Also the wakeups in the middle of the night caused by the ehrecvr en ehsched service are not solved.

MS still has a lot to fix!!

 

After the updates, sleep does not kill extender connectivity any more (or my bluetooth keyboard's as well).  And the network dropouts (jerky video) through the extender have stopped  - that could have been a neighbor with a 5.8GHz phone though.

Also have not noticed mcupdate crashing any more, time will tell.

---

Deane G Vista SP1 Home Premium 32 w/Pack, 2x A180, 550 Pro, HD4350 at 1080i to plasma, Intel D945GNTLR w/Pentium D 2.80GHz, 2GB, Seagate 300MB + Hitachi 1TB, Linksys DMA2100, Harmony 550, TMT

Since this weeks updates including the one for TV Pack Recorded TV shows do not all show up on other pc's in my network.

I have at this time on the server with 4 tv tuners 5 episodes of CSI Miami. They all show up on the server but on three other pc's on my network only 2 show up. Same for SCI Las Vegas, 8 recorded episodes and only 5 show up.

The only reason I didn't do a clean install without TV Pack is the WTV extension for Recorded TV wich is unreadable for systems without TV Pack. TV Pack really sucks. From one promblem to another.

Hmmm... when I fired up my HTPC today, I saw that Survivor didn't record last night.  No acknowlegdement that it even exists in the History list, in fact.  There was also a Media Center Store Update crash message minimized to the taskbar.  Oddly enough, Smallville recorded OK last night.

I'm getting less and less impressed with TV Pack...  Hopefully MSFT addresses these lost recordings people are getting. Soon.

Pino:

Since this weeks updates including the one for TV Pack Recorded TV shows do not all show up on other pc's in my network.

I have at this time on the server with 4 tv tuners 5 episodes of CSI Miami. They all show up on the server but on three other pc's on my network only 2 show up. Same for SCI Las Vegas, 8 recorded episodes and only 5 show up.

The only reason I didn't do a clean install without TV Pack is the WTV extension for Recorded TV wich is unreadable for systems without TV Pack. TV Pack really sucks. From one promblem to another.

The episodes wich are not appearing over the network do not have thumbnails. When I watch the Recorded TV folder in windows explorer in thumbnail view the don't have thumbnails. I Recorded 4 tv shows tonight and 2 of them don't have thumbnails and don't show up. The other two do appear in the list. All 4 recordings show up in the Recorded TV list on the pc where they were recorded on.

I moved one recording with thumbnail to another pc and the thumbnail was gone. How odd is that.

Shoot me, I don't know what MS is doing with this TV Pack but I say it's crap.

Pino:

The episodes wich are not appearing over the network do not have thumbnails. When I watch the Recorded TV folder in windows explorer in thumbnail view the don't have thumbnails. I Recorded 4 tv shows tonight and 2 of them don't have thumbnails and don't show up. The other two do appear in the list. All 4 recordings show up in the Recorded TV list on the pc where they were recorded on.

I moved one recording with thumbnail to another pc and the thumbnail was gone. How odd is that.

Shoot me, I don't know what MS is doing with this TV Pack but I say it's crap.

...sounds vaguely like some of the problems I had when I forgot to install PlayReady along with TV Pack...

millerbrad:

Pino:

The episodes wich are not appearing over the network do not have thumbnails. When I watch the Recorded TV folder in windows explorer in thumbnail view the don't have thumbnails. I Recorded 4 tv shows tonight and 2 of them don't have thumbnails and don't show up. The other two do appear in the list. All 4 recordings show up in the Recorded TV list on the pc where they were recorded on.

I moved one recording with thumbnail to another pc and the thumbnail was gone. How odd is that.

Shoot me, I don't know what MS is doing with this TV Pack but I say it's crap.

...sounds vaguely like some of the problems I had when I forgot to install PlayReady along with TV Pack...

Playready and the 2 updates belonging to tv pack are installed before last weeks updates. I'll try to uninstall playready and install it again and see what happens.

Did this issue get resolved with the Oct 14th update?  I get this consistently on DiscoveryHD and NatGeoHD.  There are probably more channels but I haven't gone thru all of them.

