HDPVR Dropouts, caught in the act!

[Spectrum]

OK so Darcilicous and I have been speculating in previous threads on what causes the HDPVR dropouts to occur ie 2-5 seconds of missed video in an HDPVR recording. For me and others that have seen it happen, the blue light on the HDPVR turns off and turns back on and that corresponds with with a dropout in video. The speculation has been is it something the HDPVR is doing, or is it something in the signal the HDPVR doesn't like.

I had the Oregon UT game on and we are having a pretty bad thunderstorm right now in Knoxville, and I saw a lot of these dropouts and the HDPVR was indeed blinking out. I quickly flipped the TV input over to the pass-through of the HDPVR and saw what happened to the video when this is happening. The video would just stop onscreen like it was frozen and the HDPVR would kick off. The video would resume after 30-40 milliseconds and then the HDPVR would start back up. Sage never noticed that anything was wrong, no alerts on stopped tuner etc.

So I think that confirms it, it's something in the signal that the HDPVR doesn't like and rather than recording the signal as is, it halts, waits for the signal to resume, then starts recording again.

I'm thinking there won't be anything the Sage devs will be able to do to address this and we will be at Hauppauge's mercy for a resolution It's not like think they can fix the signal (although that would be cool) but 2-3 seconds of missed video for a .3-.4 second halt is a bit excessive.

[jerryt]

Which drivers?

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by jerryt

Which drivers?

Drivers are 1.5.7, Sage is v7.0.16, and it was capturing component locked to 720p/60fps and DD audio.

The storm has moved on and the game is back on. Not a single dropout since the storm left.

[sleonard]

Good job

This is exactly what I had suspected and now I don't have to go thru the hassle of testing for this. I don't have a display with component inputs near my HD-PVRs and I actually haven't seen this error happen since I moved to a new house.

I do still get occasional halts and full lockups on the HD-PVR and also suspect that these are do to bad input from the cable box that the devices just cannot handle gracefully if at all. Even those errors have been relatively rare and go weeks without any problem so getting lucky enough to be in front of the tv when a lockup occurs could take a while.

I just had a thought, is there any component video switches or like device that might isolate whatever bad mojo is coming out of the cable box from the HD-PVR? So that the HD-PVR just saw some black frames instead?

Anyway... Good job again.

S

[snipeman]

Perhaps you could have used more dropouts and even less signal on that game...

Originally Posted by Spectrum

I had the Oregon UT game on and we are having a pretty bad thunderstorm right now in Knoxville, and I saw a lot of these dropouts and the HDPVR was indeed blinking out.

[Spectrum]

Originally Posted by snipeman

Perhaps you could have used more dropouts and even less signal on that game...

BOOOOO!
The first half was good but yeah, TN fell apart in the 2nd