Whenever I try to run the QAM tool (any version, including the newest one Felix just posted about) I get an  error saying "ClearQAM Utility has stopped working". I run it as administrator, and then the dialog to select the tuner comes up. I select the tuner and click OK, and then it crashes. Details are below. Does anyone else get this? I tried different driver versions too (the two most recent ones) and I still get the error. The tuner itself works fine in Vista Media Center - it's only the QAM tool that crashes. I don't know if this is relevant, but I have the TV Pack 2008 installed. I know the tool used to work for me before, so could installing the TV Pack have something to do with it?

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:    APPCRASH
  Application Name:    ClearQAM_Utility.exe
  Application Version:    1.0.0.12
  Application Timestamp:    49228990
  Fault Module Name:    StackHash_fd00
  Fault Module Version:    0.0.0.0
  Fault Module Timestamp:    00000000
  Exception Code:    c0000005
  Exception Offset:    ffffffff
  OS Version:    6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
  Locale ID:    1033
  Additional Information 1:    fd00
  Additional Information 2:    ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
  Additional Information 3:    fd00
  Additional Information 4:    ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160

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QX9650
EVGA 790i Ultra
4GB DDR3 1600MHz
2x EVGA GTX 280 SLI
AverTV Combo PCIe
Dell 30" 3007WFP-HC LCD
Vista Ultimate x64

You dont need to use QAM tool at all because you have TV Pack 2008. 

MS TV Pack 2008 has a NATIVE Support for QAM in VMC, and AVerMedia QAM tool is work around to emulate QAM in VMC/MCE as ATSC signal.

With TV Pack 2008 you will get only QAM channels that can match to  your ATSC Channel line up, so you will miss a lot of Clear QAM channels, but you will get correct TV Guide data.

With QAM Tool you might get all your "Clear" QAM channels, but you have to match them manually to ATSC channels (keep in mind that not all your "Clear" QAM channels have a corresponded ATSC channels)

So this is a big tread off when you use TV Pack vs. to QAM tool

Felix.

 

 

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Felix Kolotinsky
Product Manager
AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.

Thanks for the reply Felix. Yes I am aware the TV Pack has native support. However it doesn't seem to be picking up some channels that the clear qam tool used to pick up. That's why I just want to do another scan with the QAM tool to see if it still picks up those channels. But anyway regardless of the reason, I still would like to know why the clear qam tool crashes for me and how I can get aorund it.

Thanks

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QX9650
EVGA 790i Ultra
4GB DDR3 1600MHz
2x EVGA GTX 280 SLI
AverTV Combo PCIe
Dell 30" 3007WFP-HC LCD
Vista Ultimate x64

In my experience TV Pack 2008 is picking up all the channels that the Aver tool used to but you need to manually select all the ones that don't have guide data associated with them by going into "edit channels" and selecting them and then associating the propert guide data.  Another nice feature I've noticed is that you can "merge" the ATSC channel with the analog so that when you're flipping channels VMC automatically selects whichever tuner is not in use.  This avoids having multiple instances of the same channel.  Not sure if everyone else figured this out already so I wanted to throw it out there.

Is anyone else having problems downloading the .30 drivers from Aver?  I've been trying for a few days now and am getting a time-out from the site.

-trevor

Halfwalker:

Everything seems to be working swimmingly.  Except for the M780 after waking up from S3 sleep.

Install the MediaCenter Standby Tool (MST).  Set it to shut down media center upon going into S3 and then restart VMC upon resuming.  That cleared up the problem for me.

In any case, in testing it seems to be working most of the time.  Every so often when it wakes back up, the video decoder error will be there and it will need a full reboot.
I spoke too soon.  It seems that it's actually most often that it WON'T be able to go to LiveTV or record, and only sometimes that it will work.  I haven't yet figured out what the circumstances are that make it work or not.

Felix -

Is there anything I can do, or any debugging build of the drivers, to help enable some detailed logging to try to figure out what's going on here ? It works great, until after the system has resumed from S3 standby, after which LiveTV and recording all fail with decoder errors.

D.

What driver version do you use? I released 2.5.x.30 drivers on FTP that has a fix for S3/S4 issues.

As for Decoder errors, this is VMC/MCE problem, not a tuner

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Felix Kolotinsky
Product Manager
AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.

Felixk:

What driver version do you use? I released 2.5.x.30 drivers on FTP that has a fix for S3/S4 issues.

As for Decoder errors, this is VMC/MCE problem, not a tuner

Hi Felix, sorry about the delay.  It's version 2.9015.0.30, pulled down from the beta site a while ago.  The file is M780_Drv_x86_V2.9015.0.30_Install.zip

I haven't seen the decoder errors any more though.  It just says that it was unable to start recording due to a power loss or other system problem. 

Halfwalker, what are your system specs?  Felix is probably right and the problem is not with the tuner, but possibly with your video card drivers.  I know that with my 780G motherboard (ATI HD3200), Catalyst would crash with a BSOD on many occasions, such as changing a channel or resuming from S3 sleep depending on the driver version.  Certain versions worked perfectly and others caused constant problems.

Hey Felix I have a problem that has been happening for a while. I have vista with tv pack installed but this problem also happen before I installed tv pack. The problem is when I watch channels from digital channels from the qam cable, the analog channels become all black. I cant watch them at all and I can only watch the digital channels. I have to restart my computer completely to be able to watch the regular channels again. How come this is happening? Is it my computer? It somehow looses the analog signals when I start watching Qam channels, also it doesnt happen all the time but most of the time. Its pretty annoying problem.