 

chapmanjw:

As an update to #11 (getting Service Unavailable when trying to watch Live TV on some stations with Live TV):

I went though all my channels and the following are not working for me on Cox in Phoenix:

100 Discovery Health
251 The Movie Channel Extra
715 KNXV ABC HD
722 National Geographic HD
733 ESPN HD
762 CNBC HD
782 Showtime HD

SeanG:

Did this issue get resolved with the Oct 14th update?  I get this consistently on DiscoveryHD and NatGeoHD.  There are probably more channels but I haven't gone thru all of them.

No, the update did not fix the problem with the Service Unavailable error while watching some HD CableCard channels. I am holding out hope that the supposedly soon-to-be-released ATI Digital Cable Tuner firmware update will solve the problem. I have my machine configured and running great except for this problem, which is admittedly pretty big. If the new firmware doesn't come out soon or doesn't fix the error, I will have to wipe the computer and reinstall Vista without the TV Pack. I don't want to have to do that because of the time involved and also because I'd miss a few of the TV Pack features. I guess that's why I keep telling myself I'll give it a little longer.

Yogi

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Dell XPS 420: Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz, 6 GB RAM, 2.34 TB total storage
ATI Radeon HD 3600
Windows Vista Ultimate x64
2 ATI Digital Cable Tuners w/ CableCARD
1 HDHomeRun for 2 Clear QAM Tuners
3 Xbox 360 Extenders

I gave up on TV Pack! Last night I restored all my backups without TV Pack except for one.

To buggy and lots of plugins are not working anymore. Convert all my WTV recording to DVR-MS so I can watch them again. When all bugs are solved I will place my TV Pack backups back.

Yogi,

Did you do a clean install?  Which stations don't come in?  Were all the updates applied in order?  I'm sorry if this has been all asked before, but I'm a user who is slowly realizing that he needs TV Pack, and is trying to find out why some people have no problems and others have tons of problems!

Jon

Yogi76:

SeanG:

Did this issue get resolved with the Oct 14th update?  I get this consistently on DiscoveryHD and NatGeoHD.  There are probably more channels but I haven't gone thru all of them.

No, the update did not fix the problem with the Service Unavailable error while watching some HD CableCard channels. I am holding out hope that the supposedly soon-to-be-released ATI Digital Cable Tuner firmware update will solve the problem. I have my machine configured and running great except for this problem, which is admittedly pretty big. If the new firmware doesn't come out soon or doesn't fix the error, I will have to wipe the computer and reinstall Vista without the TV Pack. I don't want to have to do that because of the time involved and also because I'd miss a few of the TV Pack features. I guess that's why I keep telling myself I'll give it a little longer.

Yogi

JonDeutsch:

Did you do a clean install?  Which stations don't come in?  Were all the updates applied in order?  I'm sorry if this has been all asked before, but I'm a user who is slowly realizing that he needs TV Pack, and is trying to find out why some people have no problems and others have tons of problems!

Jon,

I did do a clean install and then installed TV Pack and the updates in the order recommended. I have since that time done some troubleshooting by reinstalling Vista on a second hard drive. After multiple tests of clean installs with and without TV Pack, I can say with certainty that it is TV Pack which is causing the problem. You can read other user's similar problems in the following thread:

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/293670.aspx

Yogi

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Dell XPS 420: Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz, 6 GB RAM, 2.34 TB total storage
ATI Radeon HD 3600
Windows Vista Ultimate x64
2 ATI Digital Cable Tuners w/ CableCARD
1 HDHomeRun for 2 Clear QAM Tuners
3 Xbox 360 Extenders

JonDeutsch:

Yogi,

Did you do a clean install?  Which stations don't come in?  Were all the updates applied in order?  I'm sorry if this has been all asked before, but I'm a user who is slowly realizing that he needs TV Pack, and is trying to find out why some people have no problems and others have tons of problems!

Jon

Some of us are lucky and have very few issues with TV Pack.  I only have one final outstanding issue (frame rate jumping around on some 1080i material), otherwise I think it's absolutely stellar.  It made my HTPC possible, I couldn't have done what I wanted to do before TV Pack came along.  So, it really does depend on what you're trying to accomplish, and if you're willing to get a little frustrated now and again.  I'd be more than happy to tell you what I have set up and what challenges I went through to get where I am, if it will help you.  PM me if that would be of value.

