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Hvr 1600 pause during recordings

387 views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  cube799 
#1 ·
I have a Hauppauge Hvr 1600 card that I use to Record Mexican TV. about 2 or 3 months ago it started to stop recording for about 7-8 minutes during some recordings. It's like it looses the signal from the channel for a couple of minutes. I use Catalyst Media Center to record. When it looses the signal the CLcapsvc.exe process starts using a lot of processor. Could this be a problem with Catalyst Media Center, or is it the TV card. I used to have an ATI 650 TV card before and this never happened with that card.
 
#2 ·
I have a 1600 but don't use the same software - and my analog tuner section has died. (not a big deal, it's connected to a cable box and outside antenna anyway)

From a basic troubleshooting standpoint, could it actually be a loss of signal? Have you got any real-time tuners to compare with? Converter boxes usually have signal meters.

ATSC digital signals don't give any warning of signal problems like analog does. (ghosts, snow) A general rule-of-thumb is that UHF broadcast always deteriorates over time. Probably the worst possible frequencies to use for digital TV, analog was bad enough. The 1600 does not have a very sensitive tuner either.

Could something else be locking up the PC? On mine, AVG antivirus would freeze everything when it would scan my email client, and "Backup" would halt most operations when doing a "snapshot" of the system at periodic intervals. Any access of optical drives will usually cause problems too.
 
#3 ·
You don't hear much about Catalyst Media Center these days -- I used that back when I had an ATi All-In-Wonder analog card! It had many updates, querks and unresolved issues all before ATi stopped supporting it! I'd began dabbling in ATSC and several other tuner cards/software in 2002. Today I'm running a FREE software, MediaPortal. It works well with analog and digital tuners, in fact, I have a 1600 as well and it having an on-board encoder is what allows it to still work with MediaPortal (where my HDTV-Wonder needs external software encoding I can't get to work).

See if you have anti-virus, or something going on at these times like weak signal. Try MediaPortal, it's a FREE download and would give you at least a comparison to the Catalyst Media Center to see if it's the software as opposed to your 1600 tuner.
 
#4 ·
I have the same antenna hooked up to my HDTV and when the card looses the signal, the same channel that I'm recoding works fine on the TV. The only anti virus I have is Windows Defender. I've been using Catalyst Media Center without problems, since I bought my ATI 650 card back in 2007. I've been wanting to try MediaPortal for a while, but I heard that you need a plugin to get it to record in MPEG. I installed the BDA Hotfix that they talk about in the MediaPortal website to see if it would fix the problem, but it didn't fix it.
 
#5 ·
You probably should double check the wiring and connections from the splitter to the card. Cables can develop problems. It's also possible that the TV has a better tuner than the 1600 and signal levels have dropped.

From those standpoints, have you checked recordings on a different channel? If other channels record OK, then I would suspect low signal level. If others show the same issue, then wiring or a failing card would be the choices.

My 1600 analog tuner went intermittent before dying. I can use the digital tuner (Antenna) or the line input (Cable Box) but not the analog tuner (I have some self-modulated channels I generate so I can preset cable and OTA tuner boxes and not have to remember to change channels between shows) The analog tuners work on two other capture cards so one loss is not critical.

I'd suggest trying the line input but many Media Center applications are "either/or but not both", with regards to line vs antenna; often requiring a complete re-setup to switch.
 
#6 ·
I also forgot to mention that I have mcafee anti virus that I installed with a update of Flash Player. I guess it could be the wiring it's like a 10 foot plus cable. today I turned off Windows Defender and mcafee anti virus and so far it has recorded without pausing.
 
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