How stable is your system?

[wr202]

I've been using SageTV for a few weeks, but I still haven't gotten it to be very stable. The longest I've had it running is a little less that 24 hours. I've tried numerous setups with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Although I have two PVR-250's, I still haven't installed them them because I've been trying to just get a single tuner PVR-350 system stable. I've been using it pretty heavily. I'm constantly playing/rewind/fastforwarding. I'm doing lots of recording. I'm trying to give it a work out. My longest run-time - 24 hours - occurred when I had the PVR-350 output disabled. When I have had the PVR-350 output enabled, the system will usually go down a little faster but I've had it up with PVR-350 output enabled for about 18 hours. The system never crashes when it's not getting user input. It seems to only crash when playing/rewinding/fast forwarding. I've tried numerous codecs, and some lock up more often than others. I've had fan different arrangements of fans cooling the system so overheating isn't the problem

I understand that the problem could just be the chipset on my motherboard. Some chipsets or motherboards may just not be very good for this type of thing. I've really only used just the one motherboard so far although I have another newer one that I'm planning to eventually test out soon. Or the problem could just be something else particular about my system.

What I would like to know from people is how stable your systems are. Should I just expect lockups every day or every other day? Does everyone think that's okay? Do you mind the lockups? Does anyone consider a system with lockups every day or every other day a successful system? Or does your system not have lockups? Is your system just as stable as a vcr? I never get lockups with a vcr. I suppose once in awhile I've had a tape or two eject while playing when it hit a bad spot or something, but that's very rare. Do you view using a computer for TV as kind of experimental, and therefore don't really mind the lockups? Do you feel like your system is really a practical device as a replacement for TIVO?

I would like to know how your system works day to day. Does it generally just work fine and you almost forget you're using a computer? How often do you reboot? Are you constantly having lockup problems with fast forwarding/rewinding or anything else? Do other people besides you use it regularly? I would think that most people who aren't actually involved in the setup, and just want to use it, would quickly tire of using it if there were frequent lockups.

How long did it take you to get it to be stable? Did you have to go through lots of motherboards before you found just the right one? Do you have to be careful with your system? For example, do you have to be careful not to push the fast forward button too many times in rapid succession to prevent lockups or anything like that? Are there lots of warnings you have to give to anyone who wants to use it so that they won't accidentally lock it up?

Looking through past threads in the forums, it's really hard to get the information I'm asking about here. It's hard to tell whether people really have stable working systems, or whether they're always just tweaking in the hopes that one day they finally get a stable system. That might be because, generally, people are mostly posting when they have problems. Right now, I'm trying to decide whether I should keep pursuing this, or if I should just quit for now and stop spending money if I'm expecting this to be as stable as a vcr. I would really like to hear the experiences of people who have been using this longterm.

[nielm]

(System : EPIA M10000, Windows 2000, 1xHauppage PVR-250)

My system is rock-solid! Since installing Sage about 4 months ago, I have never had an OS crash (touch wood)...

Sage was running for 2 weeks non-stop over the Christmas holidays recording things...

Sage has quit unexpectedly maybe once or twice... but so rarely that I cannot even remember why... I never have problems with FF/REW (I can hold down the button to FF though an entire program if I want)

I easily consider this a VCR replacement (better than a VCR -- no more tapes, and easy programming) but wuth a few exceptions:
* the Sage UI is not the friendliest, but that should be fixed in V2
* I cannot give videotapes of recorded programs to people
* I am not 100% happy with the picture quality: the PVR-250 drivers auto-adjust the contrast+saturation to a level that is too high for my taste, but it is still better than VHS!

The only other down-sides for me is that there is no decent listings information for Belgium, and the channels never stick to their schedules, but that is not a Sage problem!

My normal use is Sage for recording/playback maybe 3 hours per day on average... plus a very little bit of web browsing (-- maybe 1/2 hour per day).. plus a bit of WinAmp (maybe 2 hours per day), plus the occaisional slide show of digital photos. The system also acts as a fileserver and mailserver for my home network...

The only issues I have had with Sage was when I tried doing something different: a different video resolution caused the overlay to fail; a different MPEG2 decoder used too much CPU; installing UltraVNC's video hook broke the overlay (see the UltraVNC thread) but these were all resolveable...

