MP stability deteriorating (1 Viewer)

[IkeV70]

So, one fine day mu DVD player broke down. I decided to replace it with a HTPC. After some research I decided to use Media Portal.

I got a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, as that was recommended as a all in one affordable solution for HTPC's. My old tv didn' have a digital input, so I couldn't use the built-in ATI video card. I installed an old nVidia card with analogue out and started experimenting with MP, codecs, plugins, etc.

After a while I got a new Full HD tv with HDMI and everything. I removed the old nVidia and finally started using everyhting from the Gigabyte MB... well... HDMI out didn't work. I don't know why (yes, changed the setting in the bios setup), I had to use DVI out and a DVI to HDMI cable. Well, that wasn't not too bad, DVI should give the same quality as HDMI, and the sound is going via SP/DIF to a separate amp anyway. However, HDMI should have worked, so why didn't it?

Anyway, I had serious stability problems playing video and TV. The entire HTPC would freeze during DVD playback, a hard reset being the only way to get the thing back to life. TV was stuttering and freezing, it was kind of terrible.
So it didn't take long before I decided to reinstall the thing. A fresh Win XP SP3 copy, fresh MP 1.0 RC3, and only the codecs I really wanted. I installed PowerDVD 7, the ATi Avivio codecs and FFDSHOW.

Things seemed allright at first. Only the TV kept stuttering and freezing on me. Sometimes it would run without problem for a full day, and then the next morning, PC was still running, it didn't work at all.
TV problems are very annoying, but fortuately we can use the thing as a DVD player, right? Well, since a couple of days DVD video problems are returning.
I've got a downloaded DVD, probably of poor quality. The subtitles are displayed in gray, shadow color also gray. Gray on gray instead of white on gray. Unreadable. Never happened before. DVD would freeze randomly, especially after skipping a few minutes (again: not a real DVD, but a copy of it on HD). MP suddenly wasn't able to figure out the total playing time of the movie. Skip function therefore didn't work anymore after a while. And terrible lipsync problems, where audio was a second or more behind video.

Ok, I thought, probably a poorly authored DVD copy, don't loose faith in MP yet. Well, today I tried to play a real DVD. It would play for 13 secs and then the entire HTPC froze. Hard reset was the only thing left to do. Tried it again, and again, and again. Every time the same. Tried to start playing at chapter 2. Freeze after 5 seconds.

Ok, the DVD was scratched. Let's try another movie. Well, you guessed it, same damn problem. I'm kind of loosing all faith in MP's stability. It just seems to be so darn sensitive to unexpected problems. Freezing, stuttering, TV stops working, and an occasional BSOD (ati2dvag crashes).

Ok, changed the DVD codec from ffdshow (which had been working perfectly for weeks) to ATI Avivio codec. Tried to play the DVD, it works. It has been playing for 15 minutes now, I hope it'll make it to the end.

I have great admiration for all the hard work that has been put into MP. All contributors deserve great acknowledgement for their work. I therefore hate it to complain. But unfortunately I just can't get the thing stable, no matter what I try. It'll work perfectly today, everything will be terrible tomorrow. I don't get it, I'm running out of options. I've read posts here of users that have been running rock solid MP installations for months... Well, I wonder how the hell they do that...

So in short I'm experiencing serious instability problems in:

1.
TV. DVB/T card, reception is not always perfect. MP / TV Server can't seem to gracefully handle reception hickups, hardware hickups, continuity errors.

2.
DVD playback, both hardware and HD copies. Freeze problems, subtitle display problems. Subtitles are of poor quality, very jagged edges on the characters. And sometimes the main color and shadow color are the same, making the text unreadable.

3.
Radio: The same DVB/T TV Card also provides Radio. In the evening I close TV (it was working), but not ther HTPC. Netx morning I try to start Radio. Nothing. TV Service has ceased functioning somewhere in the middel of the night for no reason.

I'm using FFDSHOW for everything except H.264. (I don't have much HD content, so far no problems on that area)

Ok, I don't expect any miracle solutions, but perhaps there are some suggestions that might be helpful. Thanks,

Ike.




TV-Server Version: RC3 ?
MediaPortal Version:1.0 RC3
MediaPortal Skin: Indigo
Windows Version: XP, SP3
CPU Type: Athlon something
HDD: 2*500 GB something
Memory: 2 GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
Video Card: Onboard ATI
Video Card Driver:
Sound Card:
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Floppy DVB/T
1. TV Card Type:
1. TV Card Driver:
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: FFDShow, ATI Avivo, PowerDVD 7, MP's default codecs
MPEG2 Audio Codec: FFDShow, ATI Avivo, PowerDVD 7, MP's default codecs
h.264 Video Codec: ATI Avivo, PowerDVD 7
Satelite/CableTV Provider:
HTPC Case: Antec
Cooling:
Power Supply:
Remote:
TV:
TV - HTPC Connection: DVI-to-HDMI cable

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

I think you have some serious hardware issues that need sorting out, first i would be very concerned that the hdmi connector of the motherboard does not work, could be a naff mobo causing all your grief.

