Try the other VDPAU profiles (ie not VDPAU - High Quality). I dont think the 8400 can handle the high quality deinterlacer according to this
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/VDPAU

_________________
LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

That is the plan for my next bit of foolin' around...

Been making a bunch of test recordings, haven't got back yet to the playbck options page.

Any comment on my 'top'
It seems a lot of cpu time is going to run the HDPVR... My daughter has crashed the machine twice, trying to play a DVD while it's recording the HDPVR...

They play fine when it's not recording...

Is the TOP report with playback or just recording? I am not in front of my system now but memory says it runs about 11%-12% total while recording and watching. I don't usually use live TV but it does work fairly well for me.

I would certainly start by picking a different VDPAU profile and see if it makes any difference. There are different flavors of VDPAU for different cards. Even differet 8400 cards can be different. Take a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PureVideo_HD#PureVideo_HD

In any case, have you taken a look at the frontend and backend logs to see if there is anything interesting there?

_________________
LINHES 8.6.1 BE/FE - MSI K9N6SGM-V with AMD A64 X2 4600+, 4GB Ram. 1.5TB WD. HDHR Prime. Nvidia GT210. MCE remote.
FrontEnd - Dell Vostro 400 3.0GHz Core2Duo NVidia GeForce210. MCE Remote

OK the machine has been crashed and rebooted twice (after trying to play a DVD during recording....

It's up and running now... It's recording with the HDPVR and streaming HD to
my Western Digital media Center (for HD display...)

The TOP looks normal now (??) compared to the one I posted shortly after after HDPVR startup:


I'll post top with the mythfrontend playing when the current batch of recordings finishes....

I have an 8400 on a P4 system on one of my front ends. Everything is recorded on HD-PVRs and playback is fine on mine.

I have it set to VDPAU Normal. Anything higher quality the 8400 couldn't handle. I don't remember which de-interlacers I am using but I think it is stack for that profile.

I'm not near the front end at the moment but can check on it later. I just checked the settings through mythweb for now.

Thanks for the data point...

Something strange was definitely happening when I took that top (previous page) and it's not doing it now (above)

My daughter is watching a recording made with the HDHR while the HDPVR is recording ... top looks like this now...



I eventually got to fiddle with the playback settings....
Put it on vdpau normal & it plays fine (go figure...)
Here's the top (playing but not recording.....)



Live TV:



Three recordings, (2 HDHR, 1 HDPVR)
1 playback of current recording.


I finally settled on vdpau high quality, max two cpu's, and interlace bob 2x , backup onefield.

After a week or so of running this, making a bunch of test recordings, it works pretty well. However it periodically fails to make a recording or play live TV, at which point the HDPVR has to be rebooted and all is well again for a while.

This appears to be known behavior based on this in the mythtv hdpvr (http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR) writeup:

Caveats
Once the tuner has been added as an encoder in MythTV, it is vital that the user not access the tuner in outside programs such as cat, VLC, and mplayer. This can lead to MythTV's connection with the driver becoming unstable, and subsequent recordings failing until the driver is reloaded and power is cycled on the HD-PVR.
Any new fixes for this ?

I'm using the (latest) Hauppauge 1.5.7.0 firmware.

After a couple of weeks with the HDPVR in service, It has made a lot of recordings of good quality. But the need to periodically reboot the HDPVR (about daily seems to be good) or you suddenly start getting B (zero length) non-start recordings, is a major annoyance. It doesn't allow you to leave a bunch of future recordings un-monitored for long periods of time (as I do routinely with SD Satbox recordings made with a PVR-250 card).

Anybody know of other hardware that performs the HDPVR job... perhaps better ? Hauppauge has apparently not been able to fix this problem in two years of forum complaints that I've seen.

Well, I had this thing running for a couple of weeks, performance detailed above, but it crashed and to get the LinHes working I had to downgrade to 6.02, and upgrade back to 6.04.
The HDPVR went back to 'won't open in setup' so I went through the original 'drivers procedure' (previous page)but it didn't work as well this time.

The make as root command ran making hundreds of files and completed normally, near as I can see...




The pacman -U command goes aground like this:



Any ideas less than tossing this LinHes 6.04 install and starting with a clean slate ?

The files exist because the kernel normally supplies the dvb drivers -- unless you've added those files someother way. A quick should show they're owned by kernel26. If you want to install your custom package, you'll have to force it. Using force is not something to do haphazardly as it will override pacman's built in safety features (designed to keep you from doing something stupid and rendering your system FUBARed) and install no matter what. Use force with great care and ideally, not at all.

_________________
Mike
My Hardware Profile

This was originally a 6.04 LH, that had linux drivers for the Hauppauge HDPVR added to it with a packgebuild (due to bugfix #723) and then pacman -U install. This worked, and ran 3 - 4 weeks before it crashed. To get it working again (schema problems) I downgraded to the 6.02 on CD, then upgraded again (pacman) to 6.04... Not sure what the state of the kernal was after that, but everything worked except the HDPVR wouldn't open in cards- setup.
I even reloaded the firmware in the HDPVR.... but no dice.
So I went through the install of the v4l drivers again for the HDPVR, but it still wouldn't open, and I got those (above) results on the pacman -U install....
Since I don't know what I have now, I'm considering starting over from a clean slate.




A clean slate looks preferable to a force & a system roach.....

Edit:
So I dug out my wife's spare (backup)
production machine (has recent 6.04 upgrade on it...)
Same result as the other machine: pacman -U install fails due to already existing files... (This machine never had the bugfix 723 tried on it before...)

Since this worked 4 weeks ago (on the first machine cited) I'm assuming changes have occurred to the pacman files pulled in to make 6.04 ??

HDPVR (the new id: 4903 model...) does not open out of the box with either current 6.04 or 7.0.0.1
I tried running 'sudo pacman -Sf v4l-dvb. and it ran OK, but the HDPVR still won't open... (Signifies bugfix 723 ( http://linhes.org/bugs/issues/723 ) still not implemented therein ?)

I don't know of any current path to make it work ....

Reported as Bug # 764
http://linhes.org/bugs/issues/764

Edit 3/12/11:

So I loaded 6.02, a clean install from the cd, and did not do the pacman install of the v4l-dvb drivers. I did the bugfix 723 driver install per Greg Frost's packagebuild instructions. It still failed on existing files in the kernal. So this time I forced it.



It went quietly, stay tuned while I determine if I roached my system....

Well, the system is still working for recordings with HDHRs .... But while the HD-PVR will now open in 'setup- cards', it doesn't show up as a tuner in 'backend status', and won't open for live tv or recordings... Stay tuned while I pick thru the possible trouble spots.....

Edit 3/14:

Got it ! The system mentioned above was opening the HD-PVR but not recording.. I tackled the irblaster problems per ( http://linhes.org/bugs/issues/328 )
and activated a recording remotely from my laptop & discovered it was making a recording! I ran upstairs to look at the HD-PVR and the blue lights were on for the first time in a couple of weeks !

I may not be done yet.. the remote still has problems....
(Removed Streamzap remote, couldn't get it working, remote over Mythweb works, using that.)

Still trying to get blaster working through Bugfix 328.