Win TV HVR 1600 - Stuttering Problem

[jpl]

I just got the Hauppague Win TV HVR 1600 and on my computer the HD broadcasts have a jerky / stuttering problem, SD subchannels are fine.

I monitored CPU utilization in Task Manager and it is around 20-30% so I don't think it is a CPU related problem. Could it be a slow video card causing the problem?

System Specs are:

Athlon XP 3200
1.5GB DDR-400
Gforce FX5500 128MB
Shuttle AN35 Ultra Motherboard

Thanks

[GSrecluse]

I assume you are using 32bit Windows XP SP2, and not the beta Vista / x64 support.

That said, I have a similar system to yours, (Athlon 64 3200, Nvidia 5200 EP, Abit AV8-3rd eye MB, 1 GB of ocz DDR400 ram) and found that a) the Wintv2000 software from Hauppause does not set itself to use overlays by default, so run their 'Primary' program and select force overlay, I think its the 3rd option down, and do not use hardware acceleration if that option is not greyed out. (it seems counterintuitive, but the accelerated 3d is slower than overlay as primary display) Lastly, I found that the DVD decoder in WinDVD was interfering with WinTV2000, and uninstalling WinDVD and rebooting solved that problem. (the HVR1600 comes with a nice DVD Decoder, so as long as you don't mind windows media player for playing DVDs you won't miss it). Lastly, if you still have no luck, install the trial of BeyondTV and see if it works without stuttering. Chances are it will be just fine, so you know it isn't your hardware at fault, rather the relatively unfinished WinTV software from Hauppauge is to blame for not setting up drivers/codecs or installing correctly.

[jpl]

Your assumption is correct, I am using WinXP-SP2 32bit.

I don't have WinDVD so there are no known interference problems like you mentioned.

I did some experimenting with Primary as you suggested. Of the four settings I found that:

Allow VMR (any of the three sub-options) suffers from pretty bad stuttering
Allow Overlay fixes the stuttering but introduces a (very annoying) flickering grey line, at the bottom of the picture, and bumps CPU use up to 50-60%
Force Primary also fixes the stuttering, but looses the aspect ratio, and bumps CPU use further to 85-95%
DIB Draw also looses aspect ratio and keeps CPU at 85-90%

So none of them look like an ideal solution, but I might be able to tolerate the flickering grey line intorduced by Allow Overlay as opposed to the messed up aspect ratios from the other options. It's a pitty that such a capable card comes with such troublesome software.

I'll give BeyondTV a try, are there other OSS alternatives to WinTV that will work with this card? Maybe Dscaler?

Thank you very much for the suggestions:thanks:

[johnnyquid]

Try the free gb-pvr. You can find it in the tools section. Different codecs may also help. I installed ffdshow which can also be found in the tools section.

[TheResidentEvil]

I had this issue and it was antenna related. I bought a brand new antenna and was still getting problems. It turned out to be interference. I was keeping my antenna behind the monitor and it ran horrible so i raised it up about 3 feet so it is up above the monitor and the rods are out as far as they go and about 6 inches from the roof. All of my problems went away.