HD-PVR is killing me....

[CanadianEh]

Alright, I've been fighting trying to get a stable HD-PVR for the past year and a half. Just when I think all is well, it crashes in recordings. The best and easiest way to get it to crash is to leave it recording/watching Live TV.

I'm using the latest release of SageTV 6.5 and have tried all of the PVR drivers. I had two PVR's initially, and have scaled back to just one. The one still in use is a D1.

Am I the only one that is completely frustrated with the HD-PVR's??? I really cannot believe a year and a half later there is not one competing device on the market.


Ah well.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by CanadianEh

I'm using the latest release of SageTV 6.5 and have tried all of the PVR drivers. I had two PVR's initially, and have scaled back to just one. The one still in use is a D1.

Are you sure you are on 6.5? 6.6.2 is the latest release which Sage has added a lot of new features like automatically resetting locked up tuners.

[jerryt]

Single best move you can make to get a stable HD-PVR is to install a NEC USB card.

There is a thread with multiple things which people have reported effect the HD-PVR.

Interesting note, you should reinstall the drivers (1.0.5.301) after switching USB to this card.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by CanadianEh

Am I the only one that is completely frustrated with the HD-PVR's??? I really cannot believe a year and a half later there is not one competing device on the market.

Yeah, I'm frustrated with mine too. Sometimes I'll go weeks without it locking up, sometimes it will lock up a couple times in one day. In my case, once it gets going it usually doesn't lock up in the middle of a recording. Sometimes it locks up at the towards the end of a recording (like, when the credits of a movie either start or end), or most often it just won't start recording to begin with.

The lockups have been picking up lately. I should reinstall the drivers again. Last time I did that I went about a month without a lock-up.

I'm seriously considering getting the Avermedia HD-DVR when it comes out, if initial reports suggest it is a bit more reliable. I can't use 5.1 sound on my HD-PVR without getting lock ups far more frequently.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by CanadianEh

Alright, I've been fighting trying to get a stable HD-PVR for the past year and a half. Just when I think all is well, it crashes in recordings. The best and easiest way to get it to crash is to leave it recording/watching Live TV.

Have you taped over the IR port? That seemed to fix mine. They (not Sage) really need to get drivers that turn off all the items you aren't using.

[joe123]

Originally Posted by CanadianEh

Am I the only one that is completely frustrated with the HD-PVR's??? .

Count me in serveral times over and then triple that.

I went from SD to HD recordings in November of last year and I have never been as frustrated with any single product as I got with the HD-PVR.

For 2 solid months, I read every single thread here about problems with the HD-PVR and it's pure agony to read since there is no one single "fix". Tried the black tape over the IR, 1.0.5.301 drivers, increasing Java, using dedicated USB PCI card, standing HD-PVR on it's side, plastic sacrificial chicken hanging over the HD-PVR, you name it.

In the end and completely furstrated I re-formated my OS disk and re-installed my XP OS. I am using lastest Java, 1.0.5.301 drivers and my HD-PVR has not locked once since then.

It is sad and frustrating that SageTV has not been able to work with Hauppauge on fixing the latest drivers for SageTV. The latests HD-PVR drivers lock up the HD-PVR with SageTV for many here. The lockup problem with the latest drivers does NOT happen when using the software that comes with the HD-PVR.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by joe123

plastic sacrificial chicken hanging over the HD-PVR, you name it.

Well that's your problem. Who said it was suppose to be plastic?

In all seriousness, I really wish there were at least a better way to recover from lock-ups. I don't think its that big of deal that the thing occasionally crashes. If it just crashed, then resumed normal operation on it's own it wouldn't be a big deal. The problem is that you have to manually power cycle the thing to get it going again. Is there a way to turn off and back on the USB port the HD-PVR is connected to in software?

[joe123]

Originally Posted by reggie14

Is there a way to turn off and back on the USB port the HD-PVR is connected to in software?

