HVR-1600 + PVR-350 causes 0x80040207 error on SageTV V7

[jbromwich]

I've just added an Hauppauge HVR-1600 to my existing system to supplement my current Hauppauge PVR-350. (See system setup in my sig).

In SageTV V7.0.23.246, I have not been able to make the 350 work. Any preview, color calibration, or playback attempt gives the error: 0x80040207.

My goal is simply to tune 2 analogue channels at once. I am not attempting to get ATSC or clear QAM working at this point.

My starting point, a few days ago, was to continue with my SageTV V5.0.4 but I couldn't get all 3 tuners (1 from the 350 and 2 from the 1600) to show up. I decided to just rename my sage install directory in order to get a fresh install for version 7.

I ran hcwclear before starting, and rebooted. I then installed the latest version of Hauppauge WinTV 7. Everything is currently working perfectly in the WinTV 7 software, where I am able to tune 2 channels at the same time in two different instances of the software (using the "-multi" command-line switch).

For this reason, I think it's safe to rule-out hardware issues, IRQ conflicts, and driver problems. Isn't it? All drivers are those that came with the WinTV 7 software which I freshly downloaded a few days ago.

In Sage, I have tried every decoder setting, all of which seem to work fine for the 1600, but none of which change the error that I see from the 350.

It's probably unrelated, but just in case, I'll mention that, just as with my Sage 5 install, I am still unable to play any AVI videos within Sage. This always results in error: 0x80040217 (note: This is different from the above-mentioned code). WMV files play without problems by the way.

I have spent 17+ hours so far trying to get the 350 card to capture video in Sage 7, but I have run out of ideas.

Should I look at other decoders? Do I need different codecs? Does anyone have a suggestion for what to try next? Thanks.

[amindlin]

I have been struggling with my PVR 350 since two days ago when I upgraded from 6 to 7.

I have discovered that SageTV 7 will bomb out if PVR-350 video out is enabled. If I turn off video out, I do not have any problems. That is, no problems except watching via the composite video of the 350.

I raised the issue to George in the support team at SageTV. Since this used to work in version 6, I think it is a bug. But I screwed around with my settings so much before I figured that it was related to the video out enabling, that I am not sure if I have something else wrong.

Maybe with this clue, you can figure it out for both of us.

Alan

p.s. I have it working with a pair of 150s.

[jbromwich]

Thanks for your suggestion.

In all trials, I have always disabled the 350 video out. (And it was also disabled in my recent Sage 5 install too by the way). Many years ago, on my original very slow machine using Sage 2, I had the 350 video-out enabled by necessity, but never again since there were several unacceptable sacrifices endured when using it.

I have also tried the install both with and without the "install support for 350, remote, etc" checkbox selected, but the result seems the same (Other than having to manually add support for the remote control when the checkbox isn't selected of course). I have a feeling I should re-install (again!) with the checkbox selected since I've now changed more than one variable at a time, and it seems more logical to have it selected (though I had figured that it might only be adding support for the video-out function rather than support for the card itself... perhaps that guess was wrong). I will test again tomorrow as time permits.

[jbromwich]

I've now tried uninstalling everything, and removing the new HVR-1600 card, and basically trying to get my original system back up and running with just the PVR-350 and sage v5.0.4. (Ya, I ran hcwclear, and I've now also tried the card in both PCI slots).

Everything still works perfectly in WinTV, but not in Sage! Even with my original setup, I now always get that cursed 0x80040207 error! (I tried both "re-creating" my setup in a fresh install, and then I tried using my back-up copy of the Sage directory, and then I tried overlaying the back-up onto a fresh install. All failed.

Just for fun, I installed Snap Stream Beyond TV, and it didn't let me select the 350 from the list because apparently "This capture device does not have a built-in tuner". ... well at least it's a descriptive error! (When I had the 1600 in there on one test, I could select it and it worked fine, but never could select the 350).

I tried Media Center too... (before I disabled it), and it couldn't use the 350 tuner either.

All of this used to work a week ago! Until I tried adding this new 1600 and upgrading to Sage7. But the darn thing still CURRENTLY works every time in WinTV though! If it was hardware, it wouldn't be working in WinTv. If it was a problem with the new drivers, then using my old drivers again would have fixed it, but it didn't.

1) Can someone please give me ANY suggestions for what to try?

2) Is there some registry cleaner out there so that my installs will actually be fresh? It always knows my settings (like postal code) so I KNOW it's storing stuff between installs, but I can't find them in the registry.

