ATSC Card Owners: Come here for Support (2 Viewers)

[Commodore 64]

Hi,
New member here, I'm a refugee from MythTV and Linux.

I just setup my pcHDTV card with Media Portal. I posted some of the specifics here:

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/viewtopic.php?t=15355

I crashed Windows once or twice, so I changed a few settings. It still doesn't like to channel surf, but live TV looks ok.

Any advice is always appreciated.

Thanks,

Paul

Paul S,

Please see if you can join the IRC chat. WOuld love to tak with you about some of this stuff and Linux. ATSC support is still a work in progress, and we need all the user experiences/logs we can get.

 

[Paul S]

I've updated my thread on the pcHDTV card, and included some links to a zipped file containing the Windows drivers. There also is a link to the driver installation instructions.

I'll add this stuff to the card wiki, as soon as I learn how.

Thanks Commadore 64, for spurring me to use some of the web space that my internet provider gives me!

Paul

 

[Paul S]

pcHDTV card

After the initial success of being able to use the pchdtv HD-3000 card with Media Portal, I've had nothing but problems.

The PC re-boots often and MP will freeze up or not recognize my card. I found some different drivers for the chip, but they didn't work. I uninstalled them and reinstalled the original ones. Now I have been getting the "Blue Screen Of Death".

I'm using a VIA P4PB Ultra motherboard. It was castoff from another HTPC project that I did, because things weren't working correctly. I heard that they were plagued by bad capacitors. It's time to throw this one in the trash

I've ordered a new mobo and will report if things are better as a result.

Paul

 

[sirquack]

Small update: When I have a strong signal it seems fairly stable. If I try to watch a station that has a week signal, and then I try to go back to a known good strong signal, it sometime locks everything up on my pc. Ctrl-Alt-Del never seems to work, all I can do is hard boot my pc off/on.

Another issue is lip synch appears to be off at times. It appears to start off pretty much in synch, but gets worse, sometimes 5 second delay, is there settings to adjust lipsynch, I'm using SPDIF out to my Denon 2805, the motherboard is an NForce4 with updated drivers.

CD64, you mention some of the newer SVN builds do better with the Cat's Eye card, can you recommend one of them to add to RC4? Or, do I just grab the recent one. What is the Mozilla Active X requirement all about on the SVN page?

 

[Commodore 64]

Small update: When I have a strong signal it seems fairly stable. If I try to watch a station that has a week signal, and then I try to go back to a known good strong signal, it sometime locks everything up on my pc. Ctrl-Alt-Del never seems to work, all I can do is hard boot my pc off/on.

What Audio and Video Decoders are you using? I have this issue when using the nV Video Decoder with the nV Audio Decoder. Try using the MPa audio decoder.

Another issue is lip synch appears to be off at times. It appears to start off pretty much in synch, but gets worse, sometimes 5 second delay, is there settings to adjust lipsynch, I'm using SPDIF out to my Denon 2805, the motherboard is an NForce4 with updated drivers.

Make sure Timeshifting is on. When lip sync issues happen, rewind a second or two into your timeshift buffer. It should fix it. I also output to S/PDIF on a JVC receiver so we should have similar setups.

CD64, you mention some of the newer SVN builds do better with the Cat's Eye card, can you recommend one of them to add to RC4? Or, do I just grab the recent one. What is the Mozilla Active X requirement all about on the SVN page?

Grab the latest one. Don't worry about the Active X requirement. Once you extract the SVN to your MediaPortal directory, be sure to run start.bat in that same folder.

 

[opusnut]

I am having the same problems using the MPA audio dec. and the Mpeg2Dec video decoder. same thing happens on playback of recorded HDTV broadcasts so it's not just isolated to live/timeshift issues. And like commodore said, i can resolve it by rewinding but it hapens over and over again.

I am running an ATI HDTV wonder with a ATI x300 video card. And am also outputing audio via SPDIF.

thanx...
opusnut

 

[sirquack]

Another update:

Well the rewind does seem to temp fix the lipsync issues, thanks CD64 for that advice.

I'm having a problem with the rescan of my channels after installing the most recent SVN build. After replacing the appropriate files over the top of the RC4 version, I ran the
Start.bat file as mentioned in the instructions. Then I went into the "Setup MediaPortal" and verified all my settings in all of the categories. I also went into the TV section and realized I had to rescan the channels as it mentioned it could not reclaim my previous settings. So I fired off the new scan, which takes forever, and checked it periodically. I think it got upto somewhere in the 80's, and then I got a Microsoft DEbug "Send Report" or "Do Not Send report" and Mediaportal shut down. I even tried the GUI Setup Wizard in Mediaportal, and it closed down as soon as it starts to try to scan. Is there some files I need to delete from the old scan that are conflicting with this new build?

 

[Commodore 64]

There are no ATSC channels above 69.

I don't know why you had to readd the card, unless you were on a really old SVN.

I just updated to the latest and had no problems with rescanning etc. ALso, to avoid having to rescan, you should back-up your TV channels! GO in to the TV channels tab and there is an option to Backup, a little button on the lower right. Make sure you do that. I haven't rescanned in months! It saves a ton of time.

 

[sirquack]

Thanks 64,

You've got me also, not sure why I'm having problems. I did grab the latest build the other night for RC4. I guess when I was reading the instructions for installing SVN builds, it mentioned that you might have to go back into configuration as some things go back to default, the example they used was TV settings. So, I figured I would need to rescan, the card was still there.

I let it run for awhile and it eventually shut off and closed down configuration. I then tried the GUI interface Setup, same thing it instantly closes down and goes to Microsoft "Send Report" or "Don't send Report" for XP Pro.

Anyway, tonight I Unistalled MediaPortal, then reinstalled RC4, then grabbed the latest build again. I'm guessing there is stuff in the Registry that does not get removed as when I check the TV settings, it still shows the Card and Channels that I got from my first scan weeks ago. Maybe I need to blow any reference away in the Registry for "mediaportal". I just started a new scan and it is on 37, and has found 6 channels so far, maybe I should Stop the scan once I get beyond 69 as you mentioned, I don't know.

Thanks for your help.

randy

 

[sirquack]

Now it won't let me do the Backup, says there is nothing to backup. Uninstalling/Reinstalling RC4 and then applying latest SVN does not seem to refresh my TV card info like a fresh install. I like MP, but this is frustrating. Another thing that is frustrating is when it does decide to lockup, there is nothing you can do short of hard booting the PC. Ctrl-Alt-Del is useless, Esc is useless, nothing works. This PC is pretty loaded, should not have problems, and is only used for a HTPC, nothing else. Oh well, I'll keep working on it, sorry to vent.