Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[mistergq]

Timestamp did not stop the audio sync issue. But on the first recording, it seems to be better. On the second recording (back to back), it is bad again. Also, so far *knock on wood* there does not seem to be any timestamp issue like there were before.

[texneus]

For the record, I tried the 29192 drivers and instantly had a 0% success rate resuming from S3 standby so I'm back to the 29111(?). Nobody else reported this, am I the only one?

[SHS]

Originally Posted by texneus

For the record, I tried the 29192 drivers and instantly had a 0% success rate resuming from S3 standby so I'm back to the 29111(?). Nobody else reported this, am I the only one?

I don't used standby other then the monitor or a power fail where UPS take over.

[w4rh4wk]

I only use the monitor standby as well.

[rcrang]

I used standby with the new drivers and never had a problem. But standby is so flaky it's easy to believe that a new driver could cause problems. Two Win7-64 machines I have will go into standby manually no problem but they will NEVER go automatically to sleep. I gave up on using it a long, long time ago because of the flakiness but I put the server to sleep a couple of times lately (since the new drivers) because the heat wave added to the heat the computer was throwing off was unbearable.

[texneus]

Not sure what you mean by "flakey", usually it's all or nothing. Occasionally it does need some troubleshooting to get it to that point. This is an exception but I'm not very willing to work on it since it does not appear to solve the audio sync over S/PDIF issue. 29111 is actually working very well for me, except for that one problem.

[rcrang]

By flaky I mean that sometimes standby works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the computer will wake up, sometimes it won't. Sometimes certain devices will not reactivate, sometimes they will. I've tried to get standby working on various computers for years and I've never had long-term success. And as I said, the new drivers don't seem to affect my S3 mode as I've actually had 100% success in bringing my computer out of standby since installing them (the few times that I've used standby). Not that standby works better now, it just doesn't seem to work any worse.

[CanadianEh]

Hi all,

I've been reading this thread off and on and need to purchase another HD capture device that will be connected to a Bell Expressvu (ie: Dish Network) receiver.

My current setup includes two HD-PVR's that are more or less happily functioning. Regardless of the solution, I'll use a USB-UIRT for channel changing.

With two HD-PVRs currently in-place, should I purchase another HD-PVR, or should I jump to a Colossus? I was going to go the HD-PVR route, but it seems most online stores are sold out of HD-PVRs.

I'm a little skeptical of the Colossus based on the fact that SageTV is now more or less a dead project.. lol


Any quick suggestions on this?

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by CanadianEh

Hi all,

I've been reading this thread off and on and need to purchase another HD capture device that will be connected to a Bell Expressvu (ie: Dish Network) receiver.

My current setup includes two HD-PVR's that are more or less happily functioning. Regardless of the solution, I'll use a USB-UIRT for channel changing.

With two HD-PVRs currently in-place, should I purchase another HD-PVR, or should I jump to a Colossus? I was going to go the HD-PVR route, but it seems most online stores are sold out of HD-PVRs.

I'm a little skeptical of the Colossus based on the fact that SageTV is now more or less a dead project.. lol


Any quick suggestions on this?

I love the concept of Colossus. Two HD Cards internal in the case.

I want the Colossus to work. But for some of us, there are problems. With FIOS, I am getting excellent quality of recording, after an hour with commercial breaks, there is a noticeable out of sync between audio and video. Hopefully this gets fixed.

[CanadianEh]

Originally Posted by mistergq

I love the concept of Colossus. Two HD Cards internal in the case.

I want the Colossus to work. But for some of us, there are problems. With FIOS, I am getting excellent quality of recording, after an hour with commercial breaks, there is a noticeable out of sync between audio and video. Hopefully this gets fixed.

Yeah, I thought more about this and ended up buying another HD-PVR. While they're not incredibly stable, either, at least it has longevity by living through the several SageTV product cycles, and is also well-supported by other PVR solutions out there, should I end up needing to move away from SageTV.

Thank you for the honest input

[Hunter69]

I have been working on my setup. I originally had 2 HD-PVR's but 1 HD-PVR went bad. I bought a colossus. I instantly had issues when installed along with a HD-PVR. So I ran the Colossus alone. It was ok but had some issues. I exp what most everyone else experienced (using optical audio sync, occasional blue screen when playing back).

