Ive had this a week now, works well. But its getting to be "when it works" and its quite tiresome. Watching tv for an hour(QAM) football game. Screen goes black, it wont change channels its dead. It wont turn off, have to enter taskmanager to force it off. PMCloader.exe has encountered and error blah blah. Now it wont even start at all, but there is PMCLoader.exe running in taskmanager again. I shutdown PMCLoader manually. Try a restart again of the software and bam, nothing. Ahh yes but the process IS running......again with no function. You HAVE to HARD RESET everytime this happens to get any function back at of the software. What the heck? Why is this occuring? at all even it just stops working randomly for no apparent reason while sitting idle, it does not matter what you are doing, it eventually freezes up. Im sorry but the software is exceptionally buggy, and alot of times takes forever to respond to a function. And this is happening on a Q6600, 3.5gb ram, WinXP SP2(all patches) 8800GTS 512mb pc? Every other window that may be open or program responds fine, doesnt slowdown or lockup while the tv does. So this is all Pinnacle here...............so what now? Deal with it and swallow the money spent on buggy software? And yes im upset.

I am having the same problem,  The thing I am noticing is that I am on a FOX station and when it goes to local insertion is when the program freezes

can you try to delete all channels and see if TVC will startup?

tried deletion of channels. It will not start back up until a hard reset of PC is done. Once the PC is restarted, the first time you start the software it works just as you would expect. Until an inevitable freeze comes along(and it is completely random) and have to hard reset again. I did notice once that DVDCompressor.wnd (i think that is what it was called) was being waited on to shutdown before PC would reboot. Which to me is odd becuase I was never trying to record anything, so I dont know why that process would be running?

could you please have a look where this file is located (DVDcompress)?

whoops. I misquoted the file that was in error. I had hit reboot to reboot the machine and then got the window Windows is waiting for DVBDecompressorControl.dll to shutdown. I would swear it had a .wnd ending though but i guess im wrong as windows search finds no listing of that type of file. And i use QAM watching almost exclusively, so reverting me to an older software which did not support QAM would not be useful to me.

are you using the new Desktop Search tool? That might have not indexed the Windows folder so it won't find anything. If Windows is waiting for this file to shutdown it should be there.

just used right click on my computer and searched the hard drive. It came up with nothing, but the closest related named file was the DVBCompressor dll that is in the Pinnacle folders......twice I beleive. Not saying it is what caused the hang but it indeed gave that window of waiting to be shutdown before reboot could occur from when I had the situation stated above.

Wow, Nivo. It's as if you and I are the same person. I have experienced the exact same problems this week, save for the fact that I use version 4.7. It just freezes up out of nowhere, forcing me to "ctrl-alt-delete" just to exit the program. Then, thanks to "loader window" error messages, I have to reboot my computer if I want to re-start TVCenter Pro. Insane. Pinnacle never should have released such an expensive, bug-filled product. 

agree slats. This is CLEARLY a software issue. The card itself WHEN working works spectacualr, picture quality is outstanding on my 22" LCD. If they could overcome the bugs and get this code tightened up I'd recommend the product to anyone, but until that point I just cant do that. And I will sit here patiently and do anything I can to help them from my end.

Yes, the quality is great when it works, which is seldom. BTW, Pinnacle has helped me solve the "freezing" issue for the time being. Here is their advice:

Don't give up here. Try to uninstall/reinstall everything when it comes to your tv center pro. Use regdelete program to delete all the registry entry coming from your tv center pro.

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSite/us/Products/Consumer+Products/Home+Video/Studio+Family/Studio+Plus+11+Support/Download+Area/Tools/RegDelete+11.htm?mode=documents&Display=1

I still experience picture distortion (blurriness) and loss of signal issues, but it no longer freezes on me. Good luck.

Update: the old "freezing" problems have returned, despite Pinnacle's trouble-shooting and worthless reassurances. An entire weekend of football viewing has been RUINED thanks to their buggy, unworkable, unreliable, horseshit product. These people are thieves, pure and simple. They keep saying it's a computer or driver problem. Earth to Pinnacle: YOUR CRAPPY SOFTWARE is the problem. Can't wait to throw this in the garbage.

is this DVBCompressorControl.dll? Since only you both seem to have this issue, can you please give more info about your systems? Maybe you have something in common on/in your PC which could cause this.

When TV Pro freezes and I have to reboot, it says that  "DVBDecompressor.wnd" was not shut down properly. I then have to manually shut down this process. 

BTW, more than two people have had this "freezing/channels turn black" problem.

yep thats the same as i posted above. I listed specs in my first posting, the only thing i have to add that i didnt mention was my motherboard. MSI P7N Diamond is the brand, it has a nvidia 780i chipset. I would highly doubt that has anything to do with said problems. I still beleive this is clearly a software issue, namely the Pinnacle software. And it has nothing to do with recording either, as I dont use the card to record, so all settings are at default in that respect.

