HTPC Woes... Video/audio Out of sync

[phaxmohdem]

So I recently built an HTPC so I could record tv shows and watch them later, as well as play a few games on the TV screen, but I'm having this problem I can't seem to resolve. As you watch the recorded video, the Audio and Video get out of sync the longer you watch it, the more out of sync it gets.

Specs arn't too bad:

A-XP 2600+ (266FSB 2.13GHz)
250GB SATA hard drive 8mb cache
1GB PC3200 RAM
nVidia GeForce 6200 128MB AGP Card (Using Component Output)
WinFast TV Tuner Card W/ Remote. (Using the DVR software included with the card)
WinXP Pro

when recording (Using MPEG-2 compression, the cpu usage hovers between 70 and 80%. The playback video is smooth, and no glitches are seen or heard, it just simply gets of sync somehow.

Anyone else run into this, or have any other suggestions for building a good DVR/HTPC machine?

 

[Varun]

It really sounds like somehow the onboard MPEG-2 Encoder is not being used - CPU usage should be very low for modern TV tuner cards.

I'm not familiar with that model, can you look around in the software to make sure the hardware encoder is being used?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Is that a software based card like most under $50 are? If so, upgrading to a card with hardware MPEG2 encoding like a Hauppage PVR-150 (regular model not -MCE) should fix the problem.

If you don't want to spend the money, you might Google and try the HTPC forum at AVSForum.com to find tweaks to XP and to the WinTV that might reduce the sync issue.

 

[Varun]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
Is that a software based card like most under $50 are? If so, upgrading to a card with hardware MPEG2 encoding like a Hauppage PVR-150 (regular model not -MCE) should fix the problem.

If you don't want to spend the money, you might Google and try the HTPC forum at AVSForum.com to find tweaks to XP and to the WinTV that might reduce the sync issue.

Good point - you never actually mentioned what version of the Winfast TV tuner you have. Some of the cheaper ones won't even have hardware MPEG-2 encoding.

The ATI Theater 550 based cards are another nice choice.

 

[Velk]

Originally posted by: phaxmohdem
So I recently built an HTPC so I could record tv shows and watch them later, as well as play a few games on the TV screen, but I'm having this problem I can't seem to resolve. As you watch the recorded video, the Audio and Video get out of sync the longer you watch it, the more out of sync it gets.

Specs arn't too bad:

A-XP 2600+ (266FSB 2.13GHz)
250GB SATA hard drive 8mb cache
1GB PC3200 RAM
nVidia GeForce 6200 128MB AGP Card (Using Component Output)
WinFast TV Tuner Card W/ Remote. (Using the DVR software included with the card)
WinXP Pro

when recording (Using MPEG-2 compression, the cpu usage hovers between 70 and 80%. The playback video is smooth, and no glitches are seen or heard, it just simply gets of sync somehow.

Anyone else run into this, or have any other suggestions for building a good DVR/HTPC machine?

The obvious first step would be to check if it's hardware or software. I'd suggest grabbing the mytheatre demo and testing recording with that. If that doesn't have a problem, then check out the various options for PVR software (mytheatre, media portal, beyondtv etc ).

If it does have the same problem it would be hardware or drivers, so the place to go from there would be leadtek support I think.