TV Wonder USB2, slows down computer

[Photoguy]

Hi All,

I searched through the group, but didn't see this problem addressed and
can't find anything on the ATI site (apparently no one will be surprised by
that). I installed the TV Wonder USB2 unit on my HP TC-4200 notebook
(1.8Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM, Win XP Pro (SP2), Directx 9.0c, USB2, Mobile Intel
915 GM video card). It came with Catalyst 6.5 and MMC 9.08.

Everything seemed to install fine. Got the tv on and it looks good, but
after the TV is on for a few minutes my computer slows to a crawl. The
simplest task is near impossible. If I remove the USB all returns to normal
and works fine. I do have 3 USB2 sockets on my notebook and (interestingly
enough) one of them wouldn't allow the TV to start at all, while the other
two seem to work fine (except for the performance hit). Another thing is
that I see a lot of disk activity even though I'm not recording anything (at
least that I know of).

From what I've read in this ng I'm afraid to just download the latest
drivers and try again. It seems that some people have worse luck with newer
drivers than older ones. I've done searches on ati.com for USB,
performance, etc., but can't find anything that fits my problem.

I'd appreciate any help the group can offer. BTW, My main interest is in
being able to watch some news, etc. when I'm working, occassionally pause it
(to take a call) and then resume watching TV. Just mentioning this in case
there might be some software feature or files I may need to eliminate in
order to restore my computer's performance.

Thanks in advance,
Lou

 

[Bill]

Hi All,

I searched through the group, but didn't see this problem addressed and
can't find anything on the ATI site (apparently no one will be surprised by
that). I installed the TV Wonder USB2 unit on my HP TC-4200 notebook
(1.8Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM, Win XP Pro (SP2), Directx 9.0c, USB2, Mobile Intel
915 GM video card). It came with Catalyst 6.5 and MMC 9.08.

Everything seemed to install fine. Got the tv on and it looks good, but
after the TV is on for a few minutes my computer slows to a crawl. The
simplest task is near impossible. If I remove the USB all returns to normal
and works fine. I do have 3 USB2 sockets on my notebook and (interestingly
enough) one of them wouldn't allow the TV to start at all, while the other
two seem to work fine (except for the performance hit). Another thing is
that I see a lot of disk activity even though I'm not recording anything (at
least that I know of).

From what I've read in this ng I'm afraid to just download the latest
drivers and try again. It seems that some people have worse luck with newer
drivers than older ones. I've done searches on ati.com for USB,
performance, etc., but can't find anything that fits my problem.

I'd appreciate any help the group can offer. BTW, My main interest is in
being able to watch some news, etc. when I'm working, occassionally pause it
(to take a call) and then resume watching TV. Just mentioning this in case
there might be some software feature or files I may need to eliminate in
order to restore my computer's performance.

Thanks in advance,
Lou

Off the wall suggestion. Try more ram and defrag the hard drive, then
increase the size of your pagefile to init size 2056/ max size 2056.

Bill

 

[Michael Walraven]

If you want to pause and then resume you must be using the TV on demand
feature. This requires that the TV be copyed to
the hard disk so lots of disk activity. Laptop hard disks are not known for
their speed so that may be the root cause of the problem.
You might try turning off the on-demand to see if that stops the disk
activity.
You might be able to use the on-demand if you lower your recording quality.

As far as the later Catalyst drivers. I had to stop at 6.5 because after
that the on-demand defaulted on and slowed my older system
down so much that it was not usable.

Michael