Frustration is taking over

[trevorst]

After trying SageTV out for a few days and liking it I bought it. For a week other than a few small fixable issues it ran great. Then about 4 days ago it started to have problems. In the morning when my wife went to watch the earl show she records through the night Sage would hang as soon as the video started playing. Shutting down Sage and restarting does not clear the problem, a full reboot is all that works. Then a couple of days ago after about 20 - 30 mins of watching I get a second or so of digital clitch and a volume decrease. The volume comes back up slowly as if you are turning a volume knob, takes about 3-4 seconds. The frequency of these clitches increases until I have to reboot to clear them. This happens on live and recorded programs. Recordings are fine when viewed through media player.

On top of that after loading the latest Beta to try and cure the problem I ended up with a corrupt Wiz file so my CPU was running at 100%. Deleted the wiz file (and lost my data) and this cured the 100% CPU issue but has not helped the Clitch problem and I doubt if it has cured the other problem.

Before you request it support, I can tell you there are no error files being created.

I have been trying to get a reliable working PVR for several years and really thought I'd found it, but alas after spending another $250 it looks like it may be another bust.

I could have bought several top of the line Replay TV units and a lifetime supscription to their service for less than this project has cost me.

Sorry for sounding frustrated, but I am.....

Setup
2.4 Ghx AMD Processor
Asus A7N8X MB
512 Meg Ram
Two 80Gig Maxtor Drives
ATI 8500 Radeon feeding HDTV through Component Adapter
PVR250 (Replaced a Creative)
Using the Intervideo non CSS Decoder, have used full Intervideo and Cyberlink.
Using Mpeg Audio Decoder.

[olyar15]

A couple of questions: what OS are you using, and are there any other background apps running?

[ku71]

Well, if frustration is taking over, cut your losses and get a replay TV.

A HTPC is an complex piece of software that relies on a number of components "under the hood" to work together well.
Since this is hard to troubleshoot, I would recommend doing a second install of the operating system on a different partition. Only install a minimal set of software and no betas. Restrict yourself to the hauppauge decoder and release driver.

If your current OS is windows 9x, upgrade to 2000 or XP.

[trevorst]

Olyar I am using WinXP on a clean load with only the DVD players loaded to get their codecs. I know it is hard to toubleshoot these issues, that is why I am so frustrated. I realy thought I had a wife friendly system going and she keeps hitting problems.

KU Please Get of your Hi Horse.... I am well aware of the complexities of an HTPC. What I stated was that this setup had been running fine until 4 days ago. I loaded the Beta to see if it would rectify the problem, it did not... Advice like yours I don't need.

[Mark Lamutt]

trevorst, what version of SageTV are you running? Take a look in your SageTV directory, and upload the sagetv_0.txt file when you have the video/audio glitch problem, and when you have the first problem that you described. That file is the main source of debugging information that Jeff has to decipher problems and get them fixed.

My questions for you:

What drivers for your PVR250 are you running? Are they the beta drivers from SHS' site (www.shspvr.com) or are they the release drivers from Hauppauge? If you are running the release drivers, go through the procedure that SHS lists on his site to replace them with the beta drivers. I'm running the beta drivers with my 350, and am having much better luck than I had with the release drivers.

Do you have the DXVA registry tweaks done for the Intervideo decoder? If not, do a search on here for them and apply them - they made my system run much more smoothly.

Are you running any other applications other than SageTV when the glitches occur?

[olyar15]

Yes, troubleshooting an HTPC can be very frustrating. I started on the road over a year ago and can't begin to count the times I was ready to throw in the towel. And to this day I am afraid to actually add up the total cost of all the hardware and software I've spent trying to create the "perfect" HTPC. But in the end it was worth it, so don't give up.

OK, enough of the pep talk. The problem you have may be due to a hardware, software, or driver fault. Or a combination, which would be the most difficult to diagnose.

First hardware. Looking at your specs, you seem to have quality components. How old is the computer? If it is brand new, you may have simply purchased a defective component. Even older components can fail, although this is less likely. I am assuming you are using high quality RAM, have a good power supply, that you are not overclocking, your temps are OK, and that you are not using nonstandard or rounded IDE cables. My concern is that the instability developed after what sounds like several days of use. To me this sounds like possible data corruption, either due to flaky RAM or data cables. (A HD problem would probably have manifested itself already.) If any of my assumptions are false, try changing them and see if it helps.

From what you describe, it sounds like the shows are recorded properly if you can play them back in Media Player OK. Probably means that the PVR card is working.

Second, software. That the problem started 4 days ago begs the obvious question: Did you install anything around that time frame? Otherwise, try re-installing SageTV and see if that helps. Otherwise, I can't really think of what other programs would interfere with SageTV. You may want to check the CPU utilization to see if there are any processes that are taking up a large percent of your CPU power. If you haven't done so, go through the various services and stop or disable the unnecessary ones. Sites such as Black Viper's are quite useful. One last thought, have you tried doing a virus check? Unlikely to be a virus, but you never know.

