andy vt's tools & blog

Hi Andy,

For some reason automatic commercial skipping becomes sluggish to respond after Media Center has been running for a few days on our system.  Actually all remote control commands get a little sluggish too so its not just the auto skipping.  Other than that, everything seems to be working well.

What we notice is after a few days (especially after lots of TV being watched), MC will play a few seconds into each commercial, then eventually skip forward followed a second or few seconds later by the skip bar showing up and doing its thing.

If we exit MC and restart it, the sluggishness goes away for a while.

I noticed with 1.2.0.8 you changed the way you detect the playing file and I wanted to try it out to see if this might also fix this issue.  I assume the issue is actually a bug in Vista, but the bug might be highlighted by the commercial skip addin somehow.

Do you think 1.2.0.8 might fix this? Can I get on the early access list and give it a try?

Any other suggestions?

Man, for me it's been sooo much slower than it was in XP.  I'm using 1.2.0.6 and after watching a recorded show for about 30 minutes, the media center gets so slow that I need to restart it and then it's fine for another half hour.  It used to drive me crazy but I've learned to live with it.

 
I think the problem is as you expected, and I didn't notice that change in 1.2.0.8.  I'll try it out and post my results.

OK, I just installed and tried 1.2.0.8 and it's just as slow :(

Vista must be so much harder to program for if Andy still can't get it working as well as in XP.

kennyb03:

OK, I just installed and tried 1.2.0.8 and it's just as slow :(

Vista must be so much harder to program for if Andy still can't get it working as well as in XP.

It's not that Vista is harder to program for, it's more resource intensive. Even without Commercial Skip running, when you fast-forward, rewind, or skip, it spikes the CPU to 100%. I'm getting ready to try everything on a Dual Core machine to see if it helps.

Chris

I knew somebody would say what you just did, szurgot.  I was running XPmce with a pretty slow athlon xp (2500+), and it ran everything, including DVRMSt.  Then I upgraded to vista on the same machine and the performance of the media center was almost identical.  Before installing this program, the media center ran very smoothly, even after watching a recorded program for an hour or 2.

Then I installed DVRMSt for vista and wow, it was a night and day difference.  Everything is fine at first, but the response to inputs like channel changing, skipping forward and backward, and even adjusting the volume deteriorates to the point where I have to restart the media center.

Then after I upgraded to an awesome computer (2 gigs of fast ram, core 2 overclocked past any stock core 2, 8800gts, etc) and then reformatted, the media center ran a tad better than with my athlon xp 2500+.  Once again, however, after installing DVRMSt, the media center still slows to a crawl.  1.2.0.8 didn't help; it's still much slower than it was in windows xp.  I have to regularly restart the media center because DVRMSt slows it down so much.

And don't take me wrong....I love this program and I even paid Andy a few bucks because it's worth at least a small donation.  I just hope that one day it will be as fast as it was a year ago on my slower hardware :) 

kennyb03:

Then after I upgraded to an awesome computer (2 gigs of fast ram, core 2 overclocked past any stock core 2, 8800gts, etc) and then reformatted, the media center ran a tad better than with my athlon xp 2500+.  Once again, however, after installing DVRMSt, the media center still slows to a crawl.  1.2.0.8 didn't help; it's still much slower than it was in windows xp.  I have to regularly restart the media center because DVRMSt slows it down so much.

And don't take me wrong....I love this program and I even paid Andy a few bucks because it's worth at least a small donation.  I just hope that one day it will be as fast as it was a year ago on my slower hardware :) 

 Well, everybody's experience will be different. That's the joy of computers, especially PCs, but I do say that DVRMS doesn't make a different to my setup. Whenever I skip or change position, it messes up, even on a stock machine without DTB installed.

szurgot:

 Well, everybody's experience will be different. That's the joy of computers, especially PCs, but I do say that DVRMS doesn't make a different to my setup. Whenever I skip or change position, it messes up, even on a stock machine without DTB installed.

That sucks....well once you get a dual core, I'm sure it will run better than that :)

szurgot:

 Well, everybody's experience will be different. That's the joy of computers, especially PCs, but I do say that DVRMS doesn't make a different to my setup. Whenever I skip or change position, it messes up, even on a stock machine without DTB installed.

I'm not certain the commercial skip add-in causes the issue, but we ran Vista for almost 3 weeks before installing DVRMSToolbox and it was only after installing it that Media Center started to get sluggish to remote commands.

It almost seems like there's some sort of extra loop Vista runs through whenever a remote button is pressed and each time the commercial skip add-in does something this "loop" gets more and more CPU intensive.

As soon as Media Center is restarted, everything gets extremely fast again and then it slowly gets slower and slower.  I agree with kennyb03 that after watching about 1/2 an hour is when we start to notice the sluggishness, but it really starts to be a problem after watching many hours worth of TV.

BTW, it is only response to remote commands and response to commercial skipping commands from the add-in that are sluggish.  We rarely see any video stuttering or issues that would indicate a high CPU load.  The only issue is it gets difficult to control the playing video after a few days (it gets so sluggish that eventually it takes 20+ seconds per remote key press).

Do most of you shut down Media Center when you stop using it?  If so, you probably wouldn't notice this issue as much.

Our system is a full time HTPC and it serves Recorded TV, Movies, Music, Pictures, etc. to our other 5 computers so it remains on and running Media Center 24/7.

I should comment that I use MCE exclusively from the 360 Extender, so my experience is colored by that. It doesn't have to do any of the display work, just the transfer.

It works flawless until it has to skip ahead or behind, then it spikes.

