I've had to replace the motherboard in my HTPC, and subsequently had to reinstall MCE.  So now I've had a new problem that I havn't been able to solve for the past 2 days.

When watching analog NTSC video from the cable feed (Powercolor ATI T-550 PCI-E card), it works fine initially, the skips a bit, and after a few more seconds, freezes.  Skipping back, forward, rewind, or fast forward will clear it up, and it will work again.  30 seconds later or so, the problem comes back.  Also, when watching live TV, it seems that the recording is happening faster then playback, though playback does not seem slower than it should.

NTSC tv recorded in MCE before replacing the MoBo plays back fine.  NTSC recorded or live tv since the rebuild is has the same above problem.  HDTV works fine from either recorded or live programs (ATSC using VBox 150 PCI).  DVD playback, and all other recorded video playback is working fine, also.

I've tried switching codecs, rolling back and updating drivers for the 550 card.  Currently I'm using Cyberlink 6.0 as the codec in MCE.  Ffdshow and avi codecs had no change.

The only hardware changes with replacing the Mobo was adding some RAM, otherwise all the same components.

So I can't figure it out, and need some suggestions on what else I might try.  Here's some system specs:

Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 MoBo
AMD 64 X2 3800+ CPU
4 GB RAM DDR2 400
Gigabyte Nvidia 7600GT PCI-E video card, feeding component output to reciever
Powercolor ATI Theater 550 NTSC PCI-E (only 1)
VBox Catseye 150 ATSC PCI (only 1)
Windows XP MCE 2005 SP2 Rollup2

Anyway, this seems to be a bit of a conundrum, so any thoughts or ideas would be helpful, and very appreciated!

Thanks!

make sure you've got the amd dual core patch installed

Unless I'm mistaken, that patch is part of service pack 2.

Though I noticed that my AMD driver wasn't the newest one, I updated it, but it didn't solve my problem.

I've got the same symptoms. Using Stop, then Resume resumes playback.

Or Skip will resume playback too. Then it fails the same way shortly afterwards, with again

the same workaround to get out (Stop-Resume)

This happened on an AMD 3000+ single core, and i`ve just upgraded

to a dual-core Opteron.

My hardware:

Asus A8N-SLI Premium
Opteron 185 socket 939 dual-core
Pair of Hauppauge HVR-1800 (PCIe)
Nvidia 6600 PCIe

Windows XP MCE 2005 with Update Rollup 2,
and I did not apply specifically the AMD patch for dual-core.

make sure you have the dual core optimizer installed

So i just installed the AMD Dual-core optimizer (looks like it`s made for Athlons)

even though I have a dual-core Opteron.

After 2 restarts, the behavior stays the same.

I`m using the Nvidia decoder bronze (latest version IIRC)

and ì'll continue by removing the Dual-core optimizer and see if i can find something specifically

made for the Opterons.

Wondering if there are specific logs I could check to further investigate...

I believe I saw a generic Microsoft dual-core hot fix, so i might give this a try...

Gave a try to KB896256 from Microsoft, same results.

So I removed it.

Then I figured maybe it's not a problem with playback, but with the recordings themselves.

Re-ran windows update, it found an AMD cpu driver which i installed, along with 90-some security updates. I then proceeded

to install AMD Dual-Core optimizer. Previously recorded shows still have the problem,

but i cannot reproduce the problem on shows recorded after the Dual-Core Optimizer install.

So I believe my issue is fixed, I will monitor it going forward.

 

I do have daily EHShell.exe crash reports/MCE failing now, but i'll keep this for another thread :)

And thanks Tikker !

I'd wager that 99% of stuttering video issues on AMD boards have been related to that dual core patch, which is dumb since playback rarely consumes more than 5-10% of cpu anyway

I did a fresh install on xp 2005 sp2 and had the same stutter issues. I downloaded the optimizer from AMD dated 8/08. Fixed my problem!
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html
You would think it would be included in a MS update???