Windows Media Centre playback/Live TV breaking up

[Simonta]

Hi folks

I've got a Windows 7 Media Centre dedicated PC. It sits under my TV without being "fiddled with" and has given sterling since not long after Windows 7 RTMed.

Yesterday, Live TV and video playback started breaking up with large, pixelated blocks and very intermittent scratchy audio. Playback is broken both in MCE and Media Player so my first suspect is a codec.

I've uninstalled and deleted the drivers for the graphics and tuner cards and let them reinstall from Windows update only. I've also taken system restore back about 2 month. I used MCUD to check that the Windows default codecs are correct.

The box has 4GB of RAM and fast SATA disks. Disk activity is low during Live TV and playback so I don't think throughput is a problem.

If relevant, the GPU is an nVidia GeForce 6150SE. I've tried the Windows WHQL drivers and the nVidia direct downloads. The tuner is a dual DB-T Peak 138524APPK. I've tried the tuner with the native ITE drivers and the Peak ones.

Any ideas? Next step unless PPRuners can strut their stuff is to reinstall from scratch.

[Bushfiva]

When you say "live TV", do you have an analogue or digital signal? If digital, the blocks indicate a bad signal. If that's the case, you may want to check the antenna connection, ask neighbours, use a different digital TV etc. to see if the issue is outside the computer.

have you tested using video from another source?

[Parapunter]

It's a digital input by definition, given the tuner card. Simonta, check the Green Button - any recent issues with that set up will definitely be there.

If you suspect a weak or corrupt signal, there is a utility you can download from the Hauppauge forum that will test the signal of each channel received - at least that's where I got it from when I experienced similar.

[Simonta]

Hi Bushfiva. Parapunter is right, it's digital.

Surely a poor signal would not interfere with playback? I should have mentioned that the recording I used was made pre-problem and worked a short while back. More evidence of a codec problem?

Hi Parapunter. Thanks for the steer on the Hauppauge utility. Sadly, doesn't work on the Peak card.

I'll leave it a few days then format C:!

[Parapunter]

My WMC7 box runs 2gb ram & 1tb of hdd's. It has an nvidia 9800gt & an old intel cpu - can't remember quite which one, the point being I have a better gpu than yours but half as much memory and in all likelihood a slower cpu, so your system I would guess is better specced for speedy running.

I don't experience your issue, so my educated guess is either input or processing. From 7 years of building windows media centre based systems, I can only think of one occasion when I had to junk a gpu - it was an Nvidia 6300 & no matter what I tried, the thing wouldn't process video smoothly.

So, I reckon if it were my system, I would try either a new input if you're using a digital box or freesat for example - but if you're on Freeview, you can obviously discount that. Otherwise i would possibly suspect the tuner & try to swap that out for another - since it went wrong overnight & presumably the system hasn't applied any updates, I find it unlikely that drivers are the issue. On top of that, Win7 pretty much carries any codec you would need for tv & mainstream video formats, unlike the good old xp days when you had to choose carefully what to download to run video.

So if you decide to rebuild & find yourself back in the same spot, then you have a hardware issue I would contend.