TT S2-1600 on W10 - Problems on HD (1 Viewer)

[batsi]

Hello,

after using MediaPortal on Windows 7 for some years it has been time for a new one now.
I built a new PC with Windows 10 and put my very reliable TechnoTrend TT-budget S2-1600 in it. It worked very well with Windows 7 both SD and HD.
With Windows 10 now SD is fine, but watching an HD channel, I get a lot of block noise and other picture erros, getting more as the pictures move more, and getting almost clear if nothing moves on the film. I also tried the TT-viewer, it's the same there.
Thinking of higher bandwidth on moving pictures I already tried to swap the PCI slot, but unfortunately it didn't change anything. And putting the card back in the old Windows 7 PC everything is fine again.

Anyone ever had similar problems or even a solution?

Thanks
batsi

 

[Owlsroost]

I don't use the tuner you mention, but a few general thoughts:

Is the MP TV Server TsWriter.log showing 'continuity errors' (which might indicate signal strength or hardware compatibility issues) ?

Check the LAV video settings - is 'DXVA2 (native)' enabled ?

GPU drivers up-to-date ?

Try disabling all the picture 'enhancements' in the Intel Graphics control panel ?

 

[batsi]

Hello Owlsroost,

thanks for your suggestions, I did your supposed checks today.
TSWriter.log shows only very very few continuity errors mostly only one or two short after tuning the channel.
I also checked LAV and Intel settings, they're all standard. At least I could eliminate that they're to blame by connecting the MediaPortal client on my notebook with the server and had exactly the same picture errors:



Finally I noticed that there are minimal picture errors with SD as well.
Is there a possibility that the computer is not able to push all the information through the PCI bus?
Are there nowadays still problems with double IRQ assignments or something like that?

Thanks
batsi

 

[Owlsroost]

I think you need to attach some logs from when the problem is happening.

Is this a single-seat system ?

Are there any continuity errors in TsReader.log ?

 

[batsi]

Hi,
just wanted to give an updated status:

I had email contact with both the TV card manufacturer TechnoTrend and the mainboard manufacturer Asus. They both confirmed that there are known problems with PCI TV cards on Intel Skylake systems. According to Asus those systems do not support PCI natively anymore, and this can cause such problems.

Funny thing is that my very old MyCinema-P7131 (DVB-T) works without problems, but the newer TT S2-1600 (DVB-S) causes that block noise even with SD resolution. But maybe DVB-S has a slightly higher bandwidth than DVB-T, and that is just too much for that "not natively connected" PCI bus.

Now I'm a bit annoyed that I've decided for Skylake and didn't chose an older Broadwell chipset, but I will probably go for a new PCIe DVB-S card. At the moment I'm quite into getting a Digital Devices card. Although they're a bit more expensive, they even promote them to be compatible with MP, and I'd like to get a dual tuner card.

So just for the files: Take care and test if your PCI TV card work with Intels 6th generation Skylake processors beforehand, for me it's too late ;-(

Bastian

 

[Joutungwu]

Hi Bastian,
i had exactly the same issue with my Nova-S PCI and Windows 10 after installing both on newer hardware (system info: MediaPortal Guest PC (new)). I tried Kanotix 2013 (Linux live system) and was very surprised as i watched SD- and HDTV with Kaffeine without these errors. This showed me that there was neither a reception problem nor a hardware failure. I also thought about IRQ conflicts first, but the BIOS were set to share the IRQs and i saw the card sharing its IRQ with the same devices in Linux as well as in Windows 10. I was more surprised as i saw the card runnig well after Windows 10 reboot but that was not for a long time. After shutting the PC down and starting it after several hours, the picture errors returned more and more. I found out, that i could trigger this by resetting the PSU (PC shutdown > power cord unplugged > ON/OFF button pressed and held for at least 15 seconds). I found also that the PCI interfaces on the Asus P5K deluxe are controlled by the PCI express controller. I guess, this could be meant by "not natively supported anymore". These picture errors weren't limited to MediaPortal but also occured with other DVB software.

I tried a lot to get the Nova-S to work with Windows 10:
- Changing BIOS ACPI settings
- CMOS Resets
- PCI slot change
- BIOS reflashing and downgrades
- Changing boot entry options belonging to PCI or PCIex
Nothing worked.

Recently i took a deeper look into the BIOS options. I found Advanced > JumperFree Configuration > Ai Ocerclock Tuner, which was set to [Auto] by default. When changing the Ai Overclock Tuner to [Manual], the option PCIE Frequency occurs, which is also set to [Auto] by default. Knowing that the PCI interfaces are controlled by the PCI Express controller, i changed the PCIE Frequency value to 125 at first (allowed input values: 100-150), but the system did not start (boot device not found). After reading a little bit about PCI overclocking, it seems that choosing such a high value was not a good idea at all. So please don't copy this! Then i changed it to 110 and to 105. The system was able to boot with both values, but it didn't effect anything about the errors. After that, i returned the PCIE Frequency and Ai Ocerclock Tuner back to [Auto] and rebooted. I was very surprised watching TV without the errors now. I did at least five PSU resets, but TV was still working. I have no explanation about this curiosity but after two days with shutdowns of several hours in between (similiar effect as PSU resets) it still works. Problem solved...

So, if you still have the TT-budget S2-1600, you may try the same as i did: Start the PC with Kanotix spitfire 2016, which should have the driver of your card on board (Kernel 2.6.36 and above). Start Kaffeine, search for some free HD channels, put them to the channel list and check if the errors occur or not. If that works without errors, look into your BIOS/UEFI to set PCIE Frequency to other values than [Auto]. Try a low value between 100 and 105, save the settings and reboot Windows 10. Then go to BIOS again and set PCIE Frequency back to [AUTO]. Save settings and check if this works for your PCI DVB card as well.

Good luck!

Joutungwu

 

[Joutungwu]

Recently the problem occured again after unplugging the power cord for some time. This time i had the idea to have a closer look to the chipset drivers. I installed the older INF Update Utility - Primarily for Intel® 6, 5, 4, 3, 900 Series Chipsets version: 9.2.0.1030. While doing that the utility noticed that version 10.0.27 was installed before by me and asked me to install the older version instead. I did that and after restarting the PC everything worked fine again. Now i suppose that version 9.x is more compatible to older chipsets like P35 than version 10.x or the Microsoft labeled drivers of the Windows 10 installation. That is still no explanation for this odd problem. It's just another observation, which matches more to the fact, that the problem doesn't exist with Linux.