Vista Ultimate x64 & Hauppauge HVR-1600

Ok guys I've seen this problem in a lot of forums but nobody can come up with a solid solution. I'm running Vista Ultimate x64 and I'm having some problems with my Hauppauge dual tuner card. Vista recognizes both tuners and the HDTV tuner works without fail every time, but I have a 50/50 chance of the analog tuner working properly. It either goes green or says the signal level is too low. The signal is calibrated properly and half the time it works without fail for a few days. I know that most of the fixes involve where the drivers are loaded into memory, and I know that it has to do with having more than 4GB of ram (I'm currently running 6GB). If I start it right after the system loads it never works, but if I give the PC a few minutes and run a few other processes it loads properly BUT if I close it and re-open it sometimes it won't work again. I can leave it running, just hit stop and minimize it to keep it working for days at a time though. I really love the x64 version and I love having more than 4GB of ram, but if I can't reliably watch TV on it this new system isn't really what I wanted.

I'm running a Core 2 Quad 2.4ghz w/ 6 GB DD2-667 and handling the graphics with a XFX GeForce8800GTS if it matters. Could it be a hardware conflict with another device? I'm not seeing anything odd in the control panel. Otherwise it seems to run great for the most part, a few glitches here and there with x86 programs and I really don't want to go back to Vista Home Premium

I'm running a similar setup (Q6600/4GB PC-800/8800GTS) and have similar problems with a Hauppauge PVR-150 (analog) card. I have done a ton of searching and it seems the problem is with how the Hauppauge drivers for Vista64 use 4GB of memory and above. This problem was reported back in January of 07 and Hauppauge says its Microsoft and vice versa. There are some claims the Vista SP1 will solve the problem, but I personally would not advocate installing the beta version of this fix until it is ready.

I found the solution to be to use MSConfig and set my boot memory to 3.2 GB or 3277MB. For me this is a loss of 800MB, but it allows my card to work. I'm willing to sacrifice the memory temporarily until a solution is provided. In your case, this means sacrificing 2.8GB which is a lot, but this is a quick and simple solution. The other is to move to another card manufacturer as many others have seem to have done.

Good luck.

George

UPDATE:

The fix below worked for a while, but sadly the problem is back.



MS has a fix for the green screen / stutter problem. It is KB 940105. I happened upon this fix when I installed a demo of the game Crysis (which prompted me to install that fix).

I can now watch live TV running all 4GB of RAM in Vista 64

George

Hey Guys,

are you sure this is memory related? I have the Hauppauge HVR-1600 running on an eVga i680 motherboard, Core 2 duo 6600, eVga geforce 8800 gtx, and only 2 gig dual channel PC 5400. I've never been able to get the tuner to work with media center...it always tells me it cannot find any signals on the analog or digital line.

G1zm0 said:

Hey Guys,

are you sure this is memory related? I have the Hauppauge HVR-1600 running on an eVga i680 motherboard, Core 2 duo 6600, eVga geforce 8800 gtx, and only 2 gig dual channel PC 5400. I've never been able to get the tuner to work with media center...it always tells me it cannot find any signals on the analog or digital line.

Click to expand...

I think it has to be, or it's just an x64 Vista bug. I can install just 3 GB of RAM and it runs just fine, and if I install the 32bit version of Vista it runs just fine all the time, but with 6GB and x64 it has to be run upon startup or it won't work.

Is windows media center a true 64 bit app or is it running on wow64?

According to the task manager it's running as a 64 bit application. Right now I'm starting to get a little ticked at the situation but the thought of going back down to 3 gigs of RAM isn't a pleasant one

MS Tech support and I worked for 1.5 hours and fixed my green screen issue. The problem was 2 fold:
1. the HPV1600 doesn't support above 3GB of ram and this was causing issues with the analog tuner, after removing 1GB of ram from my PC the tuner worked fine...however the ATSC tuner still showed green screen in MCE.
2. A hot fix is required to fix an issue where the Microsoft MPEG2 decoder does not correctly flush the previous key frames
Resolution:

The Hotfix Share -> Download Manager -> Language Neutral Windows Vista Hotfix Downloads
the hotfix is - Windows6.0-KB943195-x64 if you can't find it just google it or let me know I still have it and can send it out.

After an install and a restart everything worked fine, I tried to put the 1GB back in after the hotfix which resulted in the HD tv working still but the CATV tuner malfunctions. If anyone knows how to fix that I'd appreciate the input!

Hope this helps!

