And another one a bit symptomatic of a screen somebody forgot to test before the OEM release:

Trying to add a new lineup of favourite channels, the interface uses a keyboard / remote input mechanism to enter the name of the lineup. This has got a number of problems (bugs) when using the remote. The problems here are differences between the lineup name entry textbox and every other textbox where the remote can be used to enter text. All of these others (e.g. search for programs) work perfectly.

1. If Live TV is playing in the background, then the channel +/- buttons on the remote do not cycle the input mode from lowercase to uppercase to symbols, despite what the screen message says They actually change channel instead. This flummoxed me for a while.
2. When you press a key on the remote the cursor immediately moves to the next position. There is no indication of whether pressing the same key will change the current character or add a new one. With all the other similar screens there is a delay before the cursor advances, so it is clear what is going to happen.
3. No cursor is displayed in the text box until you actually press a key on the remote. This differs from all other text entry screens. Confusing, as you go into the screen and you don't think it's ready to accept text.
4. The font in the textbox is different somehow. Either it's greyer or less bold ot something. In any case it's not as easy to read as other text entry boxes, when sat on a sofa the other side of the living room.

None of these are that serious (apart from maybe che channel +/- issue). But if Microsoft ever intend putting TV Pack on release to the general public I'd suggest they need fixing.

JB

This happens with my system:

 

1.       While recording, go to recorded TV and select the recording show.

2.       Select “Stop Recording.”

3.       Once it stops an option shows up “Do Not Record.”

4.       Navigate away and then back to the information of that show and that option is no longer there.

 

So either the defect is that that option shouldn’t be there after stopping a recording, or that option shouldn’t disappear when navigating away and then back. My guess is the former.

jrbown:

Trying to add a new lineup of favourite channels....

Also, you can't rename lineups, you have to delete and start again.  How do you add to an existing lineup?  If you create another with the same name, it lets you have two.

spplutchok:

Update: A VMC in my house without myTV?  I will NOT install WMC TV Pack 2008

What do you mean by this? I'm not having any issues with the TV Pack and MyTV.

Unable to record due to EPG db corruption, requiring deletion and guide setup re-run. 

Sometimes pressing play on recorded TV or a video file results in a spinning icon in centre of screen and nothing happens - spinning icon refused to go away. Pressing play again and playback starts and icon dissappears.

Audio Description turns itself on for no reason on specific programmes - the specific programme in this case happens to be Home & Away which kills the WAF factor, it would be one of her shows that this occurs on! Occurs one in 5 episodes.

This one is really irritating - while watching a recorded programme, when the programme on live tv changes, the banner for the recorded programme pops up on screen. For example lets say Im watching recorded programme A and I start watching at 8.15pm. At 8.30, the current programme on live tv finishes and the next one starts - the banner for recorded programme A (which Im watching) pops up. The normal behaviour for live tv *is* to pop up the banner when the live programme changes, but this now seems to be bleeding through to recorded programmes when it should be surpressed. Its quite hard to explain this one so I hope this is clear to someone!

Series record channel settings are ignored! I have series record set up to record The Simpsons, set to record Channel 4 Only in the settings, yet it continuously records from Channel4+1 as well!

mrphil:

Unable to record due to EPG db corruption, requiring deletion and guide setup re-run. 

Sometimes pressing play on recorded TV or a video file results in a spinning icon in centre of screen and nothing happens - spinning icon refused to go away. Pressing play again and playback starts and icon dissappears.

Audio Description turns itself on for no reason on specific programmes - the specific programme in this case happens to be Home & Away which kills the WAF factor, it would be one of her shows that this occurs on! Occurs one in 5 episodes.

This one is really irritating - while watching a recorded programme, when the programme on live tv changes, the banner for the recorded programme pops up on screen. For example lets say Im watching recorded programme A and I start watching at 8.15pm. At 8.30, the current programme on live tv finishes and the next one starts - the banner for recorded programme A (which Im watching) pops up. The normal behaviour for live tv *is* to pop up the banner when the live programme changes, but this now seems to be bleeding through to recorded programmes when it should be surpressed. Its quite hard to explain this one so I hope this is clear to someone!

