BeyondTV in HTPC

So I finally go a working PC in our bedroom. After struggling with MythTV installs, I finally gave up and ran XP with Beyond TV. This installed easily and works nicely. The interface is snappy. The interface is intuitive, like a Tivo, but generally more options. Using a WinTV 500 card, I can record two streams at once. It seems to work well with finding shows and dealing with conflicts and priority issues.

I also got Beyond Media, so I can watch DVDs, home video, pictures, and MP3s as well. They have a plugin to stream XM radio too. This is slick overall, but it is not integrated with Beyond TV, they are two separate applications. No big deal, I mostly use the TV application. It would be nice to have the skins be similar though...

We have had problems that are still not sorted out. I got a dud Win TV card that has a terrible signal. They switched up production about a year ago and I got one of the first new cards that did not have working drivers, and still after using the drivers it is still not great. I have an RMA to send it back.

The overall system is nice but loud. I should get a new Mobo with a quiet fan, but that is a job for another day.

The biggest issue is that Beyond TV dies on me. We leave live TV on overnight and the system generally hangs by morning. I sent the following the them, but after two days I have heard nothing:

While running BTV and BMedia, the system is never stable more than 24 hours.  We start live TV at night when we go to sleep, by morning the system is hung.

Menu bars, window frames are black, the little images in the tray are black.  The warning says no D3D device available.

Sometimes it loses the Hauppage Wintv 500 location and claims no devices are present.

Sometimes it loses the TV recording directory, so it can't record.

Sometimes it locks the machine so hard you have to unplug it (not just hold power).  Usually, the OS is still running but killing all the BTV processes does not seem to fix the issue or allow you to restart without a reboot.

Sometimes it loses all the setup information, so you have to enter your shows to record again from scratch and put in your configuration.

I have turned off XP system screen savers and the BTV screen savers.

I turned off auto updates, thinking that was causing trouble.

I turned off ShowSqueeze which was scheduled after midnight (seems to happen mostly at night).

The system is still not stable for long periods of time.

Noting interesting shows in the logs.