Athlon 6000+
3GB 667 RAM
HVR-1600
Radeon HD 2400 Pro

Well I have installed every hotfix and whatnot available and I still can only get guaranteed performance if I start the program the minute I boot. I went ahead and installed 3 GB of RAM instead of 6 GB and I'm going to try and see how much my performance realy gets hit. I am hoping that SP1 or a driver update related to SP1 will fix the issue so I'm not going to give up, but I'd like stable performance so I might just run with 3 gigs instead until I can get it running properly. I will say this much, even with just 3 GB of RAM the performance difference between the 32 znd 64 bit versions is quite noticeable. I had Vista Home Premium installed when I first built this PC, but after about a month I switched to Vista Ultimate x64. I really do like the 64 bit version better.

On another avenue towards fixing this problem, can anybody recommend a good dual tuner (OTA HD and cable) card that works with x64 and 6 GB of RAM?

All right folks I got this working good with my Vista x64 Home Premium system which has quad core processor and 8 Gb of memory. Here is what i did. I got my system up to date with all windows update patches. I downloaded the latest hauppauge cd 3.4D1 file from their US website. Also I downloaded the hcwdriver install file dated 8/19/2007 found at another location in their website. I copy pasted this driver into hauppauge cd 3.4d1 folder. Then I Uninstalled the Hauppauge driver using Hauppauge uninstaller utility found in that package. Rebooted the system and let the windows find and install it's driver. Then I updated that driver by installing hcwdriver install file dated 8/19/2007. After this i finally installed the winTv set up from that hauppauge CD 3.4D1 folder. Reboot the sytem every thing on analog tuner side worked fine. I don't have means to check ATSC signals working.

No hangups, no 8 gb issues, no green screens etc. I am happy. Hope this helps

I just installed the WinTV-HVR 1800 today, and out of the 6 tuners I've used over the years it was the smoothest ever!!! I didn't even use the cd that came with it. I installed it powered it up, Vista loaded drivers...

gangats said:

All right folks I got this working good with my Vista x64 Home Premium system which has quad core processor and 8 Gb of memory. Here is what i did. I got my system up to date with all windows update patches. I downloaded the latest hauppauge cd 3.4D1 file from their US website. Also I downloaded the hcwdriver install file dated 8/19/2007 found at another location in their website. I copy pasted this driver into hauppauge cd 3.4d1 folder. Then I Uninstalled the Hauppauge driver using Hauppauge uninstaller utility found in that package. Rebooted the system and let the windows find and install it's driver. Then I updated that driver by installing hcwdriver install file dated 8/19/2007. After this i finally installed the winTv set up from that hauppauge CD 3.4D1 folder. Reboot the sytem every thing on analog tuner side worked fine. I don't have means to check ATSC signals working.

No hangups, no 8 gb issues, no green screens etc. I am happy. Hope this helps

Click to expand...

gangats .. I am having the same issues as you .. altho a slightly different system.
Vista64 Ultimate
4GB RAM.
Beyond TV 4.8.1
Hauppauge dual analog 500 card.

Here are all the drivers I tried
Base windows driver Hauppauge 6.0.6000.16386 21/06.2006
Hauppauge 3.4D1 CD 2.0.48.24227 15/08/2006
Windows update Hauppauge 2.0.48.25037 06/02/2007

All of them failed with freeze when I tried to get them to work in BTV.

Then I did what this thread said above .. change the bootup memory to 3277 and voila ! it works.. So IT IS a driver issue.
I'm surprised yours is working. can you post the link to your drivers .. cus I cannot find the ones your referring to.

Thanks

OK, so I have been testing the various solutions here and the only one that works for me is to limit my system memory to 3277 via MSConfig. This isn't a solution as I'm running 8GB of RAM for my VM's and such. It would be nice if Hauppauge or MS could fix the driver so it worked correctly. In the meantime I gues I'll move the card to my kids Vista x32 machine.

James Senecal

Yea .. I hear you james.. I too am waiting to pick up another 4GB with the way RAM prices are.. but holding off.
I would say send an email to hauppauge cus the more they hear maybe they will be inclined to fix it.

Its probably something silly like "int" instead of "int64" somewhere in the code.

So I asked Hauppauge and they say that the 1600 and 1800 work with their new drivers and > 3.2GB RAM on Vista x64.. can anyone confirm this ?


I thought that the analog tuner on these cards is the same one as the PVR150/500. Does anyone know if this is the case ?

I downloaded the beta driver for the HVR-1800, but Vista wouldn't use them. I tried to manually install them, but still nothing. I guess we're stuck untill they actually fix the 1600/2600 driver for more than 4GB of RAM.

I received an email from Hauppauge today regarding the curent driver state for those of us with more than 4GB of RAM.

Hello
Unfortunately at this time we do not have a timeframe for a fix to this issue.

Jared Egan
Technical Support
Hauppauge Computer Works
New York Headquarters
Hauppauge Computer Works

Click to expand...

Very disappointing!

Thats funny because the email I got from them told me that the 1600/1800 dont have the problem and told me to go buy those cards.