Video quality affects pc playback?

[rocephin]

I am having a problem that, afaik, is not mentioned elsewhere in this forum. if anyone has any insight on how to resolve it, I'd really appreciate it.

My setup:

Recently purchased Tivo series 2 with updated software, winxp professional pc, netgear wm111 wireless adapter, wmp 10 with multiple codecs tested including nvidia and cole

Problem:

Shows recorded in medium quality or higher are causing me either one of two problems. The first problem I encountered is that it transfers ok (but slow) from tivo to pc, but playback is messed up. regardless of the codec I am using (including tivo-recommeded nvidia codec), the video will play anywhere from 1 to 10 seconds and then the video freezes (often at the same spot with different codecs), followed shortly later by an audio freeze. The second problem that may occur is that the show stops transferring and drops the network connection between router and tivo to the point where I have to shut down both my router and restart the tivo to get the network running again.

Interestingly (or maybe not), I do not have any of the aformentioned problems when the show I am transferring was recorded in basic quality. All shows of basic quality transfer and play just fine on wmp.

any thoughts? thanks,

rocephin

[Dan203]

How old is your PC?

Dan

[rocephin]

about 4 months...fairly robust machine...amd athlon 64, 2 gb ram, nvidia geforce 7 series

thanks,

roc

[greg_burns]

Isolate the problem to a codec issue by testing out video in Media Player Classic. (it has its own internal codec that always seems to work)

http://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/video_players/media_player_classic.cfm

[rocephin]

thanks for the media player classic link...using that player has got me farther in a show (medium quality or higher) than any codec with wmp10 thus far. However, its not without its problems. The video is choppy at points and the audio and video go out of sync about 15 minutes in..but for what its worth, it gets through the show without freezing.

When I try to transcode the higher quality shows to use on my psp (using psp video 9), the one step transcode always hangs up and never completes. when I transcode the basic quality shows, it works beautifully.

I suspect that the medium or higher quality shows are becoming flawed in some manner during transfer to my pc. The classic player is better able to handle these hiccups or holes of data and hence trudge through, but wmp and the codecs I've tested get hung up at these points. In contrast, the basic quality shows seem to transfer intact and thus can be viewed with wmp 10 and transcoded without problem.

does my theory above make any sense? could another wireless adapter make a difference? I did purchase a tivo wireless adapter to see if the problem persist swith a new adapter. perhaps I may try a wired one too.

please let me know if I am missing something, way off the mark, or perhaps another fix is out there for me.

thanks,

roc

[Puppy76]

That sounds like what happens if I try to transfer a show that had a bad signal (I use OTA)-stuff that still more or less plays on the Tivo will do the things you described when transfered to my PC, or sometimes not even finish transfering.

I don't know why the quality would make a difference though, I've never seen anything different with one quality versus another (I'm using a wired Linksys adapter by the way).