TV card crash and some other issues - preliminary thread (1 Viewer)

Lehmden

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  • December 17, 2010
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    Lehmden
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    Hi.
    Maybe a stupid question, but as I've "googled" for the "Hauppauge HVR-2250" it was labeled as "Dual digital TV receivers for ATSC or clear QAM". As far as I know in Belgium there is DVB-C instead of ATSC and/or QAM...
    In Belgium, over 95% of all households have cable television (analog and DVB-C)
    (Quote from Wikipedia)

    How could this card work properly in Belgium?
    Maybe the "Hauppauge HVR-2205" is meant here (dual DVB-C, DVB-T/T2 and analoge tuner card). Just to avoid further confusion...

    As I never have seen this card in "real" and for this never saw it working I sadly can't help with the driver issue here any further.
     

    Cordraconis

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    OK, small typo on my side: I have the 2255 version!
    There are different versions (2205, 2250 and 2255), most of the differences is in the sensitivity of the reciever I think.

    Wikipedia states that QAM is just a modulation method mostly used for digital cable (and DVB-C), so with a "normal" modulation tuner and a QAM one, the rest is probably sorted out in software.
    So for the 2255 it does not specifically states it does DVB-C or DVB-T, but in MP2 I do see both of those tuners and DVB-C works. (DVB-S is not seen, but then again: sattelite signals are on a higher freq band and thus this card cannot do it. If the tuner would go higher, it would probably also show up in the list.)

    I'll see in my spec page and put the correct version in there ASAP.

    Maybe posting in the bug report forum might increase the exposure to this issue more?
     

    Lehmden

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    Why do you use an USA Tuner card in Europe? Issues are more than logical this way.... ATSC is not DVB-T compatible, it uses different frequencies at least. The 2255 card is meant for NTSC video broadcasts as usual in US while in EU PAL is common for analoge TV broadcasts. This could be the initial reason for the crash while tuning analoge channels... So maybe you can use the 2255 for not encrypted DVB-C channels somehow, but the analoge part most likely never will work...

    BY the way, analoge TV tuners for PAL are hard to find those days... Maybe DVB-T is an alternative for you. It has lot better picture quality than analoge and it's cheap and easy. But I don't know how the DVB-T situation is in Belgium
     

    Cordraconis

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    ... I bought it from the german website of hauppaughe since it was closer for mailing than the UK site. The card works in europe, since I can see the analog channels just fine in haupaughe's own WinTV app that gets shipped with the card... I just re-checked it.
    Also in WMC analog worked without crashing.

    I noticed it does take some time to "zap" between the analog channels. About 3-4 sec to change. Maybe MP2 tries to "scan" too fast and eventually the driver or windows cannot cope anymore?

    Anyway, I'll do a post tomorrow in the bug-hunting forum. maybe more luck there. thank you for thinking along lehmden! I took no offence. :)
    BTW, DVB-T in belgium is the obligated 4 national tax-payed TV channels and about 5 ditto radio channels. They are obviously also unencrypted on the cable in DVB-C, along with the encrypted commercial ones, so no gain for me in getting a DVB-T antenna up.
    I could record in 3 days about 27hours of live streaming from Tomorrowland on Studio Brussel in CD quality over DVB-C just fine. ;-) ;-)
     

    Cordraconis

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    I *finally* found the tread I mentioned in the beginning: (it was in the MP1 forum...) I'll hold opening a support thread for now.

    https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/...g-channels-analog-cable-hvr-2255-f111.132566/

    So it seems i have some playing around to do with a custom DLL and then see if the card still crashes on analog. it seems there is a bug in the 22**range of Haupauge's cards, and it seems they still haven't fixed it in their supplied drivers or alse it would'nt crash on my system.

    I'll get back after messing around with this later, or maybe the original dev from the thread can chime in with an update?
     

    Cordraconis

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    So it seems i have some playing around to do with a custom DLL
    DLLs for MP1's TV Server like the one you've linked don't work with MP2. If you want to use that DLL you'll have to use MP1.
    Too bad, I was hoping for some measure of interoperationability.

    Any chance the fix can be ported to MP2? I'll be more than happy to test...

    I also noticed you posted a "stable" older driver somewhere in the forum, so I can play around with driver versions in the meanwhile.
     

    mm1352000

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    Any chance the fix can be ported to MP2?
    Sorry, I'm not able to do that.

    I also noticed you posted a "stable" older driver somewhere in the forum...
    AFAIK that driver is only compatible for HVR-2200 and 2250. It definitely won't work with 2205, 2215 or 2255, and I'm also pretty sure it wouldn't work for 2210.

    You must have a 2205, because that's the only one with DVB-C support. 225* is not available in Europe and does not support DVB-C. Therefore the "stable" older driver can't help you.

    Anyway, Hauppauge told me the reason that driver is stable is because it had a bug that made it stable. The bug was fixed in the next version. So, I can guarantee no other 22** driver will be stable without a patch. Therefore it's also pointless to try other drivers.
     

    Cordraconis

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    Thank you for the info. I did play around with a driver, but more on that later. (Prepared a post offline @ work, but things are crazy there last week, so I'll summarize.)

    Win7 said HVR-2205 (F120) and driver version 7.9.1.33006. The 2255 support page listed exactly the same driver and said it was for the 22xx family. (click windows driver)
    http://www.hauppauge.com/site/support/support_hvr2250.html
    So I was not worried, however the ProdInfo tool said this: Model 151609 Rev. B2I6 , (=HVR-2205) which made me doubt ... it seems I threw away the original packaging and cleaned out my mailbox a few months ago, but luckily I recovered the haupauge.de webshop emails from backup. Turns out the 2205 is indeed what I got, and I offer my humble apologies to Lehmden and you. I am impressed you guys guessed it right!
    Anyway, driver-wise this doesn't make any difference since they both use the same version.
    http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/support/support_hvr2200.html

    Maybe there is a small chance the old driver could work (22xx family???), but I'll continue reporting first.

    So I did this:
    - re-install latest driver
    - reboot
    - re-scan analog channels on tuner nr1 --> NO CRASH!!!
    - scan analog channels on tnuer nr2 --> CRASH after about 25-30% progress bar
    - reboot
    - re-scan on tuner nr 2 --> NO CRASH!!!
    - check channels that are found. There is one channel that occurs 3 times in a row. freq-wise this is around 25%... also not all channels on the cable are found.
    - scanning = rapid change of channels, so I spent 30min zapping around in the analog channel list trying to force a crash. No luck. Then I choose a DVB-C channel and ... BSOD.
    - reboot and zapping in DVB-C: sometimes MP2 hangs, sometimes no image but grey screen. restart MP2=everything normal. definately the bug is related to rapid changes of tuning freq.
    - check FAQ on 2205 support page. in win7 analog scan sometimes hangs??? it could be related to power settings, but mine are already on maximum. It is a PCIe card, so I checked those power settings: they are "off", so "always on".
    - make logs

    TODO:
    - check PCIe power settings in BIOS ???
    - try older driver
    - map channels, setup DVB-EPG and general cleanup of channels (Scan eventually got trough, and normal watching seems stable for now., so finally i can go ahead and make it somewhat usable.
    - try to add missing channels manually

    MM: you clearly have more experience with this, so maybe you can get some clues out of the above. If this is indeed a MP2 thing and you fixed it in MP1, maybe you can give some hints about it to the right MP2 dev.
    I'll continue trying and reporting anyway, so stay tuned! (hahaha...)
     

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