Sorry, but I cannot explain your problems, maybe motherboard, maybe the PVR-350, maybe something really obscure like the CPU overheating (but you have tried that) or your power supply is insufficient?

What does take time is setting up the whole PC to make it wife-friendly... it is still too easy to do something odd and appear that things have been messed up (like pressing 'Sleep', and suddenly seeing the Windows' desktop!)

I do view using a computer for TV as kind of experimental -- computers are simply not designed to be TV set-top-boxes, the TV-Out is not good enough quality -- but they are still the only PVR solution available to me (no TIVO's in belgium), and the only one that can also be a fileserver/mailserver/MP3 player/web browser/digital photo viewer!

[turak]

SageTV is very stable on my box. I've been using it for months and the program has only crashed once. My computer does sometimes bluescreen and reboot (maybe once a month), but it did that before sagetv. Thats due to overclocking my FSB to 200mhz instead of running at 166mhz.

Relavent hardware:
AMD 2700+ @ 12x200 (water cooled)
Abit NF7-S mobo
2x512mb Corsair XMS 3200
Gainward GF4 Ti4600
60gb Segate Baracuda (System)
120gb Seagate Baracuda SATA (SageTV)
Hauppage PVR-250
Creative DVCR

-Scott

[WirelessDJ]

I am testing it now for the trial period to determine this same thing.

[Mike Young]

I think SageTV CAN be very stable if configured correctly. I routinely have server and or client running for 2 weeks or more with no problems, the only reason its not longer is I usually cant resist temptation to mess with it.
Due to my schedule, I often wont even check it for 5 or 6 days at a time.
I will say that my Celeron server system has been less stable than the Athlon client, but now that I have the motherboard settings correct, it has stabilized as well.
If you are having daily lockups it is surely a configuration issue, XP can be rock solid especially when running a single, dedicated app like Sage.
Its very important though, that you have no more services running than is nessessary. I wish there were a guide to creating a "streamlined" XP,
Im working on that right now, removing absolutley everything not needed to run a HTPC.
You are absolutely correct that chipset can have alot to do with it, i feel that the Nforce chipset on my Athlon system is superior to the SIS an VIA on my others.
and it seems to boot quicker.

I played with my system for well over a month to get it just right and I belive it is NEARLY as stable as my old ReplayTV, the quality is now even better than REPLAY, despite not having a hardware mpeg decoder like Replay and other set-top boxes. I say nearly as stable because of the architecture and nature of the windows operating system (its not proprietary to sage like replay or tivos is )
makes it such that SageTV will Never be as stable as a set-top box.
That said, I stand by my assertion that Sage CAN be very stable when setup correctly, It took me about 2 months and multiple installs to develop a kind of 'formula' that works for me.

[IKK]

To stream line your XP system you should visit Black Viper.

http://www.blackviper.com/

[JasonJoel]

I haven't rebooted (or touched in any way actually) my sage tv server in about a month and a half.

But, all the machine does is Sage, MediaMVP server, and network file server... so isn't very 'polluted'

Jason

[carlgar]

Originally posted by wr202
I've been using SageTV for a few weeks, but I still haven't gotten it to be very stable. The longest I've had it running is a little less that 24 hours. I've tried numerous setups with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Although I have two PVR-250's, I still haven't installed them them because I've been trying to just get a single tuner PVR-350 system stable. I've been using it pretty heavily. I'm constantly playing/rewind/fastforwarding. I'm doing lots of recording. I'm trying to give it a work out. My longest run-time - 24 hours - occurred when I had the PVR-350 output disabled. When I have had the PVR-350 output enabled, the system will usually go down a little faster but I've had it up with PVR-350 output enabled for about 18 hours. The system never crashes when it's not getting user input. It seems to only crash when playing/rewinding/fast forwarding. I've tried numerous codecs, and some lock up more often than others. I've had fan different arrangements of fans cooling the system so overheating isn't the problem

