Hauppauge HVR-2250 and Recording Glitches

[will]

I am noticing that my HD recordings with my Hauppauge HVR-2250 have started to have frame lock-ups/stuttering during playback. This only happens with part of the recording randomly for 5 to 15 seconds.

This issue just started about two or three weeks ago randomly. The HVR-2250 has been working fine up until this point and I haven't made any configuration changes. My HD-PVRs haven't experienced this issue and the recording drive is functioning fine and is not fragmented.

The only thing I can think of is that I am low on recording space (about 5% free).

Does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this issue, could my card be going bad?

Thanks for the help,
Will

[davephan]

I have two HVR-2250s, and they are very stable. One is setup for OTA digital, and is more reliable than a HDHomerun that is also setup for OTA digital. The other HVR-2250 is setup for Analog channel 3 & 4 outputs of DTA boxes. That is lower quality due to the DTA boxes, but it is stable. My HD-PVR has a long track record of instability compared to the HVR-2250s. Although removing the top cover of the HD-PVR seems to greatly improve the HD-PVR stability.

What is your source for the HVR-2250?

When you mention you have 5% free space, that is very tight. How do you know your disks aren't fragmented? When you get down to 5% free space, the Microsoft defragger fails, so you'll need to use a third party defragger like Diskeeper or PerfectDisk.

Is your operating system drive also tight on free space? Is your operating system drive only for your OS and programs? Or do you partition the OS drive and also use part of the physical drive for video storage? Are all your video drives formatted with 64k blocks (the default is 4k blocks)?

How are you playing back the HD content? Into a HD-200 or an MVP? Or some other way?

Dave

[will]

Originally Posted by davephan

What is your source for the HVR-2250?

I use my HVR-2250 to record Unencrypted HD cable (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS) and analog cable.

Originally Posted by davephan

When you mention you have 5% free space, that is very tight. How do you know your disks aren't fragmented? When you get down to 5% free space, the Microsoft defragger fails, so you'll need to use a third party defragger like Diskeeper or PerfectDisk.

I use Diskeeper 10 Server

Originally Posted by davephan

Is your operating system drive also tight on free space? Is your operating system drive only for your OS and programs? Or do you partition the OS drive and also use part of the physical drive for video storage? Are all your video drives formatted with 64k blocks (the default is 4k blocks)?

My operating system is on a separate drive (WD Raptor) and I use it only for the OS and programs.

The video storage is on a RAID 10 array composed of four WD Black 750GB drives. The RAID parity stripe is set to 64k as well as the formatted block size in Windows.

Originally Posted by davephan

How are you playing back the HD content? Into a HD-200 or an MVP? Or some other way?

I play back HD content all the time via two HD-200s and one client. Never had an issue with the HVR-2250 until a few weeks ago, very unusual.

[Savage1701]

OK, dumb question, but are you running the de-fraggers continuously? I did a trial of Diskeeper and Perfect Disk and they totally mess up and tile my recordings if I allow them to defrag "on the fly" or whenever they want.

I'm not trying to insult your intelligence. I did not see that you were trying that, I am just wondering, because it sure happened to me.

I only manually defrag during the day when I know my system won't be recording anything. Just to add, I use a 2250, 1850, 1600, 950Q, HD-PVR and DVICO Fusion 5. My tiling/chopping/dropping happened on all shows recorded by any of the tuners if that auto-defrag option was running.

Best wishes to you on solving this.

[will]

Originally Posted by Savage1701

OK, dumb question, but are you running the de-fraggers continuously? I did a trial of Diskeeper and Perfect Disk and they totally mess up and tile my recordings if I allow them to defrag "on the fly" or whenever they want.

I'm not trying to insult your intelligence. I did not see that you were trying that, I am just wondering, because it sure happened to me.

I only manually defrag during the day when I know my system won't be recording anything. Just to add, I use a 2250, 1850, 1600, 950Q, HD-PVR and DVICO Fusion 5. My tiling/chopping/dropping happened on all shows recorded by any of the tuners if that auto-defrag option was running.

Best wishes to you on solving this.

No insult taken. I am letting diskeeper run in the background when the system is idle. I am also using Diskeeper's intelligence performance write to prevent fragmentation from happening.

I am doubtful that this is causing the issue because I have been using Diskeeper for 3 months now and this issue just started. Also, my HD-PVRs record to the same discs with no issues what so ever. However, if I can't narrow the issue down more then I will disable Diskeeper on the recording drive to see if that fixes the problem.

[will]

If I uninstall the HVR-2250 from my system via Device Manager then reinstall it do I need to first remove the HVR-2250 from SageTV?

