signal loss?

[JonTom]

I have 2 PVR150s in my sage box, which I've just rebuilt using w7 64bit. Recordings are terrible - sound cuts in and out and the picture is terribly distorted. It reminds me of watching a satelite dish in a snowstorm - big square pixelation blocks, tearing, etc.

I don't think it was always like this (since the rebuild) but it has been for the past couple of days. I have made a bunch of changes to the box in that time unfortunately so I'm not sure what I could have done that would have caused this?

Problem exists on both tuners.

[JonTom]

I've uploaded a clip to youtube to show the problem. Youtube has actually "smoothed" it out a bit, but you can still see/hear what I'm talking about. I'm not sure what to call this problem - any ideas on keywords to search for?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otYKKXsYdPE

[Taddeusz]

How much RAM do you have installed? The PVR150/250/350/500 drivers will not work with 4GB or more RAM. You need to remove or disable some of the RAM to get those cards to work. Either that or buy newer model cards. It's a known problem with their drivers that they have no plans to fix because of the age of those cards.

[JonTom]

Yeah, I know about that. I have 4 gigs but 512 of that is taken by onboard video so windows sees 3.5 gigs. It's my understanding that that fixes the 64bit problem with these cards. Also my understanding that that means I should probably have gone with 32bit windows. Oh well.

Actually, I feel pretty stupid about this problem. While it was happening we were in the middle of a pretty big rainstorm that lasted a couple of days. Once the weather cleared up, the problem went away. Who would have thought that the bad weather would cause signal problems that looked like that? Unfortunately, last night it was raining again, but not particularly hard or anything. The problem came back in full force. I checked and the tv and cable box feeds look fine too.

So, it seems to be weather related... But only affects these cards. I'm going to go back and retighten all the connectors, etc, but does anyone have any other ideas?

[Taddeusz]

What's your video source?

[JonTom]

coax from the wall into a 4 way splitter/amplifier into tv/cablebox/htpcx2

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by JonTom

coax from the wall into a 4 way splitter/amplifier into tv/cablebox/htpcx2

If you've got your coax going straight into the PVR150 cards then it's probably a problem with the feed that your cable company was receiving. This is probably satellite which would explain any problems during bad weather.

[JonTom]

yeah, but the other tuners (cable box, tv itself) don't show the same problem. maybe the 150s are more sensitive to it?

going to play with cabling tonight (if it keeps raining) and see what happens.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by JonTom

yeah, but the other tuners (cable box, tv itself) don't show the same problem. maybe the 150s are more sensitive to it?

going to play with cabling tonight (if it keeps raining) and see what happens.

Then, I don't know. The type of video errors that were in your sample were from MPEG compression errors. So it's either a problem at the source or some kind of problem with the card, driver or system incompatibility.

[Taddeusz]

You could run one of your clips through VideoRedo's quickstream fix function and see if it comes up with a lot of errors. If not, then it's a problem at the source.

[simonen]

I have onboard video as well and I still had to use msconfig to reduce the amount of recognized memory before my PVR-500 would work properly.

In windows 7, just run "msconfig". Go to the Boot tab and select the "Advanced Options". Change the maximum memory to 4095 and reboot.

If it still doesn't work, at least you can easily change it back.

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

You could run one of your clips through VideoRedo's quickstream fix function and see if it comes up with a lot of errors. If not, then it's a problem at the source.

ahh thanks, that's the kind of test i was looking for.

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by simonen

I have onboard video as well and I still had to use msconfig to reduce the amount of recognized memory before my PVR-500 would work properly.

In windows 7, just run "msconfig". Go to the Boot tab and select the "Advanced Options". Change the maximum memory to 4095 and reboot.

If it still doesn't work, at least you can easily change it back.

windows only recognizes 3.5 as is (i checked), but i'll try this too.

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by JonTom

ahh thanks, that's the kind of test i was looking for.

so i guess it's not the source material?

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by JonTom

windows only recognizes 3.5 as is (i checked), but i'll try this too.

well now i've set this, and windows reports 4gb installed and only 2.75 available (it was 3.5 before). we'll see if that makes a difference. but if it does, sigh, maybe i have to go back to 32bit. that's a lot of reinstall time...

[JonTom]

well, four recordings later and the problem seems to be gone...

but quickstreamfix is not working anymore (i ran one of the new ones through as a test) - they instantly finish and say 0 frames for each category. the resulting mpg file is obv unplayable...

[simonen]

Originally Posted by JonTom

well now i've set this, and windows reports 4gb installed and only 2.75 available (it was 3.5 before). we'll see if that makes a difference. but if it does, sigh, maybe i have to go back to 32bit. that's a lot of reinstall time...

I don't think it would matter if you went back to 32bit, because it would immediately only recognize 3GB and then your video card would take its share of the memory from that. Maybe someone else could chime in on that, just to get another opinion. From my understanding, setting the memory to 4095 is the same as setting it back to 32 bit.

I would hope that Hauppauge would come out with 64-bit drivers for these, but from what I have heard that may not happen.

[JonTom]

Originally Posted by simonen

I don't think it would matter if you went back to 32bit, because it would immediately only recognize 3GB and then your video card would take its share of the memory from that. Maybe someone else could chime in on that, just to get another opinion. From my understanding, setting the memory to 4095 is the same as setting it back to 32 bit.

I would hope that Hauppauge would come out with 64-bit drivers for these, but from what I have heard that may not happen.

it was my understanding that was correct when I bought 64bit windows, however, i've done some reading since, and apparently windows will end up with about 3gig of RAM available in a 32bit install after taking the video card ram and the BIOS and such.

see here for more.
http://www.vistaclues.com/reader-que...windows-vista/

anyways, after some thinking, i think i'm going to get a hauppage 2250. i really don't want to spend the money but i want to reinstall as 32bit even less. at least the "reduce the ram" kludge will keep me going until after christmas. i hope.