I estimate I'm now up to 34 hours on this! My only remaining option appears to be to invest even more money to buy a *another* 1600 card (and throw out a perfectly functional 350 card) so that I can have my dual-tuner system I want.

But honestly, I'm not convinced that a home-built PVR is really worth this amount of time commitment anymore. After 6 years with Sage, I'm really quite ready to throw in the towel and buy an HD dual-tuner DVR from my cable company. Having no hassles and HD is looking worth the increase in monthly bill right now.

[jbromwich]

I plan to proceed with my only remaining option which is to order the Sage 7 upgrade + Hauppauge 1600 card combo for $150 from here:
http://store.sagetv.com/mm5/merchant...tegory_Code=SB

This will mean I will have two 1600 cards (each being a slightly different revision number however).

Before I spend the money, can anyone out there confirm by personal experience that two 1600 cards will work together using Sage 7?

Thanks!

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by jbromwich

I plan to proceed with my only remaining option which is to order the Sage 7 upgrade + Hauppauge 1600 card combo for $150 from here:
http://store.sagetv.com/mm5/merchant...tegory_Code=SB

This will mean I will have two 1600 cards (each being a slightly different revision number however).

Before I spend the money, can anyone out there confirm by personal experience that two 1600 cards will work together using Sage 7?

Thanks!

Just keep in mind if you need to use the IR blaster that comes with the 1600 only one of them will work in a multi-card system. It has always been a limitation of the Hauppauge Ir drivers/software.

Gerry

[jbromwich]

Ok... Didn't know that. Thanks for the heads-up.

For now, I'll be fine because I will probably either just tune analogue directly from the cable on each card, or if I'm feeling more daring, I'll hook (just one!) of the cards up to my mini digital cable box using one IR blaster.

I would have assumed dual IR blaster support would have been implemented by Hauppauge however since they're now advertising new dual-tuner support with their WinTV 7 software all over their website.
See: http://www.hauppauge.com/site/suppor...7.html#devices (then click on the Overview tab, and scroll to "Works with multiple WinTV devices") (Although strangely they don't tell you that you must add the "-multi" option on the command line to enable it).

You never know... maybe it will work with their most recent drivers now?

[jbromwich]

A few days ago, I bought a second HVR-1600 card from a local store which had it on sale. So now I have a dual-tuner system with 2 nearly-identical cards. (The model numbers are the same, but they are a visibly different board revision). I haven't upgraded Sage yet, so still on Sage 5. It was actually completely plug-and-play to add the second card. Not a single complexity... my mother could have done it.

However, ONLY when two recordings are created simultaneously, the video and sound are out of sync for each recording. In fact, the video gets increasingly ahead of the sound on one of the tuners, and increasingly behind the sound on the other tuner. ie. The beginning of the show is in sync, but by the end of a half-hour show seems to be off by 30 seconds in either direction.

The recordings are actually being encoded out of sync, rather than it being a play-back problem. In fact, if one tuner stops recording while the other continues to record, the latter recording becomes in sync from that point onwards. Again, this is actually encoded in the file rather than being a playback issue.

This dedicated computer should certainly exceeds the minimum requirements for having dual tuners I would think, especially since the mpeg encoding is supposed to be happening on the cards themselves right?

So, what gives? Which area has the problem?

[jbromwich]

I upgraded from Sage 5 to Sage 7 which seems to have solved the sound-sync problem. I also have the record quality turned down a bit currently, but that alone didn't fix it until I upgraded.

Now there is, naturally, a different issue to solve in Sage 7. The remote, after several hours of working perfectly will no longer accept more than 2 key presses (of the same key) in a row. It's like it's debouncing it too much. I wonder if WMP is interfering even though I've disabled it in the services. Rebooting seems to be the only thing that gets the remote working again... for another few hours anyway.

Next I will try removing the permission for the current user to even run WMP to see if that has some effect. After that, I'm out of ideas.

Any other ideas on how to solve the remote issue are welcome.

[jbromwich]

Well, I disabled Windows Media Player by disabling the services and adding the registry entry to remove the current user's permission to run it. Followed instructions here: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/0...nter-in-vista/

I also un-installed the evaluation copy of Beyond TV that I had tested out.

One of these has fixed the remote problem.

Looks like everything is finally all working. Been stable for 2 days now.

Next thing is to see if I can get the S3 sleep to work again. I had to turn it off at the start if this adventure because it wasn't automatically coming out of sleep to perform recordings.