[jgscott987]

Originally Posted by will

If I uninstall the HVR-2250 from my system via Device Manager then reinstall it do I need to first remove the HVR-2250 from SageTV?

No. Remove it from the device manager, reboot, and it will reinstall automatically.

[jerryt]

I recently had a signal issue from adding additional splitters (More tuners). The programs with HVR-2250 and Avermedia Duet, would record with sections that most players would stutter on. This would happen to the same channel but not other channels. First half of the recording would be fine, and then the stuttering would start. Videoredo was able to repair the recordings.

The fix was to add a signal amplifier and balance the signal strength at each tuner.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by will

Never had an issue with the HVR-2250 until a few weeks ago, very unusual.

Have you tried taking an image of your C drive now, then recovering to an image of your C drive a little more than a few weeks ago, before the problem occurred with the HVR-2250?

If the problem goes away when restoring the C drive back in time, then you know it is related to changes in your C drive. If it does not fix the problem, then you know it is the HVR-2250 or maybe the other drives in your system.

If you don't have an image you can recover to in the past, before the HVR-2250 problem started, then it makes it tougher to determine the solution for the problem.

Dave

[will]

Originally Posted by davephan

Have you tried taking an image of your C drive now, then recovering to an image of your C drive a little more than a few weeks ago, before the problem occurred with the HVR-2250?
Dave

I do nightly backups of my server with Acronis True Image, however I only save the last 2 weeks of images.

Could this be related to the quality of my cable signal? Time Warner recently added new channels to digital cable and removed channels from Analog to make room. They may have adjusted signal strength.

I am considering using hcwclear.exe to completely remove the HVR-2250 then reinstall the drivers.

[hechacker1]

Using the latest driver for my HVR-2250, I also get corrupted recordings, with blocking artifacts, pauses, and bad audio. Usually it's bad enough to crash SageTV or freeze other video players.

The mpg file captured is actually corrupted.

I noticed it mostly happens when recording two HD channels at the same time. The first one will start recording and playblack perfectly until the second HD tuner starts recording. From that moment on the recorded mpg becomes corrupted.

I am not sure if it's a 2250 driver bug, or a SageTV bug. I don't remember having the problem with media center.

EDIT: I should add, I just did a clean install of Windows 7 x64 with all the latest drivers. I also have a very fast raid array for storage that is mostly empty.

EDIT2: I just restarted the SageTV service when I had two HD recordings going. When it restarted: The first HD video recording is perfect. The second HD recording is having blocking and artifacts. Perhaps it's related to a weak channel?

EDIT3: I stopped the first HD recording, restarted the service, and the second HD recording is still blocky.

[scat]

Originally Posted by jerryt

I recently had a signal issue from adding additional splitters (More tuners). The programs with HVR-2250 and Avermedia Duet, would record with sections that most players would stutter on. This would happen to the same channel but not other channels. First half of the recording would be fine, and then the stuttering would start. Videoredo was able to repair the recordings.

The fix was to add a signal amplifier and balance the signal strength at each tuner.

jerryt

I too am experiencing the same problem, I was thinking about a cable amp, how do you balance the signal strength at each tuner?

this is the amp I am looking at getting: Electroline EDA-FT08300 8-Port TV Signal Booster/Amplifier with Active Return Path (Retail Package with 5-Year Warranty)

Has anyone used this amp with SageTV and Comcast?

This is what I have done in checking my system: Problem Accessing File System for Playback

I have since upgraded to current version: SageTV 6.6.2.218

Thanks
Scat

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by scat

jerryt
I too am experiencing the same problem, I was thinking about a cable amp

I used a "Pico Macom TA-36 variable Distribution Amplifier", so that I could set the amplification for exactly the amount I needed. It has three adjustable bands, Lo VHF, Hi VHF and UHF. I found it very cheap on ebay.

Originally Posted by scat

how do you balance the signal strength at each tuner?

I used a "Sadelco DisplayMax Jr." signal strength meter but the HDhomeRun version 2 tuner can be used also. Max signal at each tuner should not exceed +15dBmV, which on the HDhomeRun vs2 tuner is 100% on it's signal meter. So you would have to connect the HDhomeRun at each tuner location and test that cable's signal strength.

Next you balance the system by making the cable run lengths and number of splitters equal to all tuners. (For one room that was close to the antenna, I had to run the cable accross the house through a splitter and back, to balance it with the other tuners.) This is the hard part because any change effects the other tuners. The variable amplifier was the key item for me. The balancing is like a puzzle, where you have to keep trying different pieces until everything fits. You are done when the signal strength at each tuner is as close to +15dBmV as you can get it. (Strongest channel = +15dBmV, weakest maybe +5dBmV).

