...Until then I'll take this time to try out Vista RC1 w/MCE.

I thought I'd chime in and say I have the same problem, PCHDTV5500, hang at "Setting default volumes".

Anyone have a fix yet?

"Nate,

I figured out a workaround for our problem. Basically, the issue is that the cx88-alsa module doesn't implement certain audio mixer calls correctly and crashes whenever an app tries to adjust its audio level settings.

However, the cx88alsa module is used only for ANALOG reception with the pcHDTV card. DTV carries the audio inside the MPEG stream which gets sent directly to the disk. Basically, the module is not important unless you need analog tv. As I use a pvr 250 for that, I went ahead and figured out a way to take it out of the equation.

My workaround was to remove the pcHDTV card and run alsa_init as root, setting the levels for the soundcard and making alsa run nice. I saw that you were having problems with sound after changing the alsa version, so you might just reinstall R5D1 and leave the pcHDTV card out.

Next, I put the pcHDTV card back in and skiped any audio configuration. I checked using "cat /proc/asound/pcm" and noticed that the pcHDTV 5500 card is loaded as the primary sound card, so whenever KnoppMyth tries to set the default columes, it thinks it is talking to a real sound card at ID 0 but it is getting the pcHDTV instead. I had to then run "alsamixer -d 1" to control my soundblaster live volumes. Finally I had to go into the myhtfrontend setup and change the audio device to /dev/dsp1 and the mixer device to /dev/mixer1.

Once I did this, audio playback worked perfectly."