Hauppauge Colossus Stutters during WMC Launch

[Spacen]

I have not been able to find anyone online mention a problem similar to mine so I will post here in the hopes that someone can give me some ideas I haven't already tried. I appreciate your help in advance.

I have had everything setup and working well for several months with the exception of a couple nagging problems. When I am not watching TV, I leave the PC on but WMC closed. Recordings stop and start as they should. The problem occurs when I launch WMC during a recording. The picture and sound in the recording stutters and stops off and on for 30 seconds to one minute and then resumes normally. It's like some sort of buffer is interrupted and can't catch back up for a short while. The funny thing is that I can do just about anything else during a recording and not cause this issue. Only launcing WMC seems to cause it. To note, I have the entire power on sequence for all of my devices programmed into a Harmony remote. The TV is powered on and WMC launched within that sequence.

I had a MCE 2005 before this on much slower hardware and never had issues like this. I wasn't using a Colossus in that setup, obviously.

[Scallica]

Can you provide your hardware specs?

[Spacen]

Can you provide your hardware specs?

Motherboard: ASRock A75M-ITX FM1
CPU/APU: AMD A8-3850 2.9 Ghz
Memory: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M2B1600C9
System Drive: Western Digital 320gb spinning disk
Storage Drive: Western Digital 1TB spinning disk

I have it connected to my Directv STB via component and outputting to my TV through HDMI. The only thing I've done that isn't a default setting in the Hauppauge driver setup or the WMC setup is that I have pieced together my own channel changing routine using the custom command line options in the Hauppauge device control program. I am using IP channel changing with a windows port of wget. I wouldn't think this would cause the problems I'm experiencing.

Thanks again.

[Scallica]

Are you using the on-board video/HDMI port or do you have a PCIe video card? What video driver version are you using?

Install a program called HDSentinel (www.hdsentinel.com) and check the health percentage of your hard drives.

What happens if you start WMC, but don't play the recorded show until it has completed the recording. Does the issue occur then?

Does the issue occur if you use the system drive (320GB C:) as your recorded TV drive?

[Spacen]

I am using the on-board video card. I am using the latest driver but I would be surprised if it is output related. That is because the stuttering is actually being recorded. To answer your question, if I start WMC but don't play the recorded show until it has finished recording, then the stuttering will occur during playback at the point I started WMC.

I have not tried recording to the system drive but will. I will aslo try HD Sentinel. Thank you for the suggestions.

[Spacen]

I switched the recording folder to the system drive and checked the health of both drives. They both check out and the problem remains. The recording plays fluidly, the time counter progresses without hiccups even during the choppy parts.

I do have one more experiment to run. I need to turn on my TV without launching WMC and see if that causes an issue. I assume the video card is outputting through the HDMI port even when the TV is off. If it is not, the initialization of the HDMI output could eat system resources and cause the input to drop frames.

Any other ideas? Keep them coming.

[Scallica]

The only other ideas I have is try installing a discreet video card and use that instead of the onboard HDMI. I would also consider a clean install.

[TMan459]

I know this is a late response, but are you using optical audio? Or are you running stereo RCA along with component video? I had similar issues while using optical audio when I had my Colossus. Had to get it repaired to fix the issue.