth it compared to all of the mickey mouse jumps you are going to go through trying to find a stable solution.

One last comment, I am happy to let you VNC to my PVR to check things out and watch how I can stress the system to the max while recording with the HD-PVR and not get the Red Icon HD-PVR stops producing data bs. You can check any thing else you want so long as you don't delete modify anything of course.

Good luck!

[Chriscic]

Joe,
Great to hear you're stable now. Interesting it's from a system upgrade. When I had lock-up problems (which were happening regularly, fixed with three HD-PVR RMAs, began recurring again after 6 months, then fixed again) it would happen across any of four different machines running a different copy of Sage server. So the "upgrade" solution never worked for me.

Going back to older drivers fixed it for me the latest round of problems. Been running flawlessly for months now again.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

Going back to older drivers fixed it for me the latest round of problems. Been running flawlessly for months now again.

Yes, the newer HD-PVR drivers never worked for me on my old setup. I have not tried the new HD-PVR drivers on my new PVR. Like you, I am using the older HD-PVR drivers.

Some times I wonder if the HD-PVR is so picky that it boderlines on working / Not working with certain hardware setups. This would explain all of the mysteries that we see here.

With my old setup, I was always able to get the HD-PVR to skip recording ( ~1-2 second skips in the recordings ) by simply lightly taxing the PVR system. The top blue light on the HD-PVR would go off and then back on again while recording. The light going off meant a skip on the recording, so we would see skips when watching. I was ALWAYS able to re-produce this problem with the HD-PVR.

With my new setup, I cannot get this to happen - I watch the blue light and it never goes out while recording and having the system maxed out to the fullest. The worse I have seen in rare occasions is a short fraction of a second of garble, but no skips and the garbles happen during the times I was maxing out the system stress testing it while recording.

[sportera]

Thanks for the reply Joe. One thing I have't had a problem with is the "circle of death". I've already started looking into your setup as a replacement and found your MB is a microatx with only 1 PCI. I'm going to require finding a matching MB with at least 2 PCI slots (for callerID modem, 4-port serial board for Directv serial channel change control).

Thanks again, and please update this thread if you start seeing any lockups again. Mine may go a month or two at times without a lockup. Not sure why other than maybe "heat" or possibly just doing more recording and commercial processing at those times.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by joe123

Some times I wonder if the HD-PVR is so picky that it boderlines on working / Not working with certain hardware setups. This would explain all of the mysteries that we see here.

My personal theory is that the USB controller or south bridge can not handle errors from the HDPVR. So in Joe123's case his new motherboard with a AMD SB850 south bridge is handling the errors without a problem.

It would be interesting to start a poll to hear the experiences from other people who have the AMD SB850 south bridge. Maybe they are the people who have never needed to read this thread...

@Joe123, Thanks for posting your successes... (I hate you, now I need to spend another $290.00)

[joe123]

Originally Posted by sportera

Thanks again, and please update this thread if you start seeing any lockups again. Mine may go a month or two at times without a lockup. Not sure why other than maybe "heat" or possibly just doing more recording and commercial processing at those times.

I sure will update and post here if I the HD-PVR has any issues again on my new PVR.

As for heat issues, I really don't think it's the HD-PVR. On the new setup, I purposly removed ALL of my ShowAnalyzer files to re-process them. My new PVR ran day and night running 4-6 SA at once for several days. I did this and also ran other apps to stress test the new PVR to the max. SA processed some ~1,800 recordings while the HD-PVR recorded several shows. The office where the PVR and the HD-PVR reside got quite warm and I purposly left the room closed to build up heat.

NOT A SINGLE HD-PVR LOCK UP, nor any Red icon saying that the HD-PVR stopped producing data. The worse, and I mean the worse I have yet to see in the recordings, are fraction of a second of garble in rare occasions.

So I really don't think it's a heat issue with the HD-PVR. My HD-PVR is the E1 revision, no modifications (fans, etc), sitting normal and not side ways, etc.

Again, I will update here right away if I get any lock ups or problems.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by jerryt

@Joe123, Thanks for posting your successes... (I hate you, now I need to spend another $290.00)

I would really hate to see someone upgrade with no success and wasting money, so for anyone thinking of doing this, please PLEASE see if you can do it in a way where you can try it out before keeping the setp.

For me, we have Frys Electronics near by and they have 15 days in which you can buy and return if not satisfied. Being the frugal person that I am, I actually wanted my new PVR to fail with the HD-PVR so that I could return and not spend another $300 bucks.

If someone else does upgrade with the same exact specs I have, please post your results. I would love to see others experience the same success and maybe we can start a "How our PVR almost caused us a divorce" club.

One last item, for anyone interested, here is a link to the Fry's Combo I upgraded to.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by joe123

for anyone interested, here is a link to the Fry's Combo I upgraded to.

Here is the current deal ($284.99)
http://www.frys.com/product/6214490?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Which is showing as unavailable (Most likely Joe123 created a run on the market) They are available between Newegg and Ewiz for $290.00

[joe123]

Originally Posted by jerryt

Here is the current deal ($284.99)
http://www.frys.com/product/6214490?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Which is showing as unavailable (Most likely Joe123 created a run on the market) They are available between Newegg and Ewiz for $290.00

Freaking Moses! Identically the same combo, but instead of 170 bucks, it's $285! $115 more! What the hell?

[MattHelm]

Guys, I'm using the following:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103706

and a:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128395

With this USB card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815104216

and only had a 2 flickers on the HDPVR. Both recovered so quickly, while watching the show, I didn't ever see a glitch!

I didn't even think of trying the built in USB, should I?????