Sage TV 6 MAJOR, MAJOR issues

[dale_ander]

FYI my old 2.8GhZ P4 HT system is running SageTV 6 now and so far so good. Note all I record is HD sources via my two Fusion cards. No SD. I'm using video and audio decoders that came with PowerDVD7 to make up for my currently underpowered CPU. FYI without the video decoder that sends some of the directx calls to my ATI 9600 video card the playback was jerky. This was not the case when all I recorded and played back was SD.

But there was also one other big thing that stopped the stuttering before I upgraded. Making sure the video recordings are saved to a drive designated as a primary, as opposed to a slave drive. That's if you're still using old IDE drives like me, as opposed to the SATA drives.

Like I said above, all I can say so far is so far so good. I ran SageTV 2.2 for a couple of years and my system worked flawlessly. It was rock solid and rarely required rebooting. I upgraded to SageTV 5, along with the tuner cards, video drivers, and more, a couple of months ago and my system has never been the same. It has been crashing frequently and I seem to miss getting things recorded for reasons unknown. I think a lot of that was caused by running Java 1.5, and then 1.6 (thinking that would help). Over the past weekend I reverted to Java 1.4.13 and installed SageTV 6. Once I noticed that the upgrade had changed my Overlay mode to VMR9 and I swapped it back I've been getting really good performance. We'll see how long it lasts.

I highly recommend you get some kind of back up system for your PC that lets you make images of your system drive. Norton Ghost or Drive Image or ?. I make images of my C drive to another drive before I make changes like this past weekends. At least I'm able to easily go back if things go really wrong.

[badllama77]

While I think there need to be some majore foreground changes in sage, I haven't had too much problem. I get some slow spots every now and then but that is due to my system needing more memory (I only have 512) and a kinda slow processor (XP 1800). I am running two pvr 150's with a nvidia 5200. The biggest problem I have had with sage is are recordings that seem to be incorrect (play too quickly or too slow relative to their time bars). The ease of setup is the only thing that has kept me with sage. I have looked at mediaportal but the setup is more involved and they are just getting to server level. It also has a very European focus which makes it less robust for those living in North America.

[blade]

Originally Posted by badllama77

I am running two pvr 150's with a nvidia 5200. The biggest problem I have had with sage is are recordings that seem to be incorrect (play too quickly or too slow relative to their time bars).

There are known issues with certain hauppauge drivers that cause the problems you're describing. There is a registry change that has fixed the problem for just about everyone that has tried it. Post #12 of this thread contains the needed changes. I haven't kept up with the problem so I can't say for certain if the registry changes are still needed with the newer drivers or not. Of course your problem could be something different, but it is a common problem and an easy fix to try.

[IncredibleHat]

I was going to make note on the "Full Screen Exclusive" Mode, but Stanger beat me to it. I find (even in V5) I am required to have FSE on to see un-jittery video playback in Sage.

Another option, since you may be willing to try various things, is to get the latest nVidia Forceware drivers for your 7600GT (which currently are 93.71... 93.81 are beta, and as with all betas have mixed reports).

Thirdy, someone mentioned the new Java. You may try upgrading your Java to ... whatever the new one is. I still run version 4 (j2re-1_4_2_12), because 5 was utter KEEEERAP in terms of stability and crashing (for me).

Personally, I think the WORST thing about SageTV, is that it is built with Java. Worst possible programming language in the history of man... well.. ok, DOS is the worst, but you get the jist. However, its an agruable issue as theoretically Sage isn't DOING much to warrent needing a fully optimized C style language like say, first person shooter games.

You may also want to get Driver Cleaner Pro, and do some cleanup of any driver packages for things you have uninstalled. Like, if you remove the Creative card, then driver clean out Creative drivers. Also, if you wish to jump around in nvidia driver versions, driver cleaner is a very useful tool for that (I've used it many MANY times over the recent shoody nvidia driver versions trying all sorts with mixed results).

My system is a MSI, and the board works great. Its AMD though, and I've heard that MSI for Pentium isn't as good... but thats hearsay. I only use the 6150 nvidia chip ONBOARD for my DVI output to 720p HDTV. Although I don't play and HD content, because I havn't yet seen the need (plus not all channels are HD yet, so I am waiting until ALL are HD, and its the ONLY thing you CAN get lol).