I've experienced almost all of these, but I'm not 100% about item number three. When it happens does it look like a blue bar like this?
http://bjdraw.com/2008/09/18/anyone-know-what-this-blue-bar-is-on-vista-media-center/

I haven't had as much success with number three, usually I just close down VMC and re-open it.

You are right, number four is super annoying and happens all the time!

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Ben
How good can it be, if it isn't HD?
Engadget HD

Hi

Since installing the TV Pack no thumbnails have generated for Recorded TV programmes.  The episodes of recorded TV that were made before the TV Pack (using the early beta) all have thumbnails.  Any episodes recorded since I installed the TV Pack do not have thumbnails.  I have tried leaving it on the 'Recorded TV' page overnight and opening each file just in case it was slow generating them and have rebooted the PC endless times but have never seen a thumbnail for a new recording.

I can't find any other mentions of this specific thumbnail problem - has anyone else experienced this?

:

This one is really irritating - while watching a recorded programme, when the programme on live tv changes, the banner for the recorded programme pops up on screen. For example lets say Im watching recorded programme A and I start watching at 8.15pm. At 8.30, the current programme on live tv finishes and the next one starts - the banner for recorded programme A (which Im watching) pops up. The normal behaviour for live tv *is* to pop up the banner when the live programme changes, but this now seems to be bleeding through to recorded programmes when it should be surpressed. Its quite hard to explain this one so I hope this is clear to someone!

I think I get this - I certainly get some weird banner behaviour, it's popping up every now and then (without being asked), sometimes it shows the Programme info for the programme I'm watching, other times it shows the programme info of something that's recording in the background - I thinkk what you explain might be it, that the programme in the background is starting or finishing.  I'll check next time it happens.

Another issue I have seen that I think is linked is the programme un-pausing itself on its own.  It happens a lot, but not always.  There is definitely enough buffer space left, as I can re-wind back past the point at which the TV was paused.

I couldn't figure out what people meant about the mini-guide and the program bar being displayed at the same time, but I have had this as well, now.

And while I'm at it - why does the programme bar and mini-guide only take up about half of the width of the screen?  It's been like it since MCE2005, so it's not really a bug, but wouldn't it make sense to use more of the screen?  Okay, it leaves a bit of space for the "i" context menu, but couldn't that be displayed over the top, or something?

namxnam:

I can't find any other mentions of this specific thumbnail problem - has anyone else experienced this?

Quite a few people, the standard answer to install the TV Pack on a FRESH install of Vista.

Oddly enough, my install of Vista+SP1+TVP via slipstreamed DVD seems LESS stable than when I installed TVP on top of a year-old install of Vista Home Premium.

With TVP on top of the old install, my only real problem was that it'd often take 1-2 minutes until VMC would respond to any remote control commands after waking from S3 (this was mostly remedied by the fresh install).

When I reinstalled Vista, I repartitioned my HD into 2 partitions (OS & Recorded TV).  Before this, I backed up my WTV recordings (Clear QAM via HDHomerun) onto my NAS.  After reinstalling, I copied them back into my new D: drive; but only half of them would play.  The other half were reported as "Corrupted" by VMC.  Luckily, using babgvant's ToDVRMS program to convert them to DVRMS made them playable.

With my fresh install a little over a week ago, I've already had a few recordings fail on me.  Last week's episode of Smallville appeared to record, but when I tried to watch it, the screen would go black for a second, and then go back to the episode details screen, as if the episode had completed playing.  The episode of Survivor that recorded at the same time had a couple 5-minute stretches with severe skipping of video/sound and pixellation.

When trying to play back my recording of last night's episode of Family Guy, the sound & video froze about 20 minutes into the show, but the timer continued to advance.  I wasn't able to watch the last one-third of the show.

Also, when I woke my HTPC this afternoon, the screen was "stuck" on the VMC main menu screen.  When I pressed buttons on my remote, I could hear the menu sounds, but the menu selection was stuck on "Recorded TV" (and I could see that there were no background animations -- the screen was frozen).

