I hope this is posted correctly; I am a bit new here and had some trouble
finding a tab for New Thread.
I have two Hauppauge model 1212 units, one is two years old, the other
about 18 months. In the past 6 months I've been having increasing
frequency of recording failures and the sudden freeze-ups you're all so
familiar with. They are connected to two Dell Inspiron laptops, one
a model N7010 and the other an N7110, one an Nvidia GeForce GT
525M, the other an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470, all drivers up-to-date.
They both run 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium with 6 gigs of RAM.
I never record any 1080p, no gaming sessions, and I only record
720 x 480 movies off my satellite using the medium or 'better' bitrate
of 6 Mbps in Total Media Extreme. Typical recording is a half-hour
TV sit-com, longest is a two-hour movie.
I have recently replaced both power bricks with the D-Link AF1805-A
adapters. I have ordered a couple more of the D-Links and also a couple
more of the entire Hauppauge 1212 itself, as I figure they'll stop making
them in the near future and I haven't heard of any alternative system.
I haven't added any fan modifications, but both units are running with the
top lids fully removed, standing upright to allow full ventilation through the
cooling slots on the bottom of the units. I have even tried redirecting the
video to two external Acer 22' monitors while recording to take some load
off the CPU and video cards. None of these efforts seem to have made
any difference. If I set both units to record the same channel on my two
satellite receivers, there's a 50 / 50 chance one of them will get through
an hour-long recording without stopping at any random time while recording.
Next I'll try just clamping the two units together upright in the air flow from
a table fan. But I'm starting to question whether this will make any difference
and wondering if the units are just reaching the end of their life cycle. It
reminds me of the transistor radios of the 60s and 70s with condensers
soldered to the circuit boards. They all sounded great at first but within a
few years the sound quality deteriorated and they all ended up in the garbage.
Would love to know if any of you has an older vintage Hauppauge 1212 from
maybe 2008 or earlier, and what you've done to get it to record reliably again.
This is a great forum, thank you all for your stories and experiences, it's
reassuring to know I'm not alone in my frustration.