I had my HDhomeRun tuners near the first antenna splitter but after balancing the system, I had to relocate them to the the ends of the long cable runs. The Antenna System has now been rock solid without any pixelation since completing the balancing a few weeks ago.

[will]

Do you think a solution like this could help?

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Boost.../dp/B000066E6Y

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by will

Do you think a solution like this could help?

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Boost.../dp/B000066E6Y

I would recommend this;
http://cgi.ebay.com/PICO-MACOM-TA-36...item414ca95bf5
because it is variable.

Amplifiers can only increase the existing signal and make up for extra splitters and cables. It will NOT work if the problem is an antenna which is improperly aimed or too small for it's location.

[null_pointer_us]

We had similar issues with Comcast unencrypted QAM on the HVR-2250 based family server. Later, I realized that all the corrupted HD recordings were on channel 804. Recordings from higher HD channels were 100% fine. And my ATI HD650 card on a different jack records 804 fine. I'm still trying to determine the cause of this problem...

Originally Posted by scat

I too am experiencing the same problem, I was thinking about a cable amp, how do you balance the signal strength at each tuner?

Recently I found this page helpful:
Video Distribution Tutorial - Design - HomeTech Solutions

this is the amp I am looking at getting: Electroline EDA-FT08300 8-Port TV Signal Booster/Amplifier with Active Return Path (Retail Package with 5-Year Warranty)

Has anyone used this amp with SageTV and Comcast?

No, but I have an earlier Electroline 8-port model that works fine with SageTV and Comcast. Every cable connection in the house gets a port. I used the 8-port amp to eliminate the weird 3+3+2 splitter setup the cable installer had put in place; this fixed problems with weak signals at some jacks. The amp had no negative effects on signal quality (vs. connecting a few jacks to the incoming cable with a splitter, for testing purposes).

[will]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

We had similar issues with Comcast unencrypted QAM on the HVR-2250 based family server. Later, I realized that all the corrupted HD recordings were on channel 804. Recordings from higher HD channels were 100% fine. And my ATI HD650 card on a different jack records 804 fine. I'm still trying to determine the cause of this problem...

I called Time Warner yesterday to complain about the weak HD signal I am experiencing and the gentleman on the phone said somewhat condescendingly that "we don't intend for you to use our cable that way [with a QAM tuner]." I quickly replied that they have to provide those basic HD channels unencrypted over cable by Federal law and that I have a right to use the basic analog cable I pay for.

I have a technician coming out this Saturday to check my signal strength. I am hoping that they can boost the signal from the outside or provide me with an amplifier for free.

I get the impression that TWC in my area is lowering the signal strength to get more subscribes on the same pipelines. They don't care how analog cable looks and I assume the cable boxes boost/enhance the signal.

[scat]

@jerryt

Thanks for the information
Wow that "Sadelco DisplayMax Jr." is expensive $549.95 refurbished at aaatesters.com


@null_pointer_us

Thanks for the information too
that HomeTech Solutions is a great information site
I am glad to hear that you are using a Electroline amp with good results
I'm thinking about getting the Electroline amp and connect it as follows:

I come out of the wall into the Electroline EDA-FT08300 8-Port
1 leg - to Comcast DVR box for wife's premium content
1 leg - to HVR 2250 tuner
1 leg - to PVR 500 tuner
and put terminators on all other open connections on the Electroline EDA-FT08300
this will allow for future tuners in the Sage server.

EDIT 4-20-2010 11:59 AM
Just ordered the amp and when I get it I will report back the results.

Thank you all for your input.
Scat

[null_pointer_us]

Let us know how it turns out.

Our 2x DTAs arrived. 5 hours, online activation, online chat, phone activation, phone tech support, and now a service call scheduled for tomorrow just to get these $#@% things to activate.

EDIT:

The DTAs shipped to me by Comcast for my account were configured for the wrong region, so the tech had to fix them.

[will]

A Time Warner cable tech came out to my house. He ended up un-twisting and re-installing the cable wire that goes from the junction box at the end of my yard to the house (underground).

This did make a difference, my problem has been reduced but I am still experiencing the same issues (though not as much). The cable tech said I had a perfect signal, he said he has never seen a house with such a great signal. Apparently my signal is perfect at 0dBmV. I asked if I should get a signal amp and he said "no, it would end up hurting my HD signal."

I am not sure if I believe the TWC tech. This problem only started after TWC started adding more HD (digital) channels and removing analog channels.

What do you recommend? Should I invest in a decent signal amp of eBay against the advice of TWC?

Thanks for the help,
Will