The above sounds a lot like what I saw when I first started using SageTV. My very first post Problem with SageTV it appears to hang was concerning the hangs. I was sure this was not the normal condition because of all the positive comments I was reading. I am still not sure of the cause but they seemed to go away after I reformatted my disk with 64K blocks instead of the default 4k. However, I later found out that my disk controller drivers were not up to date which may have added to this problem. The out of date driver problem was only found when I lost a disk after adding multiple tuners and driving the disk hard. I had been using the disk with a single tuner for months with WinTV with no sign of problems.
I cringe every time I read this "Rock-Solid" comment, I would say it is stable but I believe still has problems. While it is possible that it is a hardware related issue I think that is a much overused excuse here to explain what may turn out to be software related problems. SageTV is in a very awkward position of being dependent on hardware and drivers in almost every direction you turn. It is also close to impossible to test all of the combinations. Overall, I was say the SageTV is about 95% stable, I still see random events which I cannot explain why they occur. I define reliablity as the absence of random events.

[mlbdude]

With the system setup using similar tuner cards (two 250's with 15 chipset) the system ran for a couple months before I rebooted for a new driver. Now drivers come out too much so I end up rebooting every few weeks it seems.

With different type encoder cards I don't seem to get a very stable system at all so I gave up on that and run the 350 in another computer. In that other computer I run SnapStream and with a 15 and 16 card in that system even that PVR app runs unstable - even though it can only access one of the cards. Perusal of the SS forums shows the few other users that also have mixed version dual tuners also have similar issues.

Hopefully with 2.0 Frey will have a little more pull with Hauppauge to get them to address this - one way or the other. I would not even mind them telling us that we can't mix encoder chips just some kind of answer would be good. SnapStream will be adding dual tuners in the next several months so maybe between the two companies something can be done.

[JasonJoel]

Well, I am one of the weird ones that uses mixed version tuners in the same machine with absolutely no problem whatsoever.

In fact, that is the machine I haven't rebooted in a month and a half or so. Of course I haven't ever bothered upgrading drivers on my PVR250's either - I'm still using a fairly old version... If it ain't broke, don't fix it I say.

I realize that my experience is not the case for everyone. I just like to point out that SOME people can run with mixed rev 15/16 PVR250 cards just fine. No issues at all.

So it isn't a complete lost cause...

Jason

Originally posted by mlbdude
With the system setup using similar tuner cards (two 250's with 15 chipset) the system ran for a couple months before I rebooted for a new driver. Now drivers come out too much so I end up rebooting every few weeks it seems.

With different type encoder cards I don't seem to get a very stable system at all so I gave up on that and run the 350 in another computer. In that other computer I run SnapStream and with a 15 and 16 card in that system even that PVR app runs unstable - even though it can only access one of the cards. Perusal of the SS forums shows the few other users that also have mixed version dual tuners also have similar issues.

Hopefully with 2.0 Frey will have a little more pull with Hauppauge to get them to address this - one way or the other. I would not even mind them telling us that we can't mix encoder chips just some kind of answer would be good. SnapStream will be adding dual tuners in the next several months so maybe between the two companies something can be done.

[stanger89]

wr202,

To answer your question I'd call my Sage system stable. It just works.

About your problem, you mentioned it might be because of your chipset, what chipset is it?

[danward79]

My record for sage is about 14days, and 21 without rebooting.

the only reason, they were not long is because i played with something that needed rebooting...

My system is a P4 1Gb ram, 2.4 Ghz Processor Gigabyte motherboard, 5200 fx 256mb ram graphics card, 2 tuners a 250 and a 350 sound blaster audigy 2 sound card

The only ongoing issue is the problem with quality with the picture from the 250.

I use the misses as a gauge for usability, she uses it all the time, I had to make the remote control work properly thou.

Setup wise, i stripped out windows with xplite, the got rid of the recycle bin, did a few system tweaks, got rid of explorer as my shell and changed it to myhtpc as shell

Thats it

Dan

[carlgar]

JasonJoel, you are only the second member that I have seen post that they have no problems. The previous one did encounter the problems after a recent reboot. Can you please provide version of SageTV you are using. I would think that it is the most recent, but "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Thank You

[JasonJoel]

Sage TV 1.4.10 of course.

Now the part I DIDN'T mention... I had to try two different motherboards to get to the super stable system I have today. When I tried using the same two mixed version cards in my VIA KT333 based motherboard, I got nothing but issues and initialization problems. Although I can't remember which Hauppage driver version I was trying on (went through a bunch of them).

