Xbox 360 media centre extender - FreeviewHD video glitches 40 seconds after playback starts.

Forums › Home Theatre (incl HTPC) › Xbox 360 media centre extender - FreeviewHD video glitches 40 seconds after playback starts.

AllenG

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Topic # 99663 24-Mar-2012 10:46

Hi.

I have (many month ago) started a thread about video glitches that were occurring on my Win7 HTPC with media centre when watching FreeviewHD H.264 live or recorded TV.
At the time I managed to resolve a lot of the problems by swapping out the ATI video card for an Nvidia. The problem I was left with was that after changing channel, starting, resuming, or skipping through a recording or live TV there would be a disturbance in the video at aprox 40 seconds from playback resuming. This disturbance can range from barely noticable to quite bad pixelation for a second or so. It always happens at around the 40 second mark and nowhere else.

I have borrowed a friends Xbox 360 (slim I think) and have networked it to the HTPC with wired Gigabit lan.
Using Media centre on the Xbox 360 to watch Live TV or recorded TV is doing the exact same glitch at 40 seconds.

The PC is an I7 win7 pro 64bit pc with 8GB ram. It has an Nvidia GTX260, a Haupauge HVR4400 & HVR2210. When playing or recording CPU use is around 6% The Network test on the Xbox is somewhere near the top of the graph and way above the HDTV line.

Does anyone have flawless FreeviewHD on their Xbox360?
Any ideas?

Regards Allen.

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Reply # 599413 24-Mar-2012 12:21

I watch freeview HD on my Xbox without any issues described above. Have a ATI Radeo 4850 in my Win 7 PC.

Do whatever you want to do man.

mattwnz

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Reply # 599424 24-Mar-2012 12:48

Mine works fine , and that is over wireless, with an older computer connected and a nvidia card. A bit laggy, but no delay

AllenG

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Reply # 599434 24-Mar-2012 13:25

billgates: I watch freeview HD on my Xbox without any issues described above. Have a ATI Radeo 4850 in my Win 7 PC.

I initially had an ASUS EH5770 and I would get random pixelation on FreeviewHD. swapping it out for the Nvidia GTX260 cured the random pixellation but I'm still left with the glitch at 40 seconds.

Does anyone know whether media centre is transcoding the H.264 before streaming it to the Xbox or streaming it natively? I read a few posts that suggest that it is being transcoded by the PC.

Regards Allen.

Regs

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Reply # 600455 26-Mar-2012 20:16

mine is pretty much flawless with a 'cheap' NVidia adaptor. 8400GS. i'd suggest first uninstalling *all* 3rd party codecs and codec packs that didn't ship with windows and see if you still have issues.

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AllenG

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Reply # 600485 26-Mar-2012 21:25

Regs: mine is pretty much flawless with a 'cheap' NVidia adaptor. 8400GS. i'd suggest first uninstalling *all* 3rd party codecs and codec packs that didn't ship with windows and see if you still have issues.

Hi Regs. What do you mean by "Pretty much flawless"? Are you using 64bit win7 or 32bit?
I've tried most things, had a long thread here previously trying to sort it out. http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumId=84&topicId=87095&page_no=1
I completely installed windows again without any extra codecs. Updated motherboard and graphics drivers, disabled motherboard power speed stepping etc. 40 second glitch on freeviewHD still persists.
Only things I havn't tried is a different motherboard, CPU or 32bit Win7.
Extremely interesting that video streamed to the Xbox as an extender has the exact same issue at 40 seconds after resuming playback, so it's not Graphics card related. I still suspect the 64bit windows core TV/DVD codec.

Motherboard is Asus P7P55D-E, LGA1156 Socket, P55 chipset, CPU I7 870 2.93Ghz, 8GB ram, Nvidia GTX260.

Regards Allen.

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Reply # 600518 26-Mar-2012 22:37

i'm using windows 7 64bit, I previously had no issues with neither win7 32bit nor vista 32bit. I also have a dual boot with win8 64 bit and all was perfectly OK there also.

in my experience, media center probably does transcode the freeview recordings when sending to the xbox - the PC CPU is much higher when remote viewing- 60-70% versus 3-4% for local viewing.

have you tried removing some of your RAM? perhaps rip out one stick (if you have two), test, then swap sticks and test again. maybe a memory error could cause something like that.

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mm1352000

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Reply # 600646 27-Mar-2012 12:02

My guess is that it is HDD or CPU power state related.

trig42

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Reply # 600675 27-Mar-2012 12:52

I'd say HDD too.
Have you tried a new HDD? Or a slave one for live buffering?

Regs

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Reply # 600771 27-Mar-2012 15:26

if it is consistently happening at 40seconds, that feels like its:

- emptying a buffer and gone somewhere to get the next segment thats not ready (e.g. hdd sleeping) - hitting a 'fault' in the buffer and glitching over it (e.g. mem fault or hdd fault)

i'd be inclined to say that a sleeping hdd would provide a more intermittent fault - i.e. it would only happen after 40 seconds after some large period of inactivity.

if its a hdd with a dodgy block, you should see disk errors in your event log. have you looked for anything in there? if there are disk errors, run a chkdsk and try again.

if its a mem fault, then try the built in memory checker as part of the startup, or try pulling RAM like suggested above.