I am not sure Sage is the main problem for you. However, Sage isnt too tollerant on mixed up settings or conflicting hardware or bad drivers. Its downright UNfirendly about those things, and really never tells you. Instead it just goes belly up, or freaks out, or behaves quite irrationally. But what can you expect? There are so many factors and variables out there, the makers of Sage cant possibly cover every single one of them. It's not like this is for the Mac, where everything is simple to work with, and all hardware is known and in prestine condition.

You mention two days was wasted... two days?? Thats it?? I've been messing with my HTPC since May 2006 refining, altering, updating, tweaking... I could claim all those days were wasted, however I am so now addicted to my HTPC, that I am now stepping up and into the evil and dangerous realm of setting up STBs from a satellite provider! AGH!!! Talk about nightmare

Stick in there... you will get it. Its just bound to be one teeny little thing thats making everything crash to a hault.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by robinemig

SageTv continues to have stability issues. Sage 6 is no better! I tolerated it until now, where everytime sage 6 quits, crashes, causes 100% cpu utilization I restart and get that message saying that I have a pre v5 key and need to by a $40 upgrade.
Instead of making their product work, they implement Google Video support. WTF? In fact some of the best, actually usable functionality, addons don't even come from Sage.
I continue to hope Sage becomes a great product, but if I have to pay to get them to actually fix the product I'm out for good.
1) Fix the DVD player, aspect ratio, etc
2) Add commercial detection that works, no third party add on
3) what's the deal with the transcoder.exe popping in and out ALL the time
4) make it rock solid, build in a reporting of crashing feature or whatever, just make it more stable, do more testing
5) Have version upgrades actually be worth a version upgrade, ie instead v1->v1 v2->1.5 v3->1.6 v4->1.7 v5->1.8 v6->1.9 v7 (where they fix all the problems) -> v2 (a version I would pay for)

It has stability problems for YOU. I've been using the thing for about 3 years. It runs pretty much 24/7 with very minor problems especially considering how little housekeeping I do on the box. I have a server, a client, and a floating placeshifter and all work.

Sounds like your setup.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by pgman

Well, here is the deal. I have thought about this WAY too long at this point. I believe I MUST have a hardware issue and so now I am open to any suggestions as to what may cause something like this to happen. Having said this, it might make sense to move this to the hardware forums. The one variable I can think of is the playback device. Specifically, TheaterTek works great, but Sage is choppy. One of the most significant differences between the two is that TT plays back from my Sony optical drive - not the DVR HDD. I am going to record the next football game that is available in HD and then try to play it back with TheaterTek. THAT may shed some light on this. If it is not the HDD, then my next thought is system RAM. When I built this system, I seem to recall I had to use mis-matched memory sticks (I was on a budget and didn't have any choice). Assuming the data passes across the buss (it may not) in such a way as to be affected (if not actually buffered) by system RAM, does any one here know if a memory timing hiccup (with the Intel 945P chipset) might cause the PCIe buss to jitter excessively? I am sorry, I just know enough about this stuff to be very dangerous. If all you experts find this tiresome and irritating that an amatuer is asking stupid questions, it is okay - you do not have to respond. Eventually, I will figure this out.

By the way, someone commented that MSI motherboards are not that great. I am not going to argue opinions - you may not like MSI or Intel or DFI, Biostar, ASUS, etc., etc., but I have used them all. I can't tell you that I've ever found that much difference between the brands - ONLY the chipset (personally, I prefer to stick with the Intel chipsets, but I have had acceptable results with VIA and SiS as well). On the other hand, I would like to try an AMD system sometime...

Well, there are differences. I have a motherboard with a PCIe board that only works with ONE card. All the others I've tried fail to work. The one machine I didn't put together and this is my reward. The place that it together couldn't get different PCIe cards to work.

I used to go AMD, but grew weary of 4n1 driver problems.

Heck, it could be a heat problem. I've got a friend with DTV and Sage that had constant problems until he replaced his fans.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by jominor

I used to go AMD, but grew weary of 4n1 driver problems.

That's a VIA problem not an AMD one (and why many of us say avoid VIA boards).

Fortunately nVidia makes chipsets.

