Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by sleonard

Back when Firewire recording first came out I looked up the codes to open the service menus on my cable boxes and found that none of the channels including HBO and SHO had the copy protection flags set. I got excited and planned on setting up FW tuning. Well, life got in the way and when I came back to it a few months later I found that Cox had wisened up and set all the flags.

I ended up buy 3 HD_PVR's and struggling with those for years. I am now hoping that Hauppauge will do a better job of fixing the Colossus drivers so I can migrate to those.

S

That is one reason I'm holding off on DirecTV. I'm not going to be happy if I go through all that effort and can't get reliable recordings. That is one area of sage that has never given me problems. Once the bugs are ironed out I'll grab a colossus, but not until then.

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by sleonard

Back when Firewire recording first came out I looked up the codes to open the service menus on my cable boxes and found that none of the channels including HBO and SHO had the copy protection flags set. I got excited and planned on setting up FW tuning. Well, life got in the way and when I came back to it a few months later I found that Cox had wisened up and set all the flags.

I ended up buy 3 HD_PVR's and struggling with those for years. I am now hoping that Hauppauge will do a better job of fixing the Colossus drivers so I can migrate to those.

S

I'm still not buying into the Colossus problems being only a Hauppauge issue.
After my Sage client was crashing 3 times during a Colossus recording on Friday night, I went ahead on Saturday morning and enabled Windows Media Center (which has Colossus support now). And to my surprise things are looking pretty good on that side. The only issue that I noticed are some recordings without audio (which seems to be a common issue).
But video playback was fine, no stuttering of any kind, and no occasional glitches. I was able to record HD and SD without problems, and my system remained stable all the time. I've been using this for 3 days now.
All in all it looks as if Media Center seems to somehow be able to better handle problems that may stem from the driver side. MC itself did not include any updates specific for the Colossus, the only difference is that there's an additional service that Hauppauge provides, which sits between the driver and MC. The recording format is also different (same as for the HDPVR), where MC uses the wtv container instead of ts. Not sure in how far this remuxing has an effect on some of the issues.

This doesn't mean that I'm done with Sage, I'm actually hoping that things will be fixed at some stage and that I can reuse Sage, but for now I'm using what seems to be working better for my system.

[videolog]

Originally Posted by Rico66

I'm still not buying into the Colossus problems being only a Hauppauge issue.
After my Sage client was crashing 3 times during a Colossus recording on Friday night, I went ahead on Saturday morning and enabled Windows Media Center (which has Colossus support now). And to my surprise things are looking pretty good on that side. The only issue that I noticed are some recordings without audio (which seems to be a common issue).
But video playback was fine, no stuttering of any kind, and no occasional glitches. I was able to record HD and SD without problems, and my system remained stable all the time. I've been using this for 3 days now.
All in all it looks as if Media Center seems to somehow be able to better handle problems that may stem from the driver side. MC itself did not include any updates specific for the Colossus, the only difference is that there's an additional service that Hauppauge provides, which sits between the driver and MC. The recording format is also different (same as for the HDPVR), where MC uses the wtv container instead of ts. Not sure in how far this remuxing has an effect on some of the issues.

This doesn't mean that I'm done with Sage, I'm actually hoping that things will be fixed at some stage and that I can reuse Sage, but for now I'm using what seems to be working better for my system.

Your experiences are what I am seeing also. Sage will behave if I do the nightly restart. If I don't I get the same errors as everyone else on here. Tried WMC and zero problems and no restarts. I like Sage and love the extenders and Placeshifter, but needing to restart to keep things stable is not a good situation.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by videolog

Your experiences are what I am seeing also. Sage will behave if I do the nightly restart. If I don't I get the same errors as everyone else on here. Tried WMC and zero problems and no restarts. I like Sage and love the extenders and Placeshifter, but needing to restart to keep things stable is not a good situation.

Sage runs in java with a limted heap so you are going to see memory leaks much faster than WMC. I am 100% confident the problem is in haupaugge. That being said I haven't restarted in a week and a half and 0 issues since latest drivers.

[TechBill]

Strange thing happen today, Colossus was giving SageTV a No Signal so a bunch of my recordings failed.

I had to restart the server to get Colossus to work again.

Running latest driver and beta here.

I am doing the nightly reboot because I have the memory leak issue like other folks here but what happen today is something different and new which never happened before.


Bill

[The Truth]

Originally Posted by sleonard

Back when Firewire recording first came out I looked up the codes to open the service menus on my cable boxes and found that none of the channels including HBO and SHO had the copy protection flags set. I got excited and planned on setting up FW tuning. Well, life got in the way and when I came back to it a few months later I found that Cox had wisened up and set all the flags.

I ended up buy 3 HD_PVR's and struggling with those for years. I am now hoping that Hauppauge will do a better job of fixing the Colossus drivers so I can migrate to those.

S

What you get on firewire has nothing to do with what you will get with this...

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

I dont have a resistance to restarts, i have a resistance to "nightly". i.e. there is no convenient and consistent time slot, between backups, overnight recordings, etc.. i usually dont have a (everyday at 3am) type window. It would be 3 on monday, 2 on tuesday, nothing wednesday, etc.. and i really dont feel the need to schedule 7 different tasks.

I use SJQ to do my restarts. It checks to make sure there is a window where nothing is recording and nobody is watching anything.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I use SJQ to do my restarts. It checks to make sure there is a window where nothing is recording and nobody is watching anything.

