Live TV buffer not working properly on HDD (SSD is OK)

[commsman]

Hi everyone, long time reader but first post.

I rebuilt my WMC due to HDD failure & am running 120Gb SSD for Win7 OS & 3TB HDD for storage.

Everything runs great except pausing/rewind of live TV. This causes the sound & often picture to stop working until I change channels or press stop etc.

I changed the Recorder location to the SSD & this fixes the problem but isn't a good solution as there's not enough disk space. I believe the issue is the way my (oldish) system writes to the HDD.

My options seem to be (I'm not a power user so trying to keep it relatively simple):
a) increasing the performance of the HDD (tried various things to no avail). It's a Seagate Barracuda so only average.
b) sending Live TV Buffer to SSD whilst leaving Recorded TV on the HDD (tried mklink but this stopped tuners from working?) Most threads like this are about people sending the TempRec data away from the SSD.
c) don't pause or rewind live TV (quite possibly the best solution)
d) ?

Any solutions or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[blueiedgod]

Have you run the seagate tools to see if the HDD is in good health?

[commsman]

Thanks heaps for your reply & suggestion. I hadn't run any tests on the HDD because it was brand new for this rebuild. That doesn't mean it couldn't be faulty though.

I downloaded & ran the 'Seagate tools for windows' & everything tested 100%. I tried all options but the advanced ones which warned that data could be wiped.

That tool has some great info about the drives that I never knew were recorded. "Power on hours is 38", lol.

[Crash2009]

It does sound like the hard drive needs a little help. You might be right about the oldish system/new hard drive combination.

What is the model number of the motherboard and hard drive?

[commsman]

MB is ASUS P8H67-M LE with Intel Core I3 2100 3.10Ghz & 4Gb RAM.

HDD is Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001

[DavidinCT]

Is the drive by chance formatted to FAT32 ? This would cause this type problem(not even work at all) and I have seen new larger drives out the box formatted to FAT32..

If it is, format to NTFS and try again...

Based on the drive and motherboard, I don't see any reason why it should not work

[Crash2009]

MB is ASUS P8H67-M LE with Intel Core I3 2100 3.10Ghz & 4Gb RAM.

HDD is Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001

What model of drives did you have in there before?

[Crash2009]

Try plugging the Seagate into a different Sata Port.

Sata 1 and 2 (WHITE plastic) are for 6 gbps drives

Sata 1,2,3,4 (BLUE plastic) are for 3 gbps drives

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8H67 ... sk_Manual/

[commsman]

Is the drive by chance formatted to FAT32 ? This would cause this type problem(not even work at all) and I have seen new larger drives out the box formatted to FAT32..

If it is, format to NTFS and try again...

Based on the drive and motherboard, I don't see any reason why it should not work

Just checked & it is NTFS. Sort of glad to not have to copy all stored media off the drive to reformat. Would have been an easy but tedious fix though, thanks for your suggestion.

[commsman]

MB is ASUS P8H67-M LE with Intel Core I3 2100 3.10Ghz & 4Gb RAM.

HDD is Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001

What model of drives did you have in there before?

So the old drive was a 1.5Tb Seagate Barracuda ST31500341As, partitioned in 2 drives (Win7 OS & storage). There was also a 500Gb Samsung HD501LJ for storage only.

Because the TV buffer was being written to the same physical device as the OS it never gave me any problems in this regard.

[commsman]

Try plugging the Seagate into a different Sata Port.

Sata 1 and 2 (WHITE plastic) are for 6 gbps drives

Sata 1,2,3,4 (BLUE plastic) are for 3 gbps drives

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8H67 ... sk_Manual/

This is interesting. I'll pull the cover off & check where it's plugged. In any case I will swap connectors, even if going from fast to slow, to see what changes, if anything.

I'll report back. Thank you.

[commsman]

Try plugging the Seagate into a different Sata Port.

Sata 1 and 2 (WHITE plastic) are for 6 gbps drives

Sata 1,2,3,4 (BLUE plastic) are for 3 gbps drives

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8H67 ... sk_Manual/

Both the SSD & HDD were in the blue (3gbps) connectors so I moved them both to the white (6gbps) connectors.

I had high hopes that this would be the solution and to a certain extent it is.

Now if I'm watching live TV & miss something that was said, I can skip back 7 seconds (one button push) & all is OK. If I try skipping back twice it fails (goes to black screen) & I need to stop & go back into live TV.

Also, I can now pause live TV for what looks like a decent time & when I resume it will play OK. But if I then try to skip forward a few times quickly it will go black. It seems that if I space out my skips I can get more than 2 before freaking out the MC.

What's more interesting is that if I pause live TV (or have been watching the same channel for a while) & then use fast forward or rewind (not skip), it appears to move back & forth along the recording with no issue.

I'd call this 80% fixed

If anyone has any other suggestions to tweak the SSD to HDD data flow I'm all ears (overclocking?). If not, I'm happy to call it close enough.

Thanks to everyone, especially Crash, for your help.

[Crash2009]

There are probably specific utilities for testing the performance of your drives, however, the Copy and Paste test work just fine for me.

