Friday, October 24, 2008

Microsoft Media Center Update Breaks CableCard Recording



I’ve received a couple of e-mails from Vista Media Center users complaining that the recent Microsoft Media Center Cumulative update for Media Center (KB955519) caused a significant problem with CableCard recordings.



I’ve been searching for others with the same issue and found several threads on Greenbutton here and here reporting the same thing.  For those who have installed the update, some recordings made on a CableCard tuner have some or all of the following symptoms:

  • No video (audio only)

  • In some cases broken-up audio

  • The evhvid.exe process is maxing out CPU cycles

  • Significant skipped frames (looks like playback of video is skipping)

Note that some users are even reporting some of these issues with liveTV as well as recorded TV.



CableCard users have reported that simply removing the update resolves all of these issues.