Finally, drivers: Make sure you have recent drivers for your motherboard, video card and sound card. WinXP is quite a solid OS, but make sure you have SP1 installed.

I know these are quite basic steps. But I find that sometimes it helps to double-check that nothing silly was missed. Also, it helps to get a good night's sleep before tackling the troubleshooting. Hope this helps. Good luck.

[trevorst]

Thanks Charles some good ideas to check through. I did use good name brand memory. Other than the XP services and needed remote services I don't have anything else running. I do intend to go though and disable services per Black vipers instructions. This is a brand new MB, CPU and memory all other components have been moved from previous machine.

I checked CPU usage when the clitches were at their worst last night it was around 30% which is normal for my system running only Sage. This morning the PC was running fine, Sage woke up and I was able to play the programs recorded through the night. After about an hour I noticed the interaction with the menus was slowing down. So I checked the CPU usage and it was 100% constant. Restarted Sage, still the same. Rebooted and restarted Sage and back to normal 30%... I will attach the sagetv_0.txt file later to day when I get a chance.
Thanks for you help guys.

[salsbst]

What version of Radeon drivers are you using? I had similar problems when using the drivers installed by default with WinXP for my old 7500. Upgrading to Catalyst 3.2 fixed this for me.

[pawn]

With all due respect to our hosts, I think we've seen enough people with the 100% CPU problem that it's almost certainly an issue with either SageTV, Hauppage's drivers or Hauppage's hardware.

Since I've never heard of this problem with WinTV2000, I'd lean towards it being a problem with SageTV.

I thought this problem was long gone after switching to the Intervideo filters (and Sage certainly ran for a long time without the problem), but it re-appeared the other day. Similar to the OP, only a reboot and reinstall of Sage cleared it up (even using my backup Wiz and Properties files was a no go).

[Mark Lamutt]

Please send the log files (SageTV_0.txt) up either on here or directly to Jeff when this happens. Gotta have the log files to fix the problem!

[Narflex]

Beta 1.4.5 fixes all 100% CPU bugs that I've gotten log files for (for single tuner systems).

There's still one more left to fix for multi-tuner systems, but this last one can be fixed by putting SageTV to sleep and then waking it up.

ANYONE that has 100% CPU problems with SageTV 1.4.5 or later please post/email your sagetv_0.txt log file.

[Narflex]

trevorst,

Have you tried using a dedicated partition for your video that's formatted with 64K blocks? I noticed you've got 2 80GB drives, how do you have them configured, you're not using mirroing or RAID are you?

[trevorst]

Both drives are formatted as NTFS drives. No special settings. 1 Drive has all but 12 gig alloted the other is 100%. Not sure what you mean by 64 Blocks, i thought that was a old dos issue.

[Narflex]

64K blocks are really important. You can do that by going into Computer Management->Disk Manager. Format the disk in there. This is a HUGE performance increase in terms of playback smoothness (it can be up to 16 times smoother from a disk access standpoint).

[trevorst]

Just had 100%CPU issue again with 1.4.5 here is the Sage -0 file

[ku71]

Narflex,

I think you are overestimating the effects of ntfs cluster size on mpeg playback.

NT's cache manager does a read-ahead of up to 192k. This is independent of the cluster size. See Inside the Cache Manager

Martin

[fidget]

ku71,

If your hard disk is fragmented, it will take quite a long time to read that 192KB. With 64K blocks, it will take 3*Seek_Time, probably no worse than 27 ms. With the default block size, you will get 384*Seek_Time or about 3456 ms. This is assuming a Seek_Time of 9 ms (the best I have seen for a reasonably priced HDD is about 8.5 ms).

- Jonathan

[ku71]

fidget, it does not work that way. first, the default cluster size is 4k. That makes 48 4k reads worst case. second, ntfs does not write 48 clusters to 48 different places on the disk. The 192 kb remain as contiguous as possible.

[fidget]

Originally posted by ku71
The 192 kb remain as contiguous as possible.

That's the problem (the "as possible" part). If the OS decides to allocate blocks in 4K chunks, that still means 48*9 ms (432 ms) to fill the 192k buffer. And, yes, the hard drive can be that fragmented, especially if you use the PC as a dedicated HTPC and don't regularly de-frag it. A/V data tends to do very bad things to a HDD. Fortunately, MPEG data is relatively low bandwidth (even at highest quality the HDD is mostly idle). The more tuner cards you have, the longer you run your computer unattended, and the more streams you watch will cause your fragmentation problems to be more and more noticeable.

Now, in the case of a new PC you shouldn't notice a difference. After a few months, you just might.

[ku71]

I don't believe you. Please demonstrate some evidence of an a/v file being stored on disk in runs of one cluster each (i.e. each sequential cluster in a nonsequential location on disk) on an ntfs partition