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Thursday, October 8, 2009

DVBLink for HDPVR Stability - "No TV Signal"

Think it’s important to cover the stability issue with the HD PVR. Please note that all stability issues I have encountered were with the HD PVR and not the DVBlink software.

Since the HD PVR 1.5.6 driver is not officially supported for Windows 7, this may be part of the issue, however I not (touch wood) have a nearly perfectly reliable setup.

In a nutshell, the driver for the PVR is extremely sensitive to traffic on the USB Bus os it physically connect to.

Before i sorted this out , with help from the DVBlink forums, my hd pvr was locking up / crashing about 5 to 6 times a day causing loads of missed recordings and untold stress!!! ;-)

So after several rebuilds, I finally pulled out my HTPC & did some re-arranging on the physical USB connections.

I connected the hd pvr directly to the motherboard (bypassing the usb hub on the back of the chassis) -I’ll go into my spec later.

with my gigabyte motherboard I have a female usb lead that connects direct to the 8 pins on the motherboard, i think used a gold tipped usb cable to connect the hd pvr.

Since then , my setup has stabilized - it’s not 100% perfect, but close enough for me. See pic at top of post for USB configuration. and this link to optimise your setup:

http://1geek1tool.com/?s=usb+controller

forum post covering this topic:

http://dvblogic.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5174


With the DVblink software it will detect when the PVR has hung, ad with a custom hook script you can get it to power cycle if you have the hardware that will do this!

I sue one of these:

IP Power 9258S Web Power switch + Power Reboot by Ping


to be honest I dont seem to use this as much anymore since my setup has stablilsed.

so when the HD PVR hangs, the DVBlink triggers a hook script. This script sends a ping to the IP power box with power cycles the HD PVR and aferrt a few seconds, the picture returns and all goes back to normal - ans this works very well in fairness.

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