BTW, I finally managed to upgrade to v4.98 this weekend. When I start it up, it warns me that I can expect "picture dropouts"  because my computer is not "fast" enough. Um, I have Pentium 4 3.40GHz installed on my Dell. How much faster does it have to be for their crap product to work properly? It's never their fault, is it?

I guess, this warning was meant for HD channels, only. For SD your PC performance seems fine.

efaehndrich:

I guess, this warning was meant for HD channels, only. For SD your PC performance seems fine.

I shouldn't be getting that warning at all. My system is plenty fast enough.

well, do you actually have dropouts? As the warning said: you could expect them, but not necessarily.

efaehndrich:

well, do you actually have dropouts? As the warning said: you could expect them, but not necessarily.

 

Oh, we're way beyond mere picture dropouts. We're talking about total picture distortion and program crashing. Here's what I'm seeing on my end when I watch a program broadcast in HD:

http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=77099890sa8.jpg

please have a look at the CPU usage when watching HD, what does it say?

Also please let me know the signal quality and strength on these channels.

could we get back to the issue of why once the software dies, it will never ever load and function until a hard reboot is performed?

NIVO:

could we get back to the issue of why once the software dies, it will never ever load and function until a hard reboot is performed?

Go to Google and try to find a free trial version of Blaze HDTV 3.5. It worked perfectly for me with Pinnacle's tuner. No freezing or picture dropouts. If I can't get Pinnacle to work correctly within the next week or so, I'm going to upgrade to Blaze.

I'm haveing the same problem as you guys.  I have a PCTV HD pro stick.  From Nivo's screen shots it apears he has this problem on multiple channels (NBC and CBS) but it sounds like both slats7 and I only have this problem on FOX.  I've seen this problem so many times that I can explain to you very detail when it will happen.  Like I said it only happens for me on FOX when the local network splices in their "Coming up Tonight on fox news segment".  The picture cuts out right away or is scrabled like Nivo's screenshots but I can normally hear the "Coming up tonight on fox news" before the sound cuts and the program is completly dead.  I don't believe I've ever seen this happen durring any tv show but I think I've seen it on other comercials but it's almost garantead to happen during the news blurb.  I do know how to kill Pinnacle TVCenter without restarting the computer though.

When ever it crashes like this I click on the close box of the program (though i'm not too sure this is needed) then ctrl +alt+delete.  Kill PMCLoader.exe and VideoControl.exe, and then you can open Pinnacle TVCenter again.  I used to think DVBDecompressorControl.dll was part of the problem because of the same reason they said, but after this crash had happened to me about 50 times I learned by trial and error that only these two processes needed to be killed in order to restart Pinnacle TVCenter.

I believe this problem has to do with something FOX puts in their steam that the Pinnacle software just can't handle.  The FOX station that causes the problem for me is FOX 5 WTTG.  I don't see this problem as much when I watch football, I think because they aren't advertising the 10 o'clock news yet, but I see it atleast 2 or 3 times durring the Commercial breaks while watching House or Fringe.  I view this over a amplified antenna and my computer is a Inspiron 6400 with a Core Duo T2400 processor, ATI x1400 video card.  I've reinstalled Windows XP and the software many times since I've had this card over the last year so I am very confident that this is a problem between the pinnacle software and FOX 5.

  Is someone capable to give a fix to this issue? I have the same problem. Freezing. I have bought a 330e usb stick, i have instaled the ultimate version of tv center on a fresh and clean system. Same problem. Here is what i have discovered.

 First of all, i have this configuration: EP45 DS3 motherboard, E8400 processor, 4 Gb RAM, NVIDIA 6200 TC 256 Video card, Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 32 bit. With this configuration, my Tv Tuner freeze up like i said and must be restarted to work again. If i take out 2 Gb of RAM, Tv Center freezes up after a longer time.

 I have tried with an XP 32 bit, 4 Gb RAM - it works great, dispite it sees only 3 Gb of RAM. ( 32 bit systems issue)

 I have tried with an Vista 64 bit 4 Gb RAM - doesn't freeze, but the sound is absent (known 64 bit problem).

 Finaly, I used Vista 64 bit 4 Gb RAM with the Empia Generic driver and Chris tv. Works without freezing, i have sound , but i can't use the remote.

Can someone in this world explain this? I have paid for this product, for the software too, witch is marked "Windows Vista Suported", to conclude that is not, because this is clearly, OR i have bought Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit for my 4Gb RAM system to be full of errors.

Which is the correct answer?