Videos stall using USB2HDMI with Dell 9400 & Vista

[paulmarriott]

I’m experiencing persistent video/audio playback freeze-ups after installing a Startech USB2HDMI adapter, which incorporates the DisplayLink 165 chipset. The device hooks my HD TV HDMI1 input channel to my laptop via a USB 2.0 port.

Here’s my set-up:

PC: Dell Inspiron 9400/E1705 (born Apr ’07)
OS: Vista Home Premium SP2, 32-bit
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz
RAM: 4GB
GPU: Adapter: ATI Radeon Mobility x1400
Driver version: ATI 8.3600.0.0, released 14 Mar 2006
(displays managed by ATI Catalyst Control Centre 2.0)
Primary Display: 37” (1920 x 1080) Panasonic TX-L37E30B (via HDMI1)
Secondary Display: 17” (1440 x 900) WXGA laptop screen

Note: The ATI driver, whilst released a while ago, in March 2006, is the most up-to-date available; I’ve double-checked. The DisplayLink driver is the very latest (6.2 M2) release, of course.

The problem is that anywhere between, say, 5 seconds and 5 minutes of starting, video/audio playback stalls. The audio goes first, followed a few seconds later by the video. It happens on both laptop and TV screen alike... and even when there are no other apps running and maximum processing power is available to display rendering.

It happens across the board: online in IE9 and Firefox with YouTube and Vimeo Flash videos; offline in RealPlayer 15 with Flash and MP4 videos; and in Windows Media Player 11 with WMV videos. Even MP3 and WMA audios freeze.

If I close the app or webpage playing the video after a freeze-up and try again, there’s no sound right from the start; the video then freezes a few seconds later. Switching video size, particularly to full-screen, tends to initiate a stall.

Nothing the support guys at Startech advised me to do has fixed it. Neither did a reformat and clean Vista install I performed, just to make sure there was nothing amiss with my OS, which hadn’t been re-installed since I bought the laptop 5 years ago.

One thing they suggested I do, is install the USB2HDMI device on another PC... see if I get the same problem; I have an older, less powerful Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop running Windows XP.

I did this and experienced no similar playback freeze-ups... which suggests the device and driver are not at fault. Rather, there’s possibly some sort of incompatibility issue with my 9400 set-up. (It is running Vista’s ‘Aero’ mode, by the way, before anybody mentions it.)

I’ve attached Support Tool zips, below.

Appreciate your assistance.

[Wim]

Hi

Thanks for the detailed problem report. I don't think this is a hardware problem, but an interaction problem between the graphics or audio subsystem and the media player. Some further questions to narrow down the issue:

1. If you disable the USB2HDMI audio output, or select another audio output, does the problem still occur?
2. If you play the video on the ATI screen, but still send the audio to the DisplayLink graphics adapter, does the same problem occur.
3. When it freezes, can you drag other windows to the DisplayLink USB display eg is it just the media player that has frozen up or the whole DisplayLink screen?

If I was a betting man, I would expect an ATI graphics driver update would fix this. Your current graphics drivers are from Mar 2006, which is 10 months BEFORE Vista was released.. They are going to be buggy on Vista, and DisplayLink software is probably exposing some of these bugs.

Annoyingly, Dell don't distribute a later ATI driver and forbid ATI from independently distributing one. However there does seem to be one that someone has created to work around this:

http://zapek.com/?p=176

Hopefully updating to this driver version should help.

Wim

[paulmarriott]

Originally Posted by Wim

1. If you disable the USB2HDMI audio output, or select another audio output, does the problem still occur?

No, the videos play normally; I'm feeding audio output to my hi-fi system as a workround.

Originally Posted by Wim

2. If you play the video on the ATI screen, but still send the audio to the DisplayLink graphics adapter, does the same problem occur.

Yes; freeze-ups occur on both screens, alike.

Originally Posted by Wim

3. When it freezes, can you drag other windows to the DisplayLink USB display eg is it just the media player that has frozen up or the whole DisplayLink screen?

Just the media players freeze.

Originally Posted by Wim

If I was a betting man, I would expect an ATI graphics driver update would fix this. Your current graphics drivers are from Mar 2006, which is 10 months BEFORE Vista was released.. They are going to be buggy on Vista, and DisplayLink software is probably exposing some of these bugs.

Annoyingly, Dell don't distribute a later ATI driver and forbid ATI from independently distributing one. However there does seem to be one that someone has created to work around this:

http://zapek.com/?p=176

Hopefully updating to this driver version should help.

Wim

Thanks. However, when I attempted to install the ATI update, I got alerts saying the Detection Manager and Package Manager couldn't be initialized... and I had to quit the process.

Any suggestions?

[Wim]

OK - with your audio testing, it looks like its the audio that is causing the media player to lock up, not the graphics card or the graphics card driver. The DisplayLink graphics and rendering continues to work correctly.

The audio is external to the DisplayLink technology (I think it is provided by CMedia on this product), so I can't really help debug this.

One thing that it could be is if the device can't get enough power from the USB bus. The audio USB endpoint might not be stable, as it doesn't get enough power and drops out, confusing the player.

Is the adapter connected to an externally powered USB port, or connected directly to the PC? Its a long shot but worth checking.

Wim