Hauppauge PVR-350 periodical audio distortion

[frankvnk]

I own 2 Hauppauge PVR-350 PCI cards, both used in a HTPC.

First, i needed to tackle the well known recording levels problem. This one was easily fixed through changing the registry recording levels for these cards (HcwAudioscart1Prescale, HcwAudioScart1Volume and HcwNicamPrescale).

Secondly, i discovered one system had periodical audio distortions when recording TV shows.
After extensive testing, i obtained following results for the PVR-350 cards:

Model 48139 Rev. K2B7, Tuner : Philips FM1216ME_MK5
Recording from TV and Video input: no problems at all - only the recording levels need to be adjusted (HcwAudioscart1Prescale=2500h, HcwAudioScart1Volume=7001h and HcwNicamPrescale=3000h)

Model 48139 Rev. K257, Tuner : Philips FM1216ME H-3
No matter what values are used for HcwaudioScart1Volume and HcwNicamPrescale, the recorded TV sound gets distorted at equally spaced intervals.
The lower the value for HcwNicamPrescale, the larger the interval between distortions but the distortion length increases.

My first system is built with an Intel Atom D510MO board, Windows 7 Home Premium and an MCE remote control. This one has the Rev. K2B7 board and works like a charm.
The second system is built around a Gigabyte MA74GM-S2H system with AMD Athlon 64X2 4400+, Windows XP. This one has the Rev. K257 board fitted.
Both systems have a clean Windows installation with all updates installed. I already swapped the TV cards between the two computers, the K257 board keeps generating the audio problem.

Hauppauge E-mail support, while being quite fast in their replies, was not able to resolve this issue. I asked them if Rev. K257 had any known errors, they claim Rev. K257 has no known design errors.

On the other hand, it's quite strange i already found a user with exactly the same problem on Rev. K257. He's using this card on a Linux system so we can probably rule out a problem with the operating system, drivers or application software.
My best guess is the TV-tuner is causing this problem. I could check this out by swapping the TV tuners on both boards but i'm missing an important tool since the Eeprom on the Hauppauge board needs to be reprogrammed to the correct TV-tuner settings.

I'd like to know if anyone has encountered the same issues with this card and found a solution for this problem?

Even if you did not find a solution, send me an E-mail with following information about your PVR-350
PVR-350 serial number, model number, Revision number and tuner model/revision.
Short description about your system (motherboard, CPU, Operating system).
The PVR-350 information can be easily obtained with the prodinfo.exe tool available from the Hauppauge website or on the original setup CD.

If it turns out many people have the same issue with this card, i'll forward this information to Hauppauge in order to try to convince them there really is a problem and, hopefully, obtain an acceptable solution.
The only drawback is that this card is certainly out of warranty (i already got a reply from Hauppauge to send in my card for repair which would cost me 40 Euros - this is quite disappointing since they sell this card in their online shop for 39,75 Euros).
This is potentially also important for people wanting to buy this card second hand (like i did). They should be warned if the problem is real. I'm certainly not going to sell my card unless this problem can be resolved.

[hech54]

First, i needed to tackle the well known recording levels problem. This one was easily fixed through changing the registry recording levels for these cards

Never had that problem - no need to fix.

periodical audio distortions when recording TV shows.

Never had that problem either.