Intel DP35DP Motherboard; ATI HD2600XT (Catalyst 8.9); HDHomerun tuning QAM (all of the recording in question were from the HDHR using the latest drivers); ATI DCT tuning NTSC; ATI650 tuning NTSC

I've seen this one quite a few times, but can't reliably repeat it - sometimes when using the CH+ and CH- buttons to navigate up/down the guide, the guide stops scrolling, but the actual channel preview behind the guide changes channel.

It always seems to jump from fairly low in the number range to practically the top of the number range.

I don't think I'm pressing more than one button on the remote.

@Mike/eHome Team - is it worth us keep reporting these things?  Would we be better off creating a new topic each time, I notice the first post (ok, not from an MS Employee) hasn't been edited for a while.

Cafe.Racer:

I've seen this one quite a few times, but can't reliably repeat it - sometimes when using the CH+ and CH- buttons to navigate up/down the guide, the guide stops scrolling, but the actual channel preview behind the guide changes channel.

I've had this similar one too. During playback I will bring up the guide and hit the skip button to move forward 12 hours, and then the actual playback will start skipping forward. I don't know how to consistently reproduce it.

mrphil:

This one is really irritating - while watching a recorded programme, when the programme on live tv changes, the banner for the recorded programme pops up on screen. For example lets say Im watching recorded programme A and I start watching at 8.15pm. At 8.30, the current programme on live tv finishes and the next one starts - the banner for recorded programme A (which Im watching) pops up. The normal behaviour for live tv *is* to pop up the banner when the live programme changes, but this now seems to be bleeding through to recorded programmes when it should be surpressed. Its quite hard to explain this one so I hope this is clear to someone!

That's a pretty accurate description. I've noticed this too. It only stays up for a second or two, but you're like, why the heck is that there?

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TV Pack, Intel DG31PR mobo, Core 2 Duo E6700, 2GB DDR2 RAM, Asus nVidia 8500 GT, Hauppauge Win-TV-HVR-1800, integrated audio, Antec Fusion 430 case

millerbrad:

Oddly enough, my install of Vista+SP1+TVP via slipstreamed DVD seems LESS stable than when I installed TVP on top of a year-old install of Vista Home Premium.

I just realized that I forgot to install PlayReady on my new setup.  Duh!  I'm half-surprised it's been working at all!  As much as anything, I'd say this explains why some of my backed upWTVs were unplayable, given that PlayReady has to do with DRM.

Will install PlayReady after work tonight, and see if that clears up my issues...

I did the maverick thing and installed over the top instead of a fresh install. Things seemed to be working fine, still testing. I am seeing higher CPU usage when just watching via an extender. I'm curious if everyone is noticing more CPU usage with tvpack whether they did it this way or a fresh install?

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Home Built Media Server | Vista Ultimate (x86) | HP MediaSmart Connect Extender | www.techlifeweb.com

Yes! Although I'm not using an extender.

I also installed TV Pack over an existing setup. Although it was a clean setup - a dedicated HTPC  which had a clean install of Vista, and Media Center about 6 months ago, and nothing else other that Windows updates.

I've noticed a slightly higher general CPU usage (and disk access) level, but more problematic is that there are periods where this exceptionally high (100% CPU) which happen maybe once or twice a day, and last a few minutes. These brief periods seriously affect live TV playback (resulting in blocking / pixellation), and general usability such as incredibly slow display of thumbnails etc. Once Media Center finishes whatever it's doing and usage goes back down, everything is fine again.

It's not the World's fastest CPU (AMD Sempron LE1250), but then in an HTPC you need a low wattage, cool processor (I can't have a quad core with 100Mega-dB fan on it...). And it never had any trouble at all keeping up until I installed TV Pack.

Is there a new minimum spec required for TV Pack? Or is there some problem or other?...

The fact that it only happens in brief periods makes me think it's some background process that only runs occasionally, like the Microsoft indexing service which is now used to index the guide. Maybe the service is interpreting watching live TV as a period of low activity, and then kicks in at full speed or something.

Does someone from Microsoft periodically monitor this thread by the way? There's a whole load of problems which are all experienced by a whole load of users with different setups.

JB