Recently, I upgraded to the new drivers. So I decided to try both the HD-PVR and Colossus, they seemed to be a lot happier. I bought a second Colossus. After some weird issues (mainly with bad optical audio connection) I finally got both working. I initially used the optical input for audio. Happauge has seemed to improved this (I did not exp any audio sync issues) but it does seem to tax the server heavily. Right now I am running 2 Collosus using analog for sound and everything has been solid. Tuning seems faster, the picture is great. SO far so good.

I just thought I would provide some input of what I have experience since the Colossus first came out and the state it is currently in.

[rwc]

I've had a colossus since march and for the most part have been happy with it. But since I installed the card, I've had intermittent issues with recordings off the colossus.

When watching a video it'll get "stuck" and then suddenly jump ahead, only to get stuck again.

I've got the updated codecs (ffdshow, as well as the microsoft codecs), and drivers (both cards are using the latest drivers from hauppauge).

Last night when I was checking out a "bad" recording through media player (and reclock) I noticed that anytime there was a "skip", there was also no audio. If forced the audio to a specific rate (I don't remember how I did it--i was tired! :P ), the video would play correctly but there wouldn't be sound for that second or 2.

My question is: Is anybody else seeing this? Is there a known work around?

Here's the specs on my setup:

Colossus card (connected via component cables & rca audio)
HVR-2250 -- via coax
Using optimum cable
Win 7 Professional (64 bit)
4 Gigs of ram

[elefante]

After working on Colossus for days with no joy, I decided to remove it from Sage, and fire up WMC (ultimate), install the WMC service, and import it into WMC, within the same VM (PCI passthrough). So it imports the channels, sees the colossus, etc. In ten minutes Im saving a show. Not one skip, bump, etc when using component/optical. So I try it for a couple days and about 20 recordings. Not a single problem. This is while SageTV is running in the same VM, mind you.

So I take it out of WMC, put it back into Sage, and voila. Skips, jumps, java stack blowing out.

Result: Sage is the problem, not the colossus. Theres something amiss. When the Java stack eats up a 1GB (VM still only using 2 of 3 GB), bye bye. It seems to get worse on every channel change.

So I removed the Colossus from the Sage VM, created a new Win7 WMC VM, and set it up again. Now two weeks without a problem.

Running Sage server 2011061301.

It's too bad, because was absolutely stable for years w/ HDhomerun (I didnt have cable). So now I have 3 months left on my FIOS DVR before the $20/month vig kicks in.

I have sold off my HD300s, and I think my HD200's are next. The WAF is going down big time.

So now I struggle w/ the fact that outside all I like about Sage, for TV the best feature was commercial skip and the kids dont watch commercials. I have moved them to Netflix, so thats not a problem.

So what do you guys think of the next move: GoogleTV with its broken ecosystem and future, or plunge into WMC and start buying 80Watt eating Xboxes for all the TV's in the house, or something else I wont have to ffidle with for a few years? With MSFT I have a shot at a few years of it running. Google, who knows where it is going...

Funnily enough I was cleaning out one of my rooms, and I dusted off my ReplayTV, another victim of a perfect DVR that bites the dust.

[rwc]

Would this be a problem w/ Sage or w/ java?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by elefante

After working on Colossus for days with no joy, I decided to remove it from Sage, and fire up WMC (ultimate), install the WMC service, and import it into WMC, within the same VM (PCI passthrough). So it imports the channels, sees the colossus, etc. In ten minutes Im saving a show. Not one skip, bump, etc when using component/optical. So I try it for a couple days and about 20 recordings. Not a single problem. This is while SageTV is running in the same VM, mind you.

So I take it out of WMC, put it back into Sage, and voila. Skips, jumps, java stack blowing out.

Result: Sage is the problem, not the colossus. Theres something amiss. When the Java stack eats up a 1GB (VM still only using 2 of 3 GB), bye bye. It seems to get worse on every channel change.

So I removed the Colossus from the Sage VM, created a new Win7 WMC VM, and set it up again. Now two weeks without a problem.

Running Sage server 2011061301.