I was thinking about using SJQ for the restarts as well. Right now it is just *.bat that does a backup and restart scheduled for 4am.

I have not used SJQ yet and was reading about it a little this weekend. Did not understand from the example backup script how it was going to go back into the que if something was recording. Almost seemed like it would just stop trying until tomorrow. I am guessing there are a lot of different ways to approach it.

How did you set yours up?

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

How did you set yours up?

Starting at 2:00 AM it looks for a 30 minute gap in the recording schedule and when it finds one it stops sage, backs up the sage directory, and then restarts sage. You can easily check for other things before stopping sage (connected clients for example) but I don't bother with that.

[barney B.A.]

Originally Posted by The Truth

What you get on firewire has nothing to do with what you will get with this...

No. But it is a clear indication of where the cable co.s are heading.

[sleonard]

Originally Posted by The Truth

What you get on firewire has nothing to do with what you will get with this...

That wasn't the point. The point was that just because there is no copy protection right now doesn't mean that there won't be in a few months once the cableco catches up and your 30-day return period is up.

S

[The Truth]

Originally Posted by sleonard

That wasn't the point. The point was that just because there is no copy protection right now doesn't mean that there won't be in a few months once the cableco catches up and your 30-day return period is up.

S

Quit hating it will be my problem not yours then. I understand it can change. Hopefully it won't. As stated above I will have to take the loss then.

[The Truth]

Originally Posted by barney B.A.

No. But it is a clear indication of where the cable co.s are heading.

I completely disagree. Firewire has always been there and its not supposed to be used by consumers, while cablecards are.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by The Truth

I completely disagree. Firewire has always been there and its not supposed to be used by consumers, while cablecards are.

Your facts are off.Actually FireWire isfor consumers some makers put it on their tvs early on. It is actually a FCC requirement if you ask for a FireWire box they have to provide one but they can still protect it with drm.

[sleonard]

I'm not hating. I don't even understand where you get that. I simply related an experience that could help you make an informed decision and you missed my meaning so I made myself more clear.

S

[The Truth]

Originally Posted by sleonard

I'm not hating. I don't even understand where you get that. I simply related an experience that could help you make an informed decision and you missed my meaning so I made myself more clear.

S

I'm probably wrong again but for firewire you need the cable provider to have 5C and the correct copy freely thing set. Where as with a card its just copy freely. I tried Fe and didn't get many channels.

Sorry not tryin to be a mean, but i haven't heard about my cable provider changing anything in the future. And if they do I will cancel service or use colossus cards again.

I have wanted to drop this subject a while ago, and focus on getting my colossus cards to work.

[toricred]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Starting at 2:00 AM it looks for a 30 minute gap in the recording schedule and when it finds one it stops sage, backs up the sage directory, and then restarts sage. You can easily check for other things before stopping sage (connected clients for example) but I don't bother with that.

Could you share your script for this? PM me so we can keep this thread clean.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by The Truth

I'm probably wrong again but for firewire you need the cable provider to have 5C and the correct copy freely thing set. Where as with a card its just copy freely. I tried Fe and didn't get many channels.

Sorry not tryin to be a mean, but i haven't heard about my cable provider changing anything in the future. And if they do I will cancel service or use colossus cards again.

I have wanted to drop this subject a while ago, and focus on getting my colossus cards to work.

Agreed I think most where just trying to stop you from possibly buying something that won't work down the road and it got out of hand back to our original programming as you know the risk now and it is your decision.

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by toricred

Could you share your script for this? PM me so we can keep this thread clean.

I would like the script too if you don't mind sharing it .. PM if your willing to share it.

Thank you

Bill

[SHS]

Originally Posted by Rico66

I'm still not buying into the Colossus problems being only a Hauppauge issue.
After my Sage client was crashing 3 times during a Colossus recording on Friday night, I went ahead on Saturday morning and enabled Windows Media Center (which has Colossus support now). And to my surprise things are looking pretty good on that side. The only issue that I noticed are some recordings without audio (which seems to be a common issue).
But video playback was fine, no stuttering of any kind, and no occasional glitches. I was able to record HD and SD without problems, and my system remained stable all the time. I've been using this for 3 days now.
All in all it looks as if Media Center seems to somehow be able to better handle problems that may stem from the driver side. MC itself did not include any updates specific for the Colossus, the only difference is that there's an additional service that Hauppauge provides, which sits between the driver and MC. The recording format is also different (same as for the HDPVR), where MC uses the wtv container instead of ts. Not sure in how far this remuxing has an effect on some of the issues.

This doesn't mean that I'm done with Sage, I'm actually hoping that things will be fixed at some stage and that I can reuse Sage, but for now I'm using what seems to be working better for my system.

In you case that maybe true but the way I see it the other way around
old drivers last me about 36 hour were with the new latest driver I be lucky if it even last 12 hour before the video start flaking out in SageTV, WinTV and even Showbiz and I have never ever had reboot in 8 years on a daily base's even with USB HD-PVR install.
And are other apps form other user that are also seeing the some what same type of problem just look a round nPVR and MediaPortal forum.
Now it very possable that root of the problem maybe in SageTV or Java it self that cuasing the problem or ever the frist run set of Colossus Hardware board or the Firmware after all just look at HD-PVR which run so hot that could cook an egg on main chip and didn't cool it down it would lock up.