Investigating TV sync issues- any tools to help?

[scottb721]

My MCE 2005 machine, listed below, has sync issues with live TV. I can correct the sync by going to anther channel then returning but sync will stuff again at some point.
The problem starts out as some clicks in the audio then suddenly the audio leads the video by almost a sec.
I'm using the latest audio and tuner driver, tried different nVidia drivers, swapped cards around between different PCI slots, even done a clean install.
Are there are tools that can be used to investigate the issue and try to pinpopint the problem ?

oh, and I'm using the onboard SPDIF output and running that to my Amp.
Thanks

PC is -
Athlon XP2400
Albatron KM18G Pro MB
1Gb RAM
Compro DVB-T300 and T200 tuners
FX5500

[redwudz]

Just at a guess, something is stealing CPU cycles needed to process the video, so it begins to lag the audio, which takes less processing. Antivirus or some other monitoring program present?

You could check your Task Manager in the Performance tab. You may see the CPU activity increase when the problem starts. See what is running in the Processes tab.

[scottb721]

Am running PCCillin 2007.
It's solely a TV watching PC so there is very little installed. I went into MSCONFIG/Startup and turned off anything I saw that wasn't absolutely necessary.
Have closed PCC and and will see how it goes.

Cheers

[scottb721]

Stopping PCC didn't solve it but I may have done it with something else.
I went way back to nvidia driver 77.79 and it seems ok. I still get stutters in the sound but no issues with sync.

I would have been using that last year when I built my MCE PC and I'm sure I had no issues then. At some stage I went to 91.47 but was getting blue screens. Emailed nVidia in Nov and they advised to use 81.98 but that baby gives me the sync problems and the latest driver makes my mpeg2 playback very jerky.
See how the old one goes.

[redwudz]

I hope you solved it with the driver change. I would email Nvidia and describe the whole problem. You may not get much of a response, but you never know. Make sure you detail your computer hardware and software to them.

Sometimes the newest driver isn't the best. They often upgrade drivers just a solve a specific problem. And those drivers are often generic to the whole series of cards. If they have a Version History/Change Log, like you see for software programs in our 'Tools' section, you may be able to see what changes were made in each driver version.

Sometimes it's a corrupted driver or maybe you just have a combination of hardware and software that causes a problem with the newest drivers that they didn't foresee.

Besides the video card driver, there are usually a lot of software settings available for a video card. I don't understand the majority of them, but they all have a bearing on how the card performs. You might check around for a Nvidia forum and see if they have some ideas or ask them some questions.

Good luck.