That's a good question.

It would help if SageTV described here what steps they take with the HD-PVR to bring it back to life and what limitations exists with software reset of the HD-PVR.

What I have noticed is that I sometimes get "skips" every once in a while which correspond with the top of the HD-PVR Bling Blue Light going off and then quickly back on. I take it that's SageTV reseting the HD-PVR?

When the Bling Blue light goes off/on, I noticed that it only happens when my Server is very busy ( like ShowAnalyzer running, etc ). When my server is idle, I get perfect recordings with zero skips. The skips are much more prevalent with 1080i recordings by the way and hardly any with 780p or 480p. To me this indicates a bandwidth limitation somwhere on my system. 1080i puts out much more data and thus uses more resources.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by joe123

What I have noticed is that I sometimes get "skips" every once in a while which correspond with the top of the HD-PVR Bling Blue Light going off and then quickly back on. I take it that's SageTV reseting the HD-PVR?

Sage generates a system message when it detects an HD-PVR and tries to reset it. If you don't see a new system message, it's not Sage resetting the HD-PVR.

[Clift]

Originally Posted by joe123

That's a good question.

It would help if SageTV described here what steps they take with the HD-PVR to bring it back to life and what limitations exists with software reset of the HD-PVR.

What I have noticed is that I sometimes get "skips" every once in a while which correspond with the top of the HD-PVR Bling Blue Light going off and then quickly back on. I take it that's SageTV reseting the HD-PVR?

When the Bling Blue light goes off/on, I noticed that it only happens when my Server is very busy ( like ShowAnalyzer running, etc ). When my server is idle, I get perfect recordings with zero skips. The skips are much more prevalent with 1080i recordings by the way and hardly any with 780p or 480p. To me this indicates a bandwidth limitation somwhere on my system. 1080i puts out much more data and thus uses more resources.

Try locking your STB output to 720P or 1080i. I did this initially because the original HD PVR drivers were notoriously bad for resolution switching. This may have changed, but for me that's the single most problematic thing. A couple of months ago I tried setting my STB to output 480p, 720p and 1080i. If I recall I had a couple of hard lock-ups during testing, so I went back to it being locked at 1080i. I also tried going to optical sound. I did not have any lockups as a result of it, but I had a few audio glitches which made me decide to go with analog audio. I watch most TV through the TV speakers anyway, and my audio receiver has a pretty good Dolby Pro-Logic-II engine, so that's an acceptable trade off for me.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by joe123

plastic sacrificial chicken hanging over the HD-PVR,

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
14. Tape over the HD-PVR IR port
15. Enable "Tell me if this device can perform faster" for all your USB ports.
16. Use Eric3a's scripts to reset a HD-PVR with a error.
17. plastic sacrificial chicken hanging over the HD-PVR,

[joe123]

Thank you all for the great suggestions, but to repeat, I tried EVERYTHING listed here including my own sacrificial plastic chicken.

What eventually got rid of my HD-PVR lock-ups, was a fresh new install of my OS - XP Windows with the 1.0.5.301 drivers.

I am recording via SPDIF (not RCA), all has been working great for several weeks and no lock-ups.

The only minor issues are occasional skips but I know for a fact that this only happens when my server is very busy and it is recording 1080i content. If the server is not busy, no skips.

[Brent]

Not to throw salt on the wounds here but mine is working perfectly. Haven't had a glitch for over five months.

Just thought I'd mention that so those that read this thread don't get the impression the HD-PVR and SageTV doesn't work for anyone

My setup:
SageTV (latest version)
Firewire channel changing (love it)
Windows 7 Professional OS 32bit
Latest HD-PVR firmware can't remember the #
I have one of the first HD-PVRs that came out - so not sure if that matters or not

[joe123]

Originally Posted by Brent

Not to throw salt on the wounds here but mine is working perfectly. Haven't had a glitch for over five months.