Ah well, still doesn't pretty well, but that $299 HD Tivo is starting to look inviting.

vista itself has hefty hw requirements, so some of it could be related to that.  it's also important to remember that WMC on vista isn't as mature as MCE on xp.  Think about how stable MCE was pre-rollup 2 or pre-2005; WMC is much better than either of those.

1.2.0.8 is more responsive than the previous vista builds, but I never saw perf bad enough to cause concern pre-1.2.0.8.  If you're having issues with performance it could be a driver issue, assuming you have competent hw.  Some builds of the Nvidia drivers (mobo or video) were complete crap.

 

babgvant:

vista itself has hefty hw requirements, so some of it could be related to that.  it's also important to remember that WMC on vista isn't as mature as MCE on xp.  Think about how stable MCE was pre-rollup 2 or pre-2005; WMC is much better than either of those.

1.2.0.8 is more responsive than the previous vista builds, but I never saw perf bad enough to cause concern pre-1.2.0.8.  If you're having issues with performance it could be a driver issue, assuming you have competent hw.  Some builds of the Nvidia drivers (mobo or video) were complete crap.

 

My system isn't a high end system, but the performance is perfectly fine without DVRMSToolbox.  There really does seem to be some sort of connection between the slowdowns and DVRMSToolbox one way or another.  Note that we don't notice any performance affect when recordings are being analysed (even when simultaneously recording another show and watching yet another one), only when being played back after analysis do the remote control/keyboard/mouse click slowdowns occur.  DVRMSToolbox is configured for a default of "idle" priority.

I noticed a few additional "clues" over the past 2 days:

1.  If, instead of exiting Media Center when it becomes very sluggish, I watch a live TV show, Media Center immediately starts to respond quickly again.  When I then watch a recorded show that has already been processed for commercials, Media Center starts to get sluggish to remote commands again.  Note I only tried this once but I will try it again later.

2.  If I keep struggling with Media Center long enough and keep forcing the commercial skip to back up and re-skip commercials, eventually the entire system completely stops responding to all commands.  The keyboard, mouse and remote control stop responding and the current TV show sometimes keeps playing without any way to stop it.  I ended up pressing the reset button on the computer to force it to reboot a few minutes ago.  There are no errors in any of the logs, except for "The previous system shutdown at 5:57:34 PM on 03/08/2007 was unexpected." and "The LcdWriterService service hung on starting.".  The only "warning" in the logs is "Recording of Avatar: The Last Airbender began as scheduled on 08/03/2007 17:28:11 and was interrupted when the computer lost power or experienced a temporary failure."

Can I get on the list and give 1.2.0.8 a try?  Obviously nothing DVRMSToolbox does should be able to stop the system from responding, but again, my guess is there is a bug in Vista or certain drivers that DVRMSToolbox brings out on certain systems.  Maybe 1.2.0.8 will help in our situation???

BTW, here are my system spec's:  Processor:  Athlon XP 3200+, Video card: X1950Pro 512MB, Video Driver:  Catalyst 7.7, Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe, TV Tuner: Hauppage PVR-250, RAM 1.5GB, Storage:  1.5TB, including 640GB RAID 0 (SiI3112A controller) with 2x 320GB SATA drives for recorded TV.  Other than this issue (and the glitches with VFD display getting garbled every now and then), the system seems to be 100% stable and fully functional.  It will even play high end video games (half life, etc.) while recording TV without any issues.  The only time it ever stops responding is when watching Recorded TV.

Those of you with the same issue, can you post some info on your system?

For those of you that don't see any remote slowdown at all with DVRMSToolbox installed, what are your system specs?

I just thought of one more thing.  I installed both "My Movies" and "DVRMSToolbox" at the same time.  Both include add-ins that register with Media Center.  I also installed both for "all users" and have UAC turned on (default).

Maybe this bug is related to multiple add-ins or something.

Hey HT, I also have the same problem as you.  It's fine when watching live tv, and only slows down big time when watching a show that has already been processed.  This is the only add-in I installed for Media Center, so I doubt "My Movies" has anything to do with it.

I am using an Nvidia 8800GTS, so I really doubt the video card or its drivers cause the problem.

Core 2 Duo e4300 @ 3222MHz (faster than the fastest CPU on the market, e6850)
2 gigs of RAM
Nvidia 8800GTS
160GB IDE HD for recorded TV storage
80gb sata HD for OS

I'm pretty sure with our different video cards and my CPU, we can rule out processing power and the video cards/drivers.

I'm having very similiar problems.  I recently reinstalled Vista in an effort to troubleshoot another issue I was having.  I didn't install DVRMSToolbox for a couple days and the remote response was instant.  SkipFwd, SkipBack, FF, and RW were all perfect.

As soon as I installed DVRMSToolbox, I noticed severe performance issues if MCE was left running for long periods (more than a half-day).  If I press SkipFWD on the remote, the first time is pretty quick, however I have to wait up to 5-8 seconds for the MCE to 'catch up'.  Once I restart MCE, it's fine for a while but then back to the delays.  Again, this occurred immediately after installing DVRMSToolbox. 

I'm not trying to complain, because I LOVE the tool, but I just wanted to make sure it was known this is not an issue limited to only one or two people.  I was thinking about getting a new CPU and video card, but it doesn't look like that will solve the problem...

I'm including my specs, just in case.  I know they're not outsanding, but again: this was not an issue before installing DVRMSToolbox.
- Biostar Geforce6100-M9
- AMD Sempron 3000+ Socket 939
- 2 GB DDR 400 (PC 3200)
- Integrated video (I know... I know... but it works perfectly fine)
- 40 GB WD 7200 RPM SATA hard drive (OS/Program Files)
- 500 GB Seagate 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 GB/s (Media/Recorded TV)

 Anything I can do to track down the issue, I'd be happy!