Then I swapped motherboards to an old SIS 735 based board I had laying around, and it worked perfectly. And has for over 6 months. Through many reboots, and a couple of versions of Sage TV.

My hunch is that if I updated my Hauppauge drivers at this point, the whole thing would cease to work properly. But I won't try to find out.

Jason

Originally posted by carlgar
JasonJoel, you are only the second member that I have seen post that they have no problems. The previous one did encounter the problems after a recent reboot. Can you please provide version of SageTV you are using. I would think that it is the most recent, but "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Thank You

[bigjohn]

My system has been very stable after the correct setup was found.
AMD 1900
nforce 2
PVR-250
XP-PRO - standard install
blocks on D drive set to 64
Video set for 3 gig per hour - looks good but not as good as my Sat. PVR was.

[mlbdude]

I should mention that I helped a friend setup a Sage system with mixed cards some time ago. He used the drivers that came with the 16 card (I think a version of 1.6). All worked great after a touchy installation (had to physically install one card at a time and load drivers then the next).

Then drivers 1.7x came out and I convinced him to go to those since they worked on mine and looked better. He could never get it working again . I blame me .

He ended up setting the second card up as a network tuner elsewhere.

[JasonJoel]

For the record, I'm using 1.6.21062 on my mixed 15/16 setup.

Those were the first ones that actually WORKED on my mixed card setuip - and I've never seen any reason to ever change them.

Jason

Originally posted by mlbdude
I should mention that I helped a friend setup a Sage system with mixed cards some time ago. He used the drivers that came with the 16 card (I think a version of 1.6). All worked great after a touchy installation (had to physically install one card at a time and load drivers then the next).

Then drivers 1.7x came out and I convinced him to go to those since they worked on mine and looked better. He could never get it working again . I blame me .

He ended up setting the second card up as a network tuner elsewhere.

[JelloMold]

Aside from a few problems that I've caused, SageTV has been rock solid. I go 2 or 3 weeks at a time without rebooting; not because I see a problem... just preventive maintanance, I guess.

I'm running an old Emachines mobo, 1G Celeron, 384 meg ram, pvr250 v15, Radeon 7200, XP home. I'm using the original drivers that came on the cd with the 250! (Again, if it ain't broke...)

I'm rountinely doing other cpu and drive intensive things on the machine as well.

I have noticed, however, SageTV does not recover gracefully from an OS crash. (Backup your .bin and .properties files frequently!) I blew a breaker recently on the same circuit as the HTPC and for some reason SageTV lost the ability to access the overlay.

Good luck - I hate to see people having problems with what in my experience has been a wonderful piece of software.

JelloMold

[jnicke]

I have the same configuration and stabiilty issues. I have found that if I do not enable the PVR-350 output that my system will stay up for days and scheduled recordings are fine. However, when tv-out on the PVR-350 is activated an I do some live tv channel surfing, pausing, etc. I can crash the system in a matter of minutes. I have tried all the latest drivers, codec, etc. I have concluded that the problem is with the PVR-350 interface to SageTV since most of the posts that reported no problems were PVR-250 or some other configuration.

I have also found that SageTV does not recover gracefully from a hang or crash. All too often, I will have to reload since I get some kind-of Java Overflow error after ~50% of the "hangs" or "crashes". I will not use TV-Out on the PVR-350 until the next release and hope for better stability.

[Watter]

Originally posted by jnicke
I have the same configuration and stabiilty issues. I have found that if I do not enable the PVR-350 output that my system will stay up for days and scheduled recordings are fine. However, when tv-out on the PVR-350 is activated an I do some live tv channel surfing, pausing, etc. I can crash the system in a matter of minutes.

While my system is not quite that unstable, I too have problems that I believe are directly related to the PVR350 TV-out support. If I don't use the PVR350's TV-out, my system is remarkably stable. Once activated and used however, I typically have to reboot my system once every few days.

Invaraibly, my problems occur when skipping foward past a commercial. Sometimes I can skip around willy-nilly and not have a problem at all while other times, if I skip forward (or back I guess; I don't skip back much) too quickly, my screen will black out. The Sage OSD till shows the video being played but there's nothing on my screen. Occasionally, just shutting down and restarting Sage will be enough to get me going again, but usually I have to reboot in order to get things working.

-Matt