Sound issues with Sage and Hauppauge PVR 250

[humphrep]

I could really use help. I am getting great video quality , but I am having 2 separate sound issues.

My Sage TV Setup is:

· Hauppauge PVR 250

· RCA DirecTV Stereo Receiver

· S-Video – Video Input

· RCA to Headset type jack Audio input.





My two issues are:



1 – When the sound works it is very crackly.



2 – I have this set up on my HTPC. I am using TheaterTek, with reclock. If I go to watch a DVD The sound is awesome. I am running a Digital Fiber SPDIF to my stereo receiver. The problem I have is then after I finish watching my DVD, and go to watch anything in Sage TV there is no sound at all. Including anything that was recorded while I was watching. I thought that since I was using the Audio input on the Hauppauge I should be able to use my sound card for other things without affecting recordings.





Any help you could give me would be great.

[Mark Lamutt]

It sounds like you have your audio decoder set to "Default" in the audio tab under detailed setup. Try changing it to something else and see if that helps.

[humphrep]

Ok - I have been playing with this all morning. I have changed the Audio Decoder and the problem still exists. But I have pinpointed what is causing the problem, not that I understand it.


I have a program called DVDStarter - Whill allows me to play my DVD's from my hard drive (Local or networked) using TheaterTeK as the DVD Player. I really like this functionaility, as I no longer have to worry about my wife or kids scratching my DVD's again. I have them all on a HD.

Whenever I use DVDStarter the problem occurs. If I go into TheaterTek directly to play a DVD there is no problem.

I am confused why this would cause a problem. Is the Audio Decoder involved in Recordings? I thought it only came into play during playback or live View (Which is actually playback with a very slight delay).

One other question, do I have to use the Audio Capture on the Hauppauge PVR 250? I would rather use the inputs on my other sound card, it has a much better sound.


I am very new to this and I do appreciate all the help.

[sshapiro63]

I have a similar problem. If I add/remove external Firewire disks to my pc while SageTV is running, I lose sound with my PVR250. If I attempt to use Win XP Disk Administrator to add a drive or even format a disk, I lose sound with my PVR250.

I don't know if the problem is driver or SageTV related. I'm not surprised that playing DVD's off your hard disk produces the problem since all my sound issues are also somehow related to hard disk access.

[humphrep]

Interesting. That is exactly what DVDStarter does, it creates a virtual drive that the PC thinks is a DVD-Rom. So you can use the HD instead of a DVD-Rom to play back movies.

[humphrep]

OK,

I have proven it has nothing to do with DVDStarter. It is definitely the Remapping of a drive. If I have Sage TV running, and I plug in my Firewire drive the audio gets dropped as soon as windows registers the new drive.

Would this be the Drivers for the PVR 250 or Sage TV itself that is choking when windows does this?

[laurenglenn]

Originally posted by humphrep
I could really use help. I am getting great video quality , but I am having 2 separate sound issues.

My Sage TV Setup is:

· Hauppauge PVR 250

· RCA DirecTV Stereo Receiver

· S-Video – Video Input

· RCA to Headset type jack Audio input.

My two issues are:
1 – When the sound works it is very crackly.
2 – I have this set up on my HTPC. I am using TheaterTek, with reclock. If I go to watch a DVD The sound is awesome. I am running a Digital Fiber SPDIF to my stereo receiver. The problem I have is then after I finish watching my DVD, and go to watch anything in Sage TV there is no sound at all. Including anything that was recorded while I was watching. I thought that since I was using the Audio input on the Hauppauge I should be able to use my sound card for other things without affecting recordings.

Any help you could give me would be great.

If you have a VIA chipset, you may need the latency patch. I posted something on it a while back.

You can try this link:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...+latency+patch

Or just go to google.com and search for VIA Latency Patch.

I've played DVDs WHILE recording with Sage and I've had no problems. Also played WMAs when running Sage....

There's one thing I learned about sound cards is that while I may not like Creative all the time, their sound cards are worth the extra money most of the time in terms of working under Windows. Even a cheap SB16 card will probably give less problems than Philips or Hercules (as I've tried both -- and both had bad sync-clock drifting)..... You might want to just try a different card or driver.....

Lauren

[humphrep]

OK, I finally found the problem.

Many thanks to all that offered suggestions and help.

After working with Hauppauge Support, it turns out that MSN Messenger was causing the problem. Even though I never used this app on my HTPC, it caused the problem.

Any time a drive was added, wheter it was a firewire/usb drive, or a network drive, or a virtual drive (This is what DVDStarter does) the sound input on the Hauppauge Card (Not the output on my system sound card) would go out.

I did some searching and found a way to make MSN Messenger never load on Windows XP Pro. After doing that, everything is working exactly as it should.

So now I can watch DVD's and not worry about missing any recordings.

[sshapiro63]

Could you let us in on the fix? How did you disable messenger from starting up with XP?

[humphrep]

I found the following by doing a search in the Windows Help and Support Center - From the Start Menu. I searched for Windows Messenger, and found it in the Microsoft Knowledge Base Section.

There are other considerations - which were outlined in the knowledge base - if you have outlook xp or outlook express. I had neither of those apps on my machine - I have a purely dedicated HTPC. I only copied the steps I followed.







How to Prevent Windows Messenger from Running on a Windows XP-Based Computer
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Windows Messenger 4.0
Microsoft Windows Messenger 4.5
Microsoft Windows Messenger 4.6

This article was previously published under Q302089
IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

SUMMARY
This article describes how to prevent Windows Messenger from running. By default, Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home Edition install Windows Messenger, and the user interface does not provide a way to remove or to uninstall Windows Messenger.

When you install Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), Windows adds a new feature that is named "Set Program Access and Defaults" to the Add or Remove Programs tool in Control Panel. You can use this feature to remove Windows Messenger from the Start menu, the desktop, and other locations. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
332003 How to Change Your Default Programs and to Enable or Remove Access to Microsoft Windows and Non-Microsoft Programs

To prevent Windows Messenger from running, use one of the following methods.
Windows Messenger 4.0 or Later on a Windows XP Professional-Based Computer

Click Start, click Run, type gpedit.msc, and then press ENTER.

Double-click the following items to expand them:
Local Computer Policy
Computer Configuration
Administrative Templates
Windows Components
Windows Messenger
Double-click Do not allow Windows Messenger to run,
and then click Enabled.
Click OK, and then quit the Group Policy snap-in.
NOTE: Group Policy Editor (Gpedit.msc) is not available on Windows XP Home Edition-based computers.

[trevorst]

Don't you just love the great things Microsoft does for us sometimes!!!!!

[Narflex]

Well that's quite interesting! Thanks for the info.