SageTV `locking-out` live TV from time to time.

[Tarant]

Hi,

I`m running a dual tuner (1xPVR250 + 1xPVR USB2) SageTV setup and very pleased with the system overall.

Everything is running great apart from one problem that keeps cropping up from time to time. For no obvious reason, all of a sudden, Sage will no longer allow me to view live tv, either by selecting a current program from SageGuide or from the Live TV button on the main menu. When trying to do so, nothing happens and no errors pop up. Selecting and viewing anything pre-recorded works fine. When Sage is in this `broken` state, it will not record anything that is scheduled and my SageTV Clients cease to access any `live` stuff from my SageTV box also.

The only way to reset sage at this point is to ALT-F4 out, and restart.

This has been happening for a good few weeks now and is really starting to become a pain. I have tried just about every combination of pvr driver available, gfx drivers, codecs etc. I even tried reinstalling my Sage box totally from scratch (including Win XP and SageTV).

Prior to this latest lock-up today, my SageTV box had been up and running for just over 3 days (24hrs a day) with no problems at all.

Is there a tried and tested combination of drivers for the Hauppauge PVR250 + Hauppauge PVR USB2 cards that people have found to be the most stable?

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

PS. I would love to see the SageTV service (EPG) become available in the UK, XMLTV is ok but ........

[davey_fl]

I have the same problem. It was solid for three weeks and now I'm getting the exact same thing as you. the only way to solve it is to exit sagetv (not sleep) and restart it. I'm running a single PVR-250 tuner. It's very frustrating.

Davey

[davey_fl]

now I'm getting mad. It's doing it every hour, and it no longer is just an exit and restart. I've tried rebooting the machine and it still won't go into liveTV. Furthermore, when the recording of a show starts it jumps back to the guide and locks there. Sure I can go through all the menus but if I try to watch the show that is recording, meaning watch livetv, it won't do it. No errors, no anything. Can someone offer some suggestions????

thx

davey_fl

[robogeek]

Not sure if this is what you guys are experiencing, but (rarely) I get what seems like a Sage lockup but it's due to the fact that Sage likes to popup DirectX errors behind the main Sage window. Sage won't respond and appear to be locked up until you click the OK button on the error dialog. Next time you get a lockup, check your SageTV Server and Client for this type of error by pressing ALT-ESC or ALT-TAB to cycle through the open windows...if there is an error dialog hidden behind the Sage window, eventually you'll get it to popup over the Sage window.

[Tarant]

Yup, Ive just come back down to my machine after resetting it about 6 hours ago, and sure enough, its done it again. Another Sage exit + restart has corrected it for now.

There does seem to be a pattern forming, it seems that once it`s done it, it then just gets worse and carries on `locking-out` live tv on more regular occasions. This is what led me to a total re-install of everything from Windows XP Home SP1 to SageTV after the previous occasions.

robogeek, thanks for your reply. I can confirm, when this happens, there are no other error messages either from SageTV, DirectX or any other driver/app.

Regards.

[robogeek]

I know I've had this problem before, but I can't quite remember what caused it What settings are you using in the Video tab of the Detailed Setup in SageTV?

[Tarant]

robogeek,

My Detailed Setup/Video tab is set to:-

Rendering Filter - Default (VMR on XP)

Decoder - Sonic Cinemaster

DXVA - Default / Default

I have not touched the DScaler stuff at all, its all greyed out as is by default.

In the past, I have also tried the `InterVideo NonCSS decoder` and `NDVD decoder`, all with the same results.

Regards.

[gplasky]

Check your disk space too. I've seen it happen a couple of times on a previous machine that wasn't deleting properly. No errors. Just wouldn't go to live or select a program from guide.



Gerry

[Tarant]

Gerry,

Thanks for the info, I`ll give that a try. I have to admit my diskspace was very short around the time it happened last night. I`ve freed up lots of space now. I`ll have to wait and see if it makes a difference.

Regards.

[davey_fl]

My drive had 8GB left on it. I would think that was enough but who knows. I've freed up another 20gb so we'll see what happens. Hopefully that's what the problem was. robogeek I didn't have any Directx errors or popups behind sagetv but I appreciate the help. thanks for the feedback.

davey

[EJDeHaemer]

I was having the same problem with the Live TV locking up on both my main server and a client machine. It turned out to be a disk space issue.
I had one of my favorites set to keep all, manual delete and it filled up the entire disk space. Once I cleaned up some disk space and changed the favorite to automatic delete the problem went away.
I had ~50 episodes of 'Good Eats' on my hard drive.

davey_fl: Your drive might have 8GB but if you configured sage to leave 8GB free then sage would be out of space.

[WirelessDJ]

Hey that happened to me too! Could it be the Hauppauge winTV PVR USB 2?

[Tarant]

WirelessDJ,

Nope, cant see it being the USB2. davey_fl has/had the same problem and he`s running a single PVR-250.

After freeing up lots of space for Sage on my server, as suggested by Gerry, all has been ok with my set up (so far).

[WirelessDJ]

Good, I was beginning to think it was a Hauppauge USB thing.

Well I reloaded my system. then I installed the following...

FRESH win2k OS with all microsoft patches
Dell Inspiron laptop drivers
IoGear usb 2.0 cardbus driver
O2micro Dell patch (see below)
Hauppauge usb 2.0 drivers
Hauppauge IR remote
acrobat 5
Microsoft directX 9
sage tv demo
Java

so far, it seems to be working but I have to see at least a week's stability before I buy into it

Are there any other SageTV Dell laptop users!? I have interesting news for those using Cardbus

http://home.insightbb.com/~scottlandon/

This site is to help those like myself to resolve the problems with, in my particular case a Dell Notebook and USB 2.0 adapter. However, I am quickly finding out that the problem is not just limited to USB 2.0 PCMCIA adapters, but also to Firewire, SCSI and perhaps other adapters as well.

[davey_fl]

evening freeing up space it still locks one in a while. It's got an 60GB partition to use. very strange problem...

[Tarant]

Ack (, thats not good news. Although, fingers crossed, my system has been ok since ensuring there is always plenty of free space. Time will tell in the long run I guess.

Whats the error log situation with SageTV? Does it write out a log by default? Its something Ive been meaning to find out but never got round to it.

[LostInSpace]

I have the same problem. Each time I start sageTV, I have to delete the tuner and use the setup wizard again. I use a PVR-350... + WinXP Pro...
It's 1 min work but borring...
So may be it's not PVR-USB related...

Any idea?

Regards.
Ferdinand

[WirelessDJ]

had tons of trouble with xp and hauppauge PVR USB2. Even with the hauppauge software it would not work well. I went back to win2k and all is well