Hardware\drivers are the main cause of all instability problems with Mediaportal.

 

[KevL]

Have you set an adequate amount of video ram for the graphics card (internal 3200 chipset). Should be 256MB not AUTO. If set to auto it will blue screen occasionally. Apparently AUTO = 64MB. Why they didn't call it 64MB god knows.

What version drivers are you using on you graphics card? I'm still running 8.4. They work fine (no HW acc. though).

I am not using hardware decode as it breaks playback, blue screen etc.

There is lots of info on how to get this MB working in MP. I have this MB and it can be made to work well. Later radeon drivers might even give you HW acc without blue screen.


Kev

 

[IkeV70]

Thanks for the info KevL. I'm gonna check the video ram immideately when I get home tonight.
Not sure which driver version I'm using now. The Avivo (or what are they called?) hardware codecs seem to be reasonably stable. BSOD's are fortunately quite rare, mostly occur when I try to revive the HTPC via remote desktop-taskmanager-kill mediaportal.exe when it's frozen during DVD or TV playback.

Anyway, I prefer to use ffdshow for everything except H.264. The CPU can handle normal playback easily. I therefore don't care too much for hardware acceleration.

The thing that bothers me the most: When my TV or Radio stops working (yes, radio also stops working occasionally, no video codec needs to be involved) I can solve the problem by restarting MP and TV Service. Why is MP/TV service not able to recover from the problem (no doubt hardware/driver hickup) without restarting? How can MP claim it's a hardware or driver problem when a simple restart solves the problem?

 

[KevL]

ike,


when it does actually BSOD it should tell you which driver was offending the kernel. This is key info.

Cant help you with TV/radio not working, fixed by MP retart issue.

I have found that MP doesn't always set up the firewall properly - you could check this. Trouble is I can find no info on how the firewall should actually be set - so in the past I just messed with FW settings until it stopped breaking.
Also found that import channels / export channels breaks things badly and all manner of breakdowns can then happen (if you have multiple cards or chnnels with the same name) . Maybe you should try clearing your channel list and doing a full rescan. I know it is a pain but it might fix things for you. That has fixed MP for me in the past - and it is the reason I'm sticking with RC2 for a while longer.

I also noticed that you have PowerDVD 7. Are you ceratin you haven't accidently asked these codecs to do HW acc?

For codecs I'm using Nvidia pure video. Seem to work well on SD material. Maybe give them a try.

 

[IkeV70]

I have a single seat setup, so I don't expect the firewall to be any problem. TV/radio problems are irregular. Hours of stable running are followed by hours of instability.

I did set PDVD7 codecs to hardware acceleration. However, I'm not using them, I'm using ffdshow only (that is, I told MP to use ffdshow, haven't tested this with filtergraph yet)
The problem with codecs is: I sometimes change them. Things will run fine for a while, and then instability comes back. So I change the codec back, things run fine for a while, and then instability, etc. etc. etc.

I've done many channel rescans in the past few weeks, also after completely cleaning the channellist, I don't think the solution is in the channel setup

BSOD's report a problem in ati2dvag.

Anyway, while typing this post the TV froze and switched off. I'll attach the logfiles. Maybe there's something in there.

** UPDATE **
I must apologise ! This time there probably wasn't a problem, I scheduled a recording on another channel. MP correctly switched off TV.

 

[Marcusb]

with regards to the DVD issues you had, partly this could be caused by the DVD encryption. Since it's a licensed decryption method, most open source software cannot play commercial DVD's as it's a touchy legal issue. You technically can't include DVD decryption without paying license fees.
This would explain why FFDShow couldn't play, while commercial codecs could.

If you want to use FFDShow, then you are best using an app like DVD43 or AnyDVD, which will handle the decryption first.

If this was part of the problem, you'd find that the beginning of the DVD would play and possibly even the menus, but when the actual movie started, the screen would go black, and if MP was set to be always on top, it may cause unresponsiveness.

Cheers,
Marcus.

 

[IkeV70]

Marcusb

You're right, but in this case encryption is not the problem. The freezing is unpredictable. Eventually I got the entire movie to play.
(A good way to force the freeze is to do a lot of skipping back and forth)