Connect to Server then blank screen?

[heffneil]

I got my extender operating on the bench. I can see the menu options before it connects. Once I select the server to connect to the screen goes black and I don't see anything else. It's strange because it clearly allows me to see the menu options. I have pressed every button on the remote and nothing changes.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Neil

[Opus4]

Is Java up to date on the server? Is there a firewall blocking port 31099?

- Andy

[Mitch G]

Assumptions:
It's an HD100 extender.
You're connected by HDMI.

If this is true, then I had this same problem happen to me today after rearranging some cabling and the like.
Anyway, the solution for me was to press the video out button (near the DVD buttons on the remote) wait a couple of seconds, and press it again if nothing showed up. The basic problem was that the resolution being put out was not matching the TV and the way to cycle through the resolutions is by pressing the video out button.

Hope this helps,


Mitch

[carlgar]

If you cannot find a fix be sure to enable logging and let support know. Support wants to see a log of this issue. Several people have seen it in the past. I think you can correct it by rebooting your computer.

[heffneil]

It is HD100. It's firmware is the latest version.

Java is the latest version on the server. Latest version of Sage on the machine and the machine is running Vista Business.

Don't know if that helps. Is there a way to see connected clients?

Thanks,

Neil

[carlgar]

If you have the Sage Web server installed you can use it. It may show the connected clients. I doubt if it will show the HDx because I don't think it is connected yet.
I stongly urge you to get a log of the problem and then reboot your system. This problem is becoming very rare and this is the best change to get a log of it.

Edit: Here is the thread about the issue where support request a copy of the log. http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...68&postcount=1

[heffneil]

Ok so it is working now. I am not sure why but I turn on the TV and then the extender and wait a very long time. It seems if I press menu then it starts to wake up (the extender not the server) and finally show the starting up screen. Anyway I don't know if that is normal but I do have a bigger problem. When I finally get the menu up I select watch live tv. Go to select that and then it shows the description of the show and the picture comes up and practically freezes. It will not stream the feed. I am using an HD HomeRun and it is on a gigabit switch along with the server, and the extender. The extender is 3 feet from the server as I am testing everything on the bench. Not sure if I am missing something or what I can change to make it work, better? Work - would be good. At this point its pretty unusable so there must be something I am doing incorrectly. Any help or pointing in the right direction would be appreciated!

Thanks so much for all the help.

Neil

[carlgar]

What do you call a long time? Have you used a clock to time it? 2 minutes can seem like a very long time when waiting for something.
What version of Sage are you using?
With 6.3.10, I have seen some files recorded with the HDHR which support says has PTS problems. These files will not play correctly on the Hd extender. I have to use the sage client to view and the work fine with that software. Are you using the same file or have you tried a different show? I have provided support with part of a problem file, but have not heard back yet.

[heffneil]

I will time it next time I do my tests but it seems long but you are probably right its most likely 2 minutes before I see the splash screen.

I don't know what files I am using. I have the latest version of Sage running. I installed it yesterday or the day before. I only have two channels setup so far. On my HD Homerun is shows a bunch of channels but some of them don't have remap information so I cant' translate them over to the Sage guide. I tried the two channels and its pretty bad. It can't possibly work like this normally or none of you would be using this product.

Thanks,

Neil

[timnelsonic]

I have the same issue. The only cure appears to be stopping and starting the Sage service. No amount of fiddling with the Extender fixes things (button pushes, restarts, etc.).

For me, it happens about 25% of the time. I submitted my log file to Sage support today; hopefully they can sort this one out. It taints an otherwise excellent product (the HD Extender).

[mistergq]

I had this happen today. It started with the HD 100 not having any sound, then I tried to restart the 100, but would go to a black screen once it was connecting to a server. It took restarting the Sage server computer (not just exiting out a sage and restarting sage, actually restarting the computer) to get what ever was locking up the HD 100. This could have been a problem if it was not for the writer strike as it happened during prime time.

[ehlfg]

I just hooked up my new HD extender (yay!), and I'm seeing similar behavior. It finds the server, but there's a black screen on connect.

I ran WireShark on my Sage server to debug, and it looks like every single connection attempt to 31099 is reset by the server. That's odd, because I'm using the XP Firewall and the Firewall settings show that TCP port 31099 is allowed by the SageTV MiniClient exception setting.

If I turn off the XP firewall, the HD extender does connect properly. But with the firewall on, I get the black screen -- even though it *looks* like there is a rule to allow TCP port 31099.

Does anyone else see this behavior? Any idea on a fix, short of completely disabling the firewall?

[ehlfg]

A bit more information. I tried using a Mac Placeshifter, and it works even with the server firewall active. What I see is that the first connection attempt to port 31099 is rejected by the server, but after the Mac does a few more unrelated things, it attempts another connection to port 31099 that goes through.

In both cases, I'm using 5GHz 802.11n (draft) to an Apple Airport Extreme Base Station. The Mac Placeshifter runs on a MacBook Pro that supports 802.11n (draft) directly, whereas the HD extender is connected to an Apple Airport Express 802.11n (draft) in bridge mode.