Select one of your larger Recorded TV or Movie files and copy it from your Seagate to the SSD. You might have to select "Show more " during the copy. This will tell you how quickly your computer can transfer a copy from one place to another. To increase performance you might have to tweak the BIOS a bit. Asus or Seagate should be able to help with that. I usually take pictures of my BIOS Settings, so I know what I'm talking about, when I'm talking to Tech Support.

The 2nd idea I have for you is to Search here >>^^ Top right corner >>^^ Live TV Buffer There are 18 pages on the subject. Read it twice and you will know twice as much as anyone. There are some adjustments you can make inside WMC, and inside the Windows Registry to force your buffer to work better.

3rd, Antivirus can also slow you down. What are you using?

[adam1991]

There should be zero reason to tweak a damn thing. WMC just works. I have two physical drives, had them for over four years now, and it's always just worked.

If you're making adjustments and tweaking the registry to "make it work," you're just putting a band-aid on a spurting aorta. Skip the "tweaks" and continue to find out what the problem is.

[Crash2009]

You're probably right about that Adam. Thanks for putting the train back on the tracks. Looks like Asus has been improving Sata functionality over the years on that MB. Tweaking the WMC Buffer might not be necessary.

Make a System Image and a Restore Point

Backup your current BIOS

Go to the Asus website, Click on Drivers and Tools, Select your Operating System, and update the following:

1- Sata driver
2- Chipset driver
3- Motherboard BIOS update

Test for improved function of WMC between Updates. System Image will take you back to how it is now if the updates make it worse.

[DavidinCT]

I offered him to log in and look over his system and this is the details for those who are wondering (connected with Teamviewer, so I can test live tv, etc)

Symptoms: Under my tests to repo the problem, When playing live or record tv, rewinding or back button would result in a black screen with SOMETIMES audio. The timer would still go but, it would be just a black screen. I saw this in recorded TV as well. Live TV and recorded TV would be fine till you rewind or skip back. I changed to his SSD (moving recording and recording temp to the SSD)with the same result on both Drives in his system.

Fix: After looking over the system, Checking results on both Hard drives (as this was part of the discussion here) and checking out all settings on the system (drivers, registry settings, scanned system files for damaged files, etc), I found out that he did not have DirectX installed. Windows Media Center relies on DirectX for displaying video. After updating DirectX, I checked live TV, rewind/Skipped back with no issue on playback, tested on Live TV and Record TV with no issues.

Final test involved playing Live TV for 3 min, Pausing TV for 1 min, playing then skipping back to the start of the 3min and played back with no loss of display on each skip. On Recorded TV, I skipped about 5 min into the show (just one show that was recorded), and skipped back to the start watching each skep for a black screen. I fully tested the system and it appears to be working fine now.

A note on the system: The system had all critical updates installed but, all optional updates needed to be installed, suggested to install those as they go back a few years and might have some WMC fixes in them

After this was done, the OP never got back to me with his results, so I cant be 100% everything was addressed 100% but, from my testing it appeared to fix the problem.

[josim]

David,
Easy to understand that "MVP" badge you have. Awesome my friend!
josim

[sbaeder]

Awesome my friend!
josim

A M E N !

[DavidinCT]

David,
Easy to understand that "MVP" badge you have. Awesome my friend!
josim

It's what I do, I know WMC like the back of my hand. I do offer that service if people are really stumped for a small fee, that I do not charge if I cant fix it (I have not run into an issue that I have not been able to address tho).

I know a few people got involved with this and were wondering what the issue was, as they were getting down to bios level and firmware issues. I just wanted to follow up for people here.

The OP still has never gotten back to me, not sure why. I am wondering if there was other issues he was having. Oh, well.

[DavidinCT]

OK, for people watching this thread, this problem came back. It's interesting under my tests it appeared to fix it but, I guess not. As a man of my word, I would continue trying to help to fix this issue till I ran out of options. This user is from Australia and I am based in the US, so over seas standards I can honestly say, I don't know as much as I wish I did.

So under my tests, the problem did re-appear. When watching live TV, I paused it for 5 min and skipped back, this resulted in a black screen most of the time. I tried a TON of things, registry changes, disabled UAC, reset the Recorded TV folder, drivers, firmware, you name it I tried it, and even went back to the SSD again and the problem was STILL there.

I found out this does happen due to to the type of broadcasts they have over there, the issue WAS Media Center's MHEG-5 engine, it was causing this issue. So I disabled it.

Delete these registry keys (back up just in case)
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Entry Points\{7e7a8710-9e4a-40a3-824a-7b0baf38abcf}]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Extensibility\Applications\{a0cd8951-e5b6-4662-9c9c-d56c5b38ca59}]

This disables this feature and after a few reboots, it confirmed to fix the problem. I contacted Leon (OP) and he said it did resolve this problem.

I am glad I got it working, it was a tricky one but, it did 100% fix the problem. I even put 2 registry files on his computer, one to remove the keys and one to add them back, so if this problem happens again, he can just double click one to get it working again...