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Vista SP1 x64 TV Pack / GA-MA78GPM-DS2H / Phenom 9350e / Sapphire HD4550 512MB / 4GB OCZ 1066Mhz / WD10EADS 1TB / Sony BDU-X10S / (2) HDHomeRuns - 1 Baltimore OTA, 1 D.C. OTA / TotalMedia Theater / myNetflix / emuCenter / 1080i Philips 30PW9100D

I think a lot depends on how you use Media Center and TV Pack. If you boot up a PC with Media Center on, and play around, watch a DVD or a program or two, then you'll probably think TV Pack is step forward. If however (like me) you have a full HTPC in the living room as your only source of home entertainment and used by the whole family, and which has been there for years, then it is likely to be a very different story. You treat it as a piece of consumer electronics, and expect the reliability and features to be the same or better. Any glitch becomes unacceptable - you should not have to reboot your "TV" to get over some irritation or other.

For me, I had a relatively stable system, until installing TV Pack. I appear to have suffered all the various problems reported by others. I'll just list them all here as my final TV Pack posting. A clean install tonight, and then back to the stable non-TV Pack setup I had before:

• Periods of bad pixellation and blockiness watching live or recorded TV when mcglidhost.exe and indexer.exe decide to kick in and updated/index the guide. Basically unwatchable until it's finished
• Occasional loss of sound when watching recorded TV.
• Recorded TV FF/REW is nowhere near as slick as without TV Pack. It does not act immediately, but on a 1s clock, it can take a while before it plays again, and frequently results in sound getting out of synch with the picture.
• On several occasions different Media Center screens have got into some form of infinite animation flickering state, forcing me to exit Media Center and restart. This has happened once on the main guide display, and once when searching for scheduled programs. I can only assume this is buggy MCML, as many of the new screens clearly do not share the same MCML 'controls' as those in the pre-TV Pack screens.
• mcp_update.exe crashing.
• MHEG. A step forward, but it's too unstable. If you use it in anger and quickly, the MHegAddin can crash or hang.
• TV recordings can be split into several sections. The scheduled Grand Prix qualifying I recorded the other weekend appeared as one recording of 6 minutes and then another containing the remaining 2 hours.This has happened to me once, but to some users almost every time.
• Sometimes when inserting a DVD, the little spinning circle appears and it looks as if its about to start playing, but nothing happens. The spinning circle stays there until you press the DVD menu key. Sometimes it works.
• While watching live TV or recorded TV, if another program is about to start or stop recording, the little mini-guide can pop up not once but several times - it's really irritating.
• It can singularly fail to record a scheduled program. This has happened to me twice, but again to some users far more frequently than that.
• Guide display becomes inaccurate - you can browse around the guide, but the 'current' program details displayed at the bottom do not reflect the program you have selected.
• Bad series information in the UK with the guide provider BDS. Frequently series are not tagged as such, so you can only record one program at a time
• Bad ITV1 information in the UK. Some users have not ITV1 information, for others (me) it is either 7-day only or for the wrong region.

Did TV Pack solve anything for me? Yes. Two things:

• MHEG - At last I can use the BBC 'Red Button'. I've been eagerly waiting for that since first using MCE XP 4 years ago. Until that is the MHegAddin crashes...
• The really irritating blockiness and slow refresh after FF/REW which was introduced with SP1 was fixed, although it's still not quite as good as pre-SP1.

Not much of a gain really for so many losses. I used to evangelize about Media Center to friends and family. I got a little less enthusiastic with the slightly broken DVD codec when SP1 came out, and am now positively embarassed with TV Pack.

 I'll wait 6 months and then give it another go. Good luck all you guys who persevere.

JB

I'm also prepared to dump TV Pack and do yet another reinstall of Vista.  Plan to do it this weekend.

At first, I thought TV Pack was excellent.  I absolutely love the ability to combine channels and give them appropriate ATSC channel numbers (even though I'm tuning QAM stations).

Then, a few weeks later, the honeymoon was over.  I've run into the problem of scheduled recordings not being performed.  Three in the last week.  I've been away on business for the last couple days, and got an angry call from the wife last night, because Media Center kept displaying a message about being unable to record a show.  Every time she cleared the message, it would reappear.

I'd hoped that TV Pack would also clear up a problem I've had with the HTPC taking upwards of 2 minutes before it would respond to remote commands after waking from S3.  That wasn't the case.

So, I'm done with TV Pack.  I'm looking forward to going back to Vista and getting my DVRMSToolbox commercial skipping back.