Perhaps the Airport Express is part of the problem. I'll try another bridge to see if that makes a difference. Unfortunately, a wired connection isn't all that feasible.

[ehlfg]

Never mind, it looks like a networking issue. I altered the 802.11n settings to turn off wide channels, and now the HD extender connects on 31099 even with the firewall enabled.

[jrog]

I'm getting the blank screen startup on my Extenders. The local sage client on the server works, and I have some recordings going right now, so I can't reset just yet, but I fired up Placeshifter on my Mac, and it won't connect either. I do see the server in the Extender startup screen, and in the Placeshifter Servers Manager window.

Here is my log on the Mac...

Jun 25 21:38:33 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Starting MiniClient
Jun 25 21:38:33 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:33.248 Detecting cryptography support...
Jun 25 21:38:36 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:36.362 Sending out discovery packets to find SageTVPlaceshifter Servers...
Jun 25 21:38:36 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:36.407 Starting SageTVPlaceshifter Client
Jun 25 21:38:36 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:36.426 Starting main loop
Jun 25 21:38:36 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:36.427 StorageDeviceDetector started...
Jun 25 21:38:37 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:37.479 Discovery packet received:java.net.DatagramPacket@8ceeea
Jun 25 21:38:37 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:37.514 Added server info:192.168.0.165 192.168.0.165
Jun 25 21:38:39 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:39.701 Attempting to connect to server at 192.168.0.165:31099
Jun 25 21:38:39 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:39.740 ERROR with socket connection: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused
Jun 25 21:38:41 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:41.369 Error discovering servers:java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Receive timed out
Jun 25 21:38:46 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:46.371 Sending out discovery packets to find SageTVPlaceshifter Servers...
Jun 25 21:38:46 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:46.625 Discovery packet received:java.net.DatagramPacket@21b59a
Jun 25 21:38:46 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:46.645 Added server info:192.168.0.165 192.168.0.165
Jun 25 21:38:51 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:51.371 Error discovering servers:java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Receive timed out
Jun 25 21:38:56 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:56.372 Sending out discovery packets to find SageTVPlaceshifter Servers...
Jun 25 21:38:57 Avocado [0x0-0x219219].tv.sage.Placeshifter[46008]: Wed 6/25 21:38:57.339 Discovery packet received:java.net.DatagramPacket@706da8

I'm plugged into the same ethernet switch as the server, and I don't have the WindowsXP Firewall turned on the server. I'm assuming that restarting the service, or rebooting the machine will fix this, so turning on logging probably won't help at this point... very weird.

[spvoyek]

I had this happen to me this AM, so I wanted to provide some information...

I'm new to SageTV, just got my system up and going within the past month. I have the latest beta versions of the server and hd100 firmware, which I've been running for the past week or so with no problems. This may just be a coincidence, but last night I decided to see what the secret "5309" features were. I enabled them from one of my HD Extenders (extender A) and everything seemed to work fine. This AM, I turned extender A on and started playing a recorded show for the kids. A little bit later I turned on my other HD Extender (extender B) and was greeted by the "black screen of death" (BSOD)! I rebooted a couple times, didn't help. Worried that it "might" be a bug in the "5309" stuff, I turned them off using extender A. Went back to extender B and rebooted, still BSOD. By this time the kids were done watching their show, so, thinking it may be a license issue, I shutdown extender A and rebooted extender B, still BSOD. So, I shut it down and went back and powered up extender A, BSOD!

I decided to connect to the webserver to see if it might give me some way to kick the extender. Extender A showed up on the home page, so I went to the recordings and told it to play one of them on extender A. That didn't help, so now I'm thinking I probably need to restart the server. The server appeared to be running just fine, but it was in the middle of recording a show - good time to go look in the forums. I found this thread and subsequently rebooted the server pc, now both extenders are working fine.

If it were a license issue, I don't think extender A would have shown up in the webserver.

I don't know if I have any logs to provide. Where should I look?

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by spvoyek

If it were a license issue, I don't think extender A would have shown up in the webserver.

I don't know if I have any logs to provide. Where should I look?

According to sage support, a specific error message would appear if it were a license issue. I tried to test but had too many licenses and did not want to remove any.

The log files would appear in the sage directory. I doubt if you have the logging enabled. See this FAQ http://forums.sage.tv/forums/showthr...076#post149076

[briands]

I have seen this issue only with the latest beta 6.4.4
I submitted a bug report and am working with Sage to try to capture more information. They are leaning toward it being an extender issue instead of a server issue.

I suggest everyone submit a bug report so they can get more data on their end.

[timnelsonic]

I used to get this issue all the time (as noted above). I found a solution and posted to another thread, but forgot to post here. In my case, I set the network adapter to NOT allow powersave mode. This is in the Properties section of the network card hardware setting (at least with Windows XP). This cured my issue 100%.

This issue recently started recurring and, when I checked this setting, I found that it had flipped back. This occured when I installed a new router and the installation software set this w/o telling me. I again turned Powersave off and the issue is gone.

I highly recommend those having this issue to try it out. It might not fix everyone but it sure worked for me.