Client - Brief Pause Sometimes

[sshapiro63]

Hey Folks,

I am running Sage 2.2 as a service on my SageTV server (Intel 2.66Ghz CPU). I use the Sage Client application on a couple of pc's for viewing SageTV over a 100Mb ethernet LAN.

Overall, SageTV works very well; however, I do get brief pauses when viewing tv with the client application. It happens for about 1 second, then the playback is fine again. If I rewind and play the section again there is no pause/stutter. The problem is intertmittent and might occur once or twice in an hour of viewing.

The 2 client pc's are: 1.4Ghz Centrino laptop running WinDVD 6 (Intel Integrated Video) and an AMD Athlon XP 2000+ desktop running PowerDVD 4 XP (ATI Radeon 8500 AGP). Both are on XP Pro, with current patches/service packs/video drivers.

I don't watch SageTV directly on the server, only via the clients. The server runs 5 PVR250's and uses a couple of WD 250GB drives configured as a single spanned dynamic disk of 500GB (using WinXP Pro Disk Management).

I don't think the server is the problem since rewinding/replaying does not produce any pause. The network is lightly loaded; just the 3 systems running.

Can anybody give me advice on what might fix this problem. It's not a terrible problem, but I would like to fix it.

Thanks,

Steve

[silkshadow]

Yeah, I think I know what that problem is. Its the CPU usage on your Sage Server. Try a little experiment. Bump up the process priority of Sagetv.exe to 'realtime' and see if you get the slight pause on your clients anymore. Now warning, bumping up the Sage priority will create instability but just give it a try for experiment's sake. If the slight pause goes away then you know thats the culprit. AFAIK you can safely keep Sage at the 'above normal' process priority however this may not be enough so try high then and see if you're stable.

[sshapiro63]

Okay, I will try making the change. Thanks for the advice. I will let you know what happens.

Steve

[Mike Young]

If that turns out to not be the problem....
I assume that you have everything turned off on the client PC's, for example windows updates virus, firewall (zone alarm is notorious for causing what you describe)
every time I have encountered that issue, I traced it back to some background process initializing on the client - especially if it is not there on the recording when you rewind and replay.
I have had cpu use on the server at 100% while doing encoding and not seen any problems on the client...a testament to how little cpu actually needs to be available on the server.

mike/

[sshapiro63]

How do I chance the priority of the SageTVService.exe? When I attempt to change it with task manager I get an Access Denied message.

[silkshadow]

Humm, the access denied error would only come if you're not logged in as administrator or the account you're logging in as does not have administrative privilidges (this is for XP, NT amd 2003). Try loggin into the 'administrator' account and try again.