I guess it is possible it could be cpu power state related too - maybe it decides to spin up another thread at precisely 40 seconds each time. I would think this was less likely, but you could try disabling C1 (and even c2, c3) sleep states for your CPU in bios.

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AllenG

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Reply # 600884 27-Mar-2012 18:29

Regs: if it is consistently happening at 40seconds, that feels like its:

- emptying a buffer and gone somewhere to get the next segment thats not ready (e.g. hdd sleeping) - hitting a 'fault' in the buffer and glitching over it (e.g. mem fault or hdd fault)

i'd be inclined to say that a sleeping hdd would provide a more intermittent fault - i.e. it would only happen after 40 seconds after some large period of inactivity.

if its a hdd with a dodgy block, you should see disk errors in your event log. have you looked for anything in there? if there are disk errors, run a chkdsk and try again.

if its a mem fault, then try the built in memory checker as part of the startup, or try pulling RAM like suggested above.

I guess it is possible it could be cpu power state related too - maybe it decides to spin up another thread at precisely 40 seconds each time. I would think this was less likely, but you could try disabling C1 (and even c2, c3) sleep states for your CPU in bios.

Hi Regs.

The media HDD is separate from the OS HDD. I have also tried moving the recorded TV temporarily to the OS HDD, no change. Also the problem is only with FreeviewHD H.264, not with satellite Mpeg2.

If it was a memory fault I'd be seeing other symptoms and crashes???

I'm pretty sure I've tried disabling CPU stepping in BIOS previously without any improvement, also tried disabling it in Windows Power saving options at one stage. I'm not sure about sleep states? I'll have another look.

The research I've done points to the Windows 7 Foundation DVD/TV codec which cannot be swapped for a different codec in 64bit win7. In 32bit win7, People often find a fix by substituting the Cyberlink PowerDVD Codec etc.

I'll have a look at the event log and see if anything rears it's ugly head.

Regards Allen.

AllenG

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Reply # 601033 27-Mar-2012 22:25

Hi.

Tried disabling speed stepping and then disabling Intel C state in BIOS. No change to video glitch.
Confirmed CPU speed at 100% in resource monitor. Funny thing though, Core temp still shows multiplier and clock speed changing? CPU cores running a few degrees warmer.

Memory test passed.

Event log entries dont coincide with media centre video glitches.

Event log shows zero critical in last 7 days, 8 errors in last hour, zero warnings in last 24 hours.

Errors in last hour:

1 x 315, PrintService: The print spooler failed to share printer Brother HL-2150N series with shared resource name Brother HL-2150N series. Error 2114. The printer cannot be used by others on the network.

3 x 10010 DistributedCOM: The server {E10F6C3A-F1AE-4ADC-AA9D-2FE65525666E} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout.

4 x 14365, Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service: Proximity detection failed due to unknown error '0x80004004'. The best proximity time detected was -1 milliseconds.

These errors occurred shortly after the last reboot (9:37 PM). There have been no new ones in 40 minutes. I have gotten media centre to glitch several times since then.

If no one has any brainwaves I'll try installing a dual boot and put win7 32 bit on. If it fixes the issue I'll buy it and activate it when the 30 days expires.

Regards Allen

mm1352000

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Reply # 601186 28-Mar-2012 12:30

This is a long shot, but since you asked: I take it all your drivers are signed? Not sure if you can still install unsigned drivers on W7, but I had some "fun" with Vista several years back...

AllenG

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Reply # 601467 28-Mar-2012 18:57

mm1352000: This is a long shot, but since you asked: I take it all your drivers are signed? Not sure if you can still install unsigned drivers on W7, but I had some "fun" with Vista several years back...

Pass? Motherboard BIOS and chipset drivers were from ASUS, Graphics from Nvidia. Win7 automatic updates are up to date.

I just updated the Nvidia driver again from the Nvidia control panel. Driver V 296.10 No change.

I'll try 32bit win7 over the weekend.

Regards Allen.

mm1352000

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Reply # 601764 29-Mar-2012 10:38

For me I think it was the tuner driver that was unsigned. Basically if you get a big red warning come up when you install the drivers then that is usually an indication that the drivers are not signed. That would almost certainly not happen with NVidia, ATI/AMD or ASUS. I *think* Hauppauge is pretty good on that front which is why I said it was a long shot.

Did you also check DPC latency at any point?

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Free software [for personal non-commercial use], does the job nicely.

It'll be interesting to hear your 32 bit results.

AllenG

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Reply # 601777 29-Mar-2012 10:52

mm1352000: For me I think it was the tuner driver that was unsigned. Basically if you get a big red warning come up when you install the drivers then that is usually an indication that the drivers are not signed. That would almost certainly not happen with NVidia, ATI/AMD or ASUS. I *think* Hauppauge is pretty good on that front which is why I said it was a long shot.

Did you also check DPC latency at any point?

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Free software [for personal non-commercial use], does the job nicely.

It'll be interesting to hear your 32 bit results.

Yep. Had run it before, just reran it. Worst was 186uS.

Regards Allen.

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