[dale_ander]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

Personally, I think the WORST thing about SageTV, is that it is built with Java. Worst possible programming language in the history of man... well.. ok, DOS is the worst, but you get the jist. However, its an agruable issue as theoretically Sage isn't DOING much to warrent needing a fully optimized C style language like say, first person shooter games.

I actually like Java and it seems to work well for SageTV in my opinion. FYI I currently work on an Enterprise quality, server type, application completely written in Java, which my company sells for many $s. It also runs with the 1.5 JRE and is ROCK SOLID. The application runs 24x7 and many Fortune 500 corporations currently depend on it.

It's too bad you can use the 1.5 JRE with SageTV 5 and up (I had no problems with it and SageTV 2.2) as the performance gains we saw at work on our application were tremendous. The same computer running our software could process twice as many events per second with 1.5.06 as it could with 1.4.11. I am relatively certain the memory leak, or whatever, issue lies in SageTV and not in Java.

[gplasky]

You can actually load Java 6 with the current version of Sage TV 6 and enjoy better performance.

Gerry

[IncredibleHat]

Its not so much the better performance... its that I had to exit and relaunch Sagetv about once a week or it came to a grinding hault and failed to work otherwise

I've only been with Sage 6 for two days now, so I cannot comment on how well it works with java 4 or 5 or 6. The above comment was for Sage 5 and java 5.

[pgman]

Thank you all for all the suggestions. About the stuttering video - it only seems to happen on HD content, with the stuff I know is 1080 being the worst (720 is almost perfect). I am using VMR9 (because, in my setup, Overlay is noticeably inferior) and FSE. Again, this is with the latest release of Sage and all the current system device drivers.

I am certainly willing to believe the Creative Audigy2 could be part of my problem. If I choose the "Direct Sound" option (in Sage Setup) for the Audgy, the playback won't even run more than a second or so before the whole thing chokes and sputters all over the place. The plain old "Audigy" option is much better (and what I am currently using). Unfortunately, the on-board audio (Realtek) sounds pretty bad. Heck, the Audigy was not my choice - I just had it laying around and needed to save some money on this build. If I knew of a truly high-fidelity HTPC audio board, I would probably get one immediately to replace the Audigy. I wonder if M-Audio still makes one for 7.1 setups?

Also, SageTV plays DVDs flawlessly (using the same settings - VMR9 and the NVIDIA decoder) and TheaterTek plays recorded HD content perfectly - also using VMR9 and NVIDIA. I have not yet been able to record a sports event (which seem to be the acid test) to then playback in TheaterTek, but that is on my list.

Another issue I have noticed - FSE seems to be siezing my video hardware and NOT releasing it when I minimize or close Sage (I am using Sage in Service mode). I remember someone here saying that FSE is not working right in V6, but I thought there was a registry fix or some other syntax that could be changed in one of the system files to fix this. Can anyone point me in the direction of this? I have to completely stop SageTV (service and everything) in order to use Theater Tek or to view anything in Windows Media Player. That, of course, is completely unacceptable.

I know that there are a lot of people using this software with no trouble. I used it myself for almost a year with no difficulty, but that was with SD. My troubles began when I switched to HD. I still believe it would be a lot easier for everyone if Sage would list a specific hardware / driver list (or combinations of hardwareand drivers) that they KNOW work perfectly. Though I initially built this box to test the concept in my own living room, I am so sold on the concept now that I would gladly re-build the whole thing now if I knew EXACTLY what to put in it. I may just start reading profiles here and see who is having success - maybe I will copy one of your setups.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by pgman

Thank you all for all the suggestions. About the stuttering video - it only seems to happen on HD content, with the stuff I know is 1080 being the worst (720 is almost perfect). I am using VMR9 (because, in my setup, Overlay is noticeably inferior) and FSE. Again, this is with the latest release of Sage and all the current system device drivers.

Sounds kind of like a horsepower issue.

I am certainly willing to believe the Creative Audigy2 could be part of my problem. If I choose the "Direct Sound" option (in Sage Setup) for the Audgy, the playback won't even run more than a second or so before the whole thing chokes and sputters all over the place. The plain old "Audigy" option is much better (and what I am currently using). Unfortunately, the on-board audio (Realtek) sounds pretty bad. Heck, the Audigy was not my choice - I just had it laying around and needed to save some money on this build. If I knew of a truly high-fidelity HTPC audio board, I would probably get one immediately to replace the Audigy. I wonder if M-Audio still makes one for 7.1 setups?