Was this true from day 1 you setup the HD-PVR? Never ever had a single problem with the HD-PVR? Zero skips / lock-ups?

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Brent

Just thought I'd mention that so those that read this thread don't get the impression the HD-PVR and SageTV doesn't work for anyone

Yeah, I really think a lot of the lockups are caused by things particular to a set-top box, cable provider, and/or network feed.

I'm sure you've posted this somewhere else, but how is your HD-PVR set up? Which STB are you using? You're using optical audio, right? Is your STB resolution locked? If so, is it locked for SD and HD, or just HD?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by joe123

Was this true from day 1 you setup the HD-PVR? Never ever had a single problem with the HD-PVR?

Nope. I had issues with it locking up occasionally (not seemingly as often as some) and firmware updates from Happauge improved things and finally one of the SageTV updates eliminated all lock-ups for me. I did still have the occasional missed recording cause of the IR blaster missing the channel change, but after switching to firewire channel changing it is now 100% accurate and a little faster changing channels too.

I know some still have issues with their HD-PVR's - not denying that at all. Just saying I no longer do. I think some of the HD-PVRs were just bad. But I would think the rest of the problems would have been solved with the firmware & SageTV software updates.

UPDATE: As Reggie says, I wouldn't be surprised if the cable box difference may have something to do with the success rate as well. I have a Motorola box, it's locked for HD, I use optical audio. - I'll have to check from home to give you the details on it though.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by Brent

Just thought I'd mention that so those that read this thread don't get the impression the HD-PVR and SageTV doesn't work for anyone

That's one of the problems though. No one can seem to find the "magic plastic chicken" that makes it work all the time. It should work the same on ALL systems. Now personally, I think it's a Happauge issue, not Sage's, as they are the ones in control of the hardware and firmware. I know there is a chance it's something in Sage, but then why does yours work?

[sleonard]

BeyondTV users were also experiencing this. Further evidence that it is not Sage but the hardware/firmware.

I started with three C1's in June of '08. Those were RMA'd for D2's which were then RMA'd for E1's 14 months ago. I started with 4-5 lockups per day until I got the E1's and the frequency dropped to 1-2 lockups per day. 12 months ago I connected them to a new motherboard with HD-PVR friendly USB ports and the lockup frequency dropped to several per week. About 5 months ago I upgraded all of my cable boxes and immediately the frequency dropped to an occasional lockup every 2-3 months.

My conclusion is that the HD-PVR is very 'sensitive' to the USB port it is plugged in to as well as the 'quality' of the audio/video being fed to it. I'll leave the definition of 'sensitive' and 'quality' open to interpretation until someone finally figures out what the exact problems are

S

[thomaszoo]

I have had mine since shortly after they came out. Mine has been pretty reliable with a couple of exceptions. The first had to do with a failing hard drive back in December. Then about a week ago I started having problems again. Tonight it wouldn't work at all, even with a power cycle. Then I remembered that I had added pass-through for the A/V about a week ago for the rare occasions that we watch TV without Sage (usually Comcast On-Demand). First I found the optical cable partially unplugged. Plugging it in still didn't help. Then I unplugged the optical out cable. It immediately came back to life! So perhaps this is yet another weakness of the little HD-PVR. Not a problem for me since I can run a coax cable for the audio.

Wayne

[joe123]

Originally Posted by sleonard

BeyondTV users were also experiencing this. Further evidence that it is not Sage but the hardware/firmware.

I don't think this is true.

For many here the 1.0.5.301 drivers work while the newest Hauppauge 1.5.6.1 drivers don't work well with SageTV.

However, the 1.5.6.1 drivers work well with the TMZ software the HD-PVR comes with.

If it is not SageTV's fault, then neither driver version should work or both driver versions work, but we have a mixture.

It could very well be that SageTV is too demanding and the new drivers cannot keep up ( think buffer ). IF this is the case, then they are both at fault - SageTV and the driver.