Thanks.

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Intel Q6600 G0 3.6ghz with Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme
Evga 780i
Evga Superclocked 7950GT 512mb
4gb G.Skill 2x2gb ram
WD 2x 120gb RAID 0
Creative Inspire P7800 7.1 speakers
Corsair 620HX
Cooler Master 690

I get a Data Execution Protection error when I run the V1.0.0.12 ClearQAM tool.  I have hardware-based DEP turned on.  Any suggestions, other than turning off DEP?

Also, I noticed that the latest beta driver has been removed from the "BSOD_Fix" directory.  Was there a problem with it?

-------------
Intel DG45ID with G45 integrated graphics; no overclocking
E8400 @ 3GHz
4GB DDR2
Aver M780 with .30 drivers
Vista Premium with all updates

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Chuck Lincoln

DG45ID MB with G45 integrated graphics
E8400 3 GHz Core 2 Duo
4GB DDR2
Aver M780 tuner
Vista Premium x64 with all updates

sneakerx:

Halfwalker, what are your system specs?  Felix is probably right and the problem is not with the tuner, but possibly with your video card drivers.  I know that with my 780G motherboard (ATI HD3200), Catalyst would crash with a BSOD on many occasions, such as changing a channel or resuming from S3 sleep depending on the driver version.  Certain versions worked perfectly and others caused constant problems.

System is fairly vanilla ...

Biostar P4M900-M4 motherboard (onboard video disabled)
3.0GHz socket 478 cpu
2GB ddr2/667 ram
Asus EAH3450/di/256m/a video card using DVI output
Aver M780
400G sata

It has Vista Ultimate x32 with SP1 installed, and all updates in place.  Biostar drivers for chipset (VIA_HyperionPro_V518B.exe), lan (vista32.zip), audio (Vista_R205.exe) are installed, from

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/mb/driver.php?S_ID=283

I'm using the ATI drivers and Avivo for the 3450 ...

8-11_vista32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_70229
8-11_vista32-64_xcode_70231

This is a completely clean new install, done using the TV Pack 2008 as per the procedure available everywhere (http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/1/281532/ShowThread.aspx).  That is, installed :

Vista Ultimate
SP1
All MS updates
Biostar drivers
ATI drivers
AverMedia driver M780_Drv_x86_V2.9015.0.30_Install
All MS updates again to be sure
TV Pack 2008
PlayReady
KB951685 and KB950754
Used the VMCD utility to enable the Avivo codec

The system works perfectly.  Nice and fast, low cpu utilization mostly.  There are some 1080p MKVs that tend to be jerky or the sound gets out of sync.

For a while there it would go into suspend mode and come out fine, being able to do LiveTV or record.  Usually, although sometimes it would not record when it woke up.  There have been a couple of updates from MS since the install, and now once it's suspended, the tuner is always bazook/kaput.  It has to be rebooted to get the tuner back to life.

It's never had a BSOD, not once.  The only problem is trying to go to LiveTV - it puts up the spinner, and that just sits there forever.  Eventually it will give up and say there's a problem, though I haven't seen the error in a while now, since we just bounce the damn box.  In RecordedTV History it will show programs that should have recorded, but weren't. 

The only msg it gives is that there was an unexpected failure, error code 771.

Any ideas ?

D.

I'm really grateful to avermedia for releasing the card and the software, it's allowed me to watch HD on my MCE2005 machine.

I have one technical question though, why doesn't the ClearQAM Utility have the ability to display the station letters after performing the scan on unencrypted digital channels?  Don't these channels have the station information in their signal...they even have information on upcoming shows.  This would make it much easier for labeling and getting the MCE guide to work.

Halfwalker:

sneakerx:

Halfwalker, what are your system specs?  Felix is probably right and the problem is not with the tuner, but possibly with your video card drivers.  I know that with my 780G motherboard (ATI HD3200), Catalyst would crash with a BSOD on many occasions, such as changing a channel or resuming from S3 sleep depending on the driver version.  Certain versions worked perfectly and others caused constant problems.

System is fairly vanilla ...

Biostar P4M900-M4 motherboard (onboard video disabled)
3.0GHz socket 478 cpu
2GB ddr2/667 ram
Asus EAH3450/di/256m/a video card using DVI output
Aver M780
400G sata

It has Vista Ultimate x32 with SP1 installed, and all updates in place. 
I'm using the ATI drivers and Avivo for the 3450 ...

8-11_vista32_dd_ccc_wdm_enu_70229
8-11_vista32-64_xcode_70231
  :
  :
It's never had a BSOD, not once.  The only problem is trying to go to LiveTV - it puts up the spinner, and that just sits there forever.  Eventually it will give up and say there's a problem, though I haven't seen the error in a while now, since we just bounce the damn box.  In RecordedTV History it will show programs that should have recorded, but weren't. 

The only msg it gives is that there was an unexpected failure, error code 771.

Any ideas ?

D.

OK, it's consistent now.  It will *never* record or show LiveTV after coming back from suspend :(.

Arg.

The only thing I can think to suggest at this point is to roll back to previous Catalyst versions and do some trial-and-error testing.  The 3450 came out a while back and ATI has a tendency to break support for things that were previously working in their new drivers.  Once you find something that works the way you want it, then it'd be best to stick with it and not upgrade.