MCE Help! video/Audio freezes, ect....

Q

quaa

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Hey all, I have just recently built a media center computer that has MCE 2k5 installed.

I actually have two problems, whenever I am watching Live TV The video will stutter..(I guess that’s what its called) it does it randomly throughout the whole showing and the video and audio will I guess stop for a 1/2 second and they continue.

The 2nd problem is the Lower channels sub<10 are very very bad quality. There is a lot of static to the video and channels like 2-4 are barely watch-able.


I have read threads that say to update the drivers for the TV Tuner and the video card, and I did these with no luck at all. I am a pretty good computer person and usually can figure out everything that goes wrong, but I have no idea with this one. Other threads have indicated to use a compatible MPEG-2 Encoder, I downloaded the trial of NVIDIA TrueView or something and still no luck.

I read somewhere that the AMD Dual Core processors cause the same problem as my 1st one and they have an update for them, I searched to see if the same applied to the single core and I could find nothing.

I have also read about IRQ Sharing could possibly cause these problems, I have not messed with the IRQ's that much, but I have a broad knowledge of what they are (I am studying for the A+ Cert), I know you need to go into the bios to change them, but I don’t want to mess with them unless someone online or somewhere can tell me what to do, because I don’t really want to mess this up even more than it already is.

Specs are
AMD ath. 3200+ 64 xp
Sapphire radeon 9250 128 mb 128bit AGP
Hauppauge PVR 150 MCE
Corsair ram - 512 MB
1x 40Gb Hdd (5400 RPM, IDE) that has MCE Installed on it
And 1x 250Gb Hdd (7200 RPM, IDE) that is strictly for video/recording
+2 external hard drives that hold pictures/movies/music/ect...

Anyone have any ideas on what is wrong or anything to do?

Sorry this is so long, but I needed to get all of the symptoms in here and everything that I have already tried, thank you for your help AGAIN! It will be very appreciated by my roommate and me if I get this thing working flawlessly.
 
It could be down to having a weak signal to the TV card, you should have 60+ channels available to you and that is usually the first clue on signal strength. I would also suggest two other weaknesses, 1. Not enough ram, must admit I always build XP systems these days with 1G as a minimum. 2, the drive you are using for MCE is very slow?. 3, Make sure the TV card is not in the slot next to the Graphics card.

Another good source of info. http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/
 
Andy98765 said:
It could be down to having a weak signal to the TV card, you should have 60+ channels available to you and that is usually the first clue on signal strength. I would also suggest two other weaknesses, 1. Not enough ram, must admit I always build XP systems these days with 1G as a minimum. 2, the drive you are using for MCE is very slow?. 3, Make sure the TV card is not in the slot next to the Graphics card.

Another good source of info. http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/

We have 57 channels available to us in the dorm room

i know the ram might be an issue, but it has been running at around 300/400mb in use and that gives me 200/100 to play with, witch isnt much but i havent seen it go over yet..

i know the drive is slow, but should that matter, because my Storage device is G: witch is the 250 GB/7200Rpm with enough cache

the TV Tuner is 1 slot away from the Video card..i believe, i will check tomorrow, but the video card is AGP and the TV Tuner is PCI, should this matter? ill swap it tomorrow if it is together.

i believe that i have already updated the Video card drivers to 6.5, but i will check.. i dont remember installing .NET, so i will do that tomorrow too.
 
If you did not install .NET with ATI Catalyst it would not work.

You should never fit the TV card next to the AGP slot as these two slots often share the same IRQ.
Go into Control panel, System, Hardware, Device Manager, VIEW, by resources by connection, then open IRQ.

Example attached.
 

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  • Device Manager.jpg
    Device Manager.jpg
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oh yeah, now i remember where to check out the IRQ's... i remember that i have been there before, but not in a good long time. i am going to check that in a min or so
 
Totally agree, no conflicts there. I really feel you need to investigate external possibilities and I would investigate the signal strength you are getting, for example my TOSH freeview TV would suffer the same problem until I upgraded the down lead and fitted a masthead amp.
 
Andy98765 said:
Totally agree, no conflicts there. I really feel you need to investigate external possibilities and I would investigate the signal strength you are getting, for example my TOSH freeview TV would suffer the same problem until I upgraded the down lead and fitted a masthead amp.
I am going to plug in the coax cable into the TV just to see what kind of signal i am getting. Right now the computer is defraging C: (windows installed) and G: (recordings) C: has 40% Fragmentation while G: has 99%. so this could possibly be why the video is all choppy at times, who knows.
 
actually i just checked the Cable (we have 2 cables, one long one and one shorter one they are prolly both cheap walmart cables if that means anything) and the dorm rooms have 2 coax drops ( i tested both ) All of the channels are fuzzy. if that changes anything.
 
Are you using an analogue broadcast input? I assumed that you were using DVB-T, but reading the post about static and walmart cables seem to suggest you are US based correct?

When using an analogue signal I do think you can change the bitrate quality to a higher setting to make it a bit better quality....I think your computer should handle that...But if you are getting static, I would guess it is you signal to start of with....
 
yes, i am from the US. its an standard cable that is going into the computer, no digital. How would i change the bitrate? ive never heard of that before.
 
im thinking that the bad picture is because of the cable in the dorms, is that a fix for the stuttering or the quality?
 
Neither really, I mean if their is noise on the cable then nothing on your MCE box will be able to fix that...You would just get better quality noise :)

The stuttering is really down to your machine, as with analogue signals the computer wouldn't know the difference between noise/static and a good picture I think....It is just a digital TV signal that can cause stuttering as there is error correction information etc and a lock on the MUX.....In my opinion the stuttering is something in your machine, maybe due to anti-virus, or a personal firewall, or a badly configured network card...Could be so many things....
 
somebody was saying it could be because my video card is not a MCE Card or whatever, but they also said that maybe if i used the right driver + decoder it could possibly fix it. does anyone have a 9250 in their MCE? if so, what driver and decoder are yall using? thanks!
 
I ran the MCE Diag tool and this is what it showed me
mcediag.jpg

i tried to go into the other tabs but i dont really know what i would be looking for.
 

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