What are you feeding? An amp/powered speakers, or a Reciever/processor?

Also, SageTV plays DVDs flawlessly (using the same settings - VMR9 and the NVIDIA decoder) and TheaterTek plays recorded HD content perfectly - also using VMR9 and NVIDIA. I have not yet been able to record a sports event (which seem to be the acid test) to then playback in TheaterTek, but that is on my list.

Another issue I have noticed - FSE seems to be siezing my video hardware and NOT releasing it when I minimize or close Sage (I am using Sage in Service mode). I remember someone here saying that FSE is not working right in V6, but I thought there was a registry fix or some other syntax that could be changed in one of the system files to fix this. Can anyone point me in the direction of this? I have to completely stop SageTV (service and everything) in order to use Theater Tek or to view anything in Windows Media Player. That, of course, is completely unacceptable.

I think its a know (to the forum at least, might be worth making an official bug report) that Sage doesn't completely release the hardware when in sleep mode.

It should when you exit it. I believe it does for me, though I'm running client on that PC.

[PGPfan]

Originally Posted by pgman

..... If I knew of a truly high-fidelity HTPC audio board, I would probably get one immediately to replace the Audigy. I wonder if M-Audio still makes one for 7.1 setups? ......

Are you wanting to use analog or digital out for the soundcard? If analog (the only way you are really taxing the capability of soundcard hardware) then the best currently available is the Auzentech X-Meridian. There are many people over at the AVS forum that are using it to replace high-end recievers and seperates. Sadly, ever since the M-Audio "Revo" was released, they have pretty much abandoned the HTPC market.

If you are using digital out, you won't be taxing the sound hardware at all, and therefore you should just find something cheap that can do 'bit-perfect' output to an external decoder.

-PGPfan

[davephan]

[QUOTE=I highly recommend you get some kind of back up system for your PC that lets you make images of your system drive. Norton Ghost or Drive Image or ?. I make images of my C drive to another drive before I make changes like this past weekends. At least I'm able to easily go back if things go really wrong.[/QUOTE]

I also think that disk imaging must be a part of the recovery process. I periodically take images, and especially before version changes. I use my SageTV computer system too much to waste time recoverying it by manually rebuilding everything. I had trouble a couple of times with the SageTV system, and could easily recover using images. I use Ghost 9.0, but there are many drive imaging programs. The price of the imaging software is cheap compared to the aggrivation and hassle of manually rebuilding systems!

Dave

[stevech]

Originally Posted by IncredibleHat

Personally, I think the WORST thing about SageTV, is that it is built with Java. Worst possible programming language in the history of man... well.. ok,

Have you ever seen/used the APL language? <grin>

(I do agree though, Java and the JVM together fall way far short of the original ideals. Too bad. Esp. with Sun Micro. so fragile.)

[pgman]

Currently, I am using a five-channel amplifier, and so I need to do the audio decoding in the CPU. I specifically set it up this way because I wanted to keep things VERY simple. I like this arrangement because the operator (oftentimes my wife) can grab the volume control in Windows / Sage, etc., and it does what it should. It also allows me to take advantage of the speaker calibration features, which do seem to work.

As far as the "horsepower issue" goes - I don't understand that. My system is far above the minimum requirements listed at Sage and it responds VERY quickly to commands and program launches, for example. Of course, HDTV playback is probably the high-water mark in terms of system requirement, but my CPU useage is generally below 40% when I am playing HD. I don't know how to tell if the PCI buss is saturated, but I would imagine there is a lot amount of data traffic on it when I am watching HD. Also, the video stutter seems to be rhythmic - not random. The video plays smoothly, but at regular intervals, it jumps. It is almost as if one device is running at a slightly different frame rate than another. I am using the HD15 connection from my 7600GT to my HDTV, and I have the system set for 1280 X 768 @ 75Hz. I don't know if there are "correct" settings for this, but these seem to work fine.

I must say that I was not terribly impressed with ATI's drivers, but I think the nVidia ones are worse. I have tried many of them, and some are completeley un-usuable. The one I have now is the current one, but I wonder if it is contributing to my FSE issue (hardware not being released unless I completely shut down Sage). I don't recall having this problem with an older driver. This is frustrating - even if it was free.