It's too bad, because was absolutely stable for years w/ HDhomerun (I didnt have cable). So now I have 3 months left on my FIOS DVR before the $20/month vig kicks in.

I have sold off my HD300s, and I think my HD200's are next. The WAF is going down big time.

So now I struggle w/ the fact that outside all I like about Sage, for TV the best feature was commercial skip and the kids dont watch commercials. I have moved them to Netflix, so thats not a problem.

So what do you guys think of the next move: GoogleTV with its broken ecosystem and future, or plunge into WMC and start buying 80Watt eating Xboxes for all the TV's in the house, or something else I wont have to ffidle with for a few years? With MSFT I have a shot at a few years of it running. Google, who knows where it is going...

Funnily enough I was cleaning out one of my rooms, and I dusted off my ReplayTV, another victim of a perfect DVR that bites the dust.

But you are also running Sage in a VM. Other users also have the Colossus working perfectly in Sage on a physical machine. So maybe WMC plays better in a VM than Sage and java. It is just like the USB HD-PVR. Some have no issues whatsoever and others do.

Gerry

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by rwc

I've had a colossus since march and for the most part have been happy with it. But since I installed the card, I've had intermittent issues with recordings off the colossus.

When watching a video it'll get "stuck" and then suddenly jump ahead, only to get stuck again.

I've got the updated codecs (ffdshow, as well as the microsoft codecs), and drivers (both cards are using the latest drivers from hauppauge).

Last night when I was checking out a "bad" recording through media player (and reclock) I noticed that anytime there was a "skip", there was also no audio. If forced the audio to a specific rate (I don't remember how I did it--i was tired! :P ), the video would play correctly but there wouldn't be sound for that second or 2.

My question is: Is anybody else seeing this? Is there a known work around?

Here's the specs on my setup:

Colossus card (connected via component cables & rca audio)
HVR-2250 -- via coax
Using optimum cable
Win 7 Professional (64 bit)
4 Gigs of ram

Did you try the timestamp correction for the registry?
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...postcount=1505

This solved the skip problems for me. I went into that section of the registry, export the settings to a txt file, added the line to the end of the registry, imported the line, restarted the computer, and have not seen the skip since.

let me be clear though, this did not solve my audio sync issues.

[texneus]

Originally Posted by mistergq

Did you try the timestamp correction for the registry?
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...postcount=1505

That post references a TBC (Time Base Correction) function. Did you intend to reference something else? Timestamp correction is a completely different function which I assume here refers to re-computing and applying new time stamps to a digital A/V stream so the audio is correctly synchronized to the video. A TBC corrects timing errors in horizontal and vertical video sync signals (usually introduced by the many variables in a helical scanning analog video system, aka a VCR). Extremely sloppy video timing would result in a capture device being unable to synchronize to the incoming video signals. More typically though it just makes the video look "sloppy".

[mistergq]

Originally Posted by texneus

That post references a TBC (Time Base Correction) function. Did you intend to reference something else? Timestamp correction is a completely different function which I assume here refers to re-computing and applying new time stamps to a digital A/V stream so the audio is correctly synchronized to the video. A TBC corrects timing errors in horizontal and vertical video sync signals (usually introduced by the many variables in a helical scanning analog video system, aka a VCR). Extremely sloppy video timing would result in a capture device being unable to synchronize to the incoming video signals. More typically though it just makes the video look "sloppy".

Actually, I referred to the right post, called it the wrong thing. This solution fixed the problem of the video file skipping ahead which is a problem he seems to be referring too.

[panteragstk]

Got DirecTV installed today. First recording went well. HDMI with native output and dolby digital enabled on stb are working. I had the channel change delay at 4, but have changed it to 12 to see if A/V can lock on better. The first recording has about 30sec of stuck screen, but the rest of the recording is fine. HTTP channel changing with the supplied DTV broadband adapter eliminates the need for ethernet at the stb. Pretty cool.

[traker1001]

Ok, So I am running 2 Colossus cards, latest drivers and latest RC of sage, And This having to re-start sage everything is getting kinda annoying.

If I don't the cards start getting that audio interruption thing. Anyone know of anyway to force sage to release the hardware for a second then re-initialize it without having to restart sage itself? Id wonder if being able to do this every 6 hours or so would eliminate my need to restart sage every night.