Desperate

[johnd]

I have been fooling around with GBPVR/PVR-150 setup for about three weeks and cannot get any consistency in playback with my recordings. This not a picture quality issue. My best efforts will only play in WMP, and when forwarding, reversing or pausing the file requires about a 25 second delay before it will continue playing. Video quality is acceptable, sound is sometimes stuttery, but acceptable. This is my best effort, most videos will only play if you start the video and do not attempt to pause, forward or reverse the video. Any attempt to utilize any of these functions results in the video freezing up, simply have to close the player and start over, cannot pause, skip commercials or reverse. Most times, these same videos will play continuosly for the first 10-15 minutes and then just pause themselves and never resume, even though the player status say that it is playing. Other videos will show a timeline of about 25 seconds, status bar will go to the end immediately, though video will continue to play for entire program, just cannot puase or manipulate direction, have to let play and endure commercials. I have tried installing the time stamp software update as well as the new registry settings and this seems to have had no effect, maybe even worse. When playing video through WMP, system resources are being used at about 70-85%, WMP only uses about 15% when playing any other content (Captured DV video, DVD content etc). My system is not super state of the art, but based on what I have read here, should be more than powerful enough. Windows XP home sp2, 2.4ghz P4, 768mhz 2700 ram, ATI 9200 128m video card, 160g 7200rpm hd. I am desperate to get this resolved, I keep recording my shows using the PVR, but I record everything on VHS as well because of the unreliability of the pvr. Could a switch to Sagetv, Beyondtv or another software be a potential solution? Sagetv was my first choice for a software package, but I decided to try one of the free programs to see if this was for me. At this point, I am almost ready to scrap the whole project and try something else.

[reboot]

Everything you describe is symptomatic of an overloaded system. This is not a gbpvr or 150 problem. This is probably the playback mpeg-2 codec you are using. If gbpvr won't play your recordings, there are other issues.
Other PVR software won't magically cure the problems.
I suggest you join the forums at gbpvr.com and post your problems there. Many of these issues have already been discussed, and there are logical solutions. Nothing wrong with the timestamp on the video, and messing with registry settings is not going to make video play any better.
Playback is independant of recording software, and simply uses codecs you have on the system.
If you have 15 icons in the taskbar, possibly 15 hidden services running, anti-virus scanning your recordings folder, or any number of other interfering bit's of software, these can all lead to crappy playback.

[rampy]

yeah something seems crapped/spywared/etc up 

IT should play just fine on that class machine...

For giggles you can try changing the video rendering in gbpvr setup to "overlay"

You can also try, for giggles, seeing how with gbpvr service OFF, how the default hauppauge wintv2000 application records/playsback/performs on your system...

IT's important to generally only make one change at a time and keep track of what you've did... if you've made god knows how many changes, it's kinda hard to pick up the pieces and know what to try or isolate where the issue is...

Have you tried defragmenting your drive?

rampy

[johnd]

Thanks for the info. The general consensus over at gbpvr seems to be a codec problem. Hard drive is defragged at regular intervals and I make sure to set a fresh restore point before making a change and try only one thing at a time. Thanks again for the input.