Consistent Stuttering every 10 seconds

[MattDell]

I'm not sure what to do... I at the end of my rope with this computer! I was running SageTV on my primary PC, but I decided that it would be more convenient for me to put together an HTPC with some spare parts I had lying around and watch TV on my real TV instead of on my computer monitor all the time.

SO.. SageTV worked flawlessly on my primary PC. However, my new computer has a terrible time with video playback. Everytime I want to watch video on it, the video will play for 10 seconds, pause for about two, then play for another 10 seconds and repeat the cycle. It's frustrating to say the least!

Here is the hardware:

• Motherboard: MSI K7T266 Pro 2
• PSU: CoolMax 400W Silent PSU
• CPU: AMD AthlonXP 1700+
• RAM: One Stick of Crucial 256MB PC2100 DDR
• Video Card: MSI GeForce 6200 128MB AGP
• Windows Hard Drive: 60GB IBM DeskStar 7200RPM
• SageTV Hard Drive: 250GB Western Digital 7200RPM (NTFS 64KB Block Size)
• TV Tuner: Hauppauge PVR-150

I've done the InterVideo registry hack, no changes.
I've tried putting more RAM in, no changes.
I've updated every driver, no changes
I've tried using the SageTV Decoder, InterVideo NonCSS Decoder, nVidia Pure Video Decoder... nothing changes!


Also, SageTV records fine. I can record from the HTPC and then play the videos on my primary PC, but playback of any video file on the HTPC results in stuttering.


So... any ideas, gents?

-Matt

[pjriley]

I am a Sage novice, so don't place too much confidence in my reply.

But, I had issue similar to yours after upgrading to Sage 4.0. The stuttering every 10 seconds was accompanied by substantial disk activity. This aggravated me for weeks. I even reformatted my drive and re-installed OS & Sage. The problem would not go away.
Then I added more RAM (moved from 512MB to 1GB). My stuttering problem disappeared completely! That was 4 months ago and the problem as never returned. In fact several other minor aggravations disappeared too.

[Opus4]

This probably isn't it either, but do you have something like Norton Antivirus running? If so, make sure it is set to exclude the the SageTV recording directories from its autoscanning.

- Andy

[MattDell]

No, I don't run antivirus software on this machine. Not yet, at least.

And I've put my roommate's 1GB stick in this computer, but that didn't help anything.


The strange thing is, the CPU usage hovers around 30%-40% while SageTV is running, but when the stuttering starts it drops down to 0%-5%. Memory usage always stays the same.

-Matt

[MattDell]

This is SO FREAKING FRUSTRATING!!




-Matt

[Narflex]

How's video playback in Windows Media Player?

[MattDell]

Originally Posted by Narflex

How's video playback in Windows Media Player?

Exactly the same. Stutters just like SageTV, no matter how large or small the video is.


-Matt

[mike1961]

Matt - copy the file to your local hard drive and try playing it in Media player and see if it still stutters. If it still stutters, then you know it's not a network problem. How about other mpg files (not from Sage) do they stutter too? If it is not a network problem, I would start to suspect a possible problem with the display adapter or drivers for it in which case the fix would be to first reinstall the drivers for the display card and then if that doesn't work consider replacing the graphics card.

Mike