SageTV HD troubles- why wont it just work? - please help!

[danOO00]

I don't post here often, since I have been using Sage for years with SD tuners, and despite the annoying decoder issues that pop up now and again I have been prety happy with the stability of the system (one server and one client PC, ripped DVD's, online vids, netflix, etc...)

I have since upgraded my server to support HD - I have a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H mobo with integrated graphics - 2GB PC800 ram, AM2 dual core 5050E processor on XP-sp3 as the server. HD Homerun connected to the server on a secondary dedicated NIC. There is also a WD 1TB drive formatted to 64KB blocks used as a dedicated sage recordings drive.

Now for my problems-

Micro stutter- with overlay, with VMR9, with ATI codecs, with Sage codecs, with nvidia codecs 3D enabled, disabled, FSE on/off... all combinations of the above that I can come up with- driving me NUTS, and when the stutter is resolved 90%, and I actually get to watch some HD content...

spontaneous server reboot or hangs when I try to watch HD live or recorded on the server. Very bad. this only happens when watching HD while same program is being recorded- never happens with SD. The client plays the content fine most of the time- sometimes freezes for a while when watching HD while the same program is being recorded.

I have tried increasing the allocated memory to the integrated video in BIOS up to 500MB, increased Java heap size in the registry, downloaded latest MOBO drivers from gigabyte, installed Theatertek with Nvidia dcodec, installed ATI AVIVO? codec, latest sage/java ad nauseum, but cannot create a stable server for watching HD. The server will be fine as long as only the client is used for days, but watching HD on the server is very problematic.


Done with my rant/venting..

possible solutions...I am leaning toward the need for a PCIe video card (ditch onboard ATI3200 graphics, or possible faulty or inadequate power supply currently 500W but an off-brand.

Any advice or suggestions from someone with a similar stable setup would be VERY appreciated. Buying a HD200 at this point seems silly when the server should be able to handle this function..

Thanks for reading.

Dan

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by danOO00

I don't post here often, since I have been using Sage for years with SD tuners, and despite the annoying decoder issues that pop up now and again I have been prety happy with the stability of the system (one server and one client PC, ripped DVD's, online vids, netflix, etc...)

I have since upgraded my server to support HD - I have a Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H mobo with integrated graphics - 2GB PC800 ram, AM2 dual core 5050E processor on XP-sp3 as the server. HD Homerun connected to the server on a secondary dedicated NIC. There is also a WD 1TB drive formatted to 64KB blocks used as a dedicated sage recordings drive.

Now for my problems-

Micro stutter- with overlay, with VMR9, with ATI codecs, with Sage codecs, with nvidia codecs 3D enabled, disabled, FSE on/off... all combinations of the above that I can come up with- driving me NUTS, and when the stutter is resolved 90%, and I actually get to watch some HD content...

spontaneous server reboot or hangs when I try to watch HD live or recorded on the server. Very bad. this only happens when watching HD while same program is being recorded- never happens with SD. The client plays the content fine most of the time- sometimes freezes for a while when watching HD while the same program is being recorded.

Sounds like you've got some sort of hardware issue there, maybe heat, that only presents itself when the system is under load. I seriously doubt this is a Sage issue, I don't think Sage itself is capable of that. Maybe a video driver issue....

From what I remember it's not uncommon for there to be overheating issues with that board. Or maybe it was the DS2H, seems like the 780G chipset puts out a lot of heat. I retired my GA-M78GM-DS2H machine when the instability became unbearable.

I have tried increasing the allocated memory to the integrated video in BIOS up to 500MB, increased Java heap size in the registry, downloaded latest MOBO drivers from gigabyte, installed Theatertek with Nvidia dcodec, installed ATI AVIVO? codec, latest sage/java ad nauseum, but cannot create a stable server for watching HD. The server will be fine as long as only the client is used for days, but watching HD on the server is very problematic.


Done with my rant/venting..

possible solutions...I am leaning toward the need for a PCIe video card (ditch onboard ATI3200 graphics, or possible faulty or inadequate power supply currently 500W but an off-brand.

Stability issue asside, you've layed out all the reasons many of us have gone to extenders.

Any advice or suggestions from someone with a similar stable setup would be VERY appreciated. Buying a HD200 at this point seems silly when the server should be able to handle this function..

And I think many of us thought that way for a long time. Until we broke down and got an extender and all the problems went away, and then we wished we'd gotten one sooner.

As much of an HTPC supporter as I was/want to be, eliminating PCs as playback devices has been about the best use of money I've every spent in my system.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by danOO00

Micro stutter- with overlay, with VMR9, with ATI codecs, with Sage codecs, with nvidia codecs 3D enabled, disabled, FSE on/off... all combinations of the above that I can come up with- driving me NUTS, and when the stutter is resolved 90%, and I actually get to watch some HD content...

Are you running in IDE or AHCI mode? If AHCI, make sure you've installed the RAID drivers. If you're running IDE, you won't get the benefits of NCQ.

The AVIVO mpeg decoder works really well with 780G (at least in vista).

Originally Posted by danOO00

spontaneous server reboot or hangs when I try to watch HD live or recorded on the server. Very bad. this only happens when watching HD while same program is being recorded- never happens with SD. The client plays the content fine most of the time- sometimes freezes for a while when watching HD while the same program is being recorded.

If the server's hanging or giving a BSOD it's either a driver or HW problem. As Stanger notes it could be a problem with heat, one way to see if it's heat is to download prime95 and run an instance per core and monitor temps.

I have an ATX Gigabyte 780G system and it plays back HD very nicely, so it can work.

Originally Posted by danOO00

possible solutions...I am leaning toward the need for a PCIe video card (ditch onboard ATI3200 graphics

The HD3200 does very well with an AM2 proc playing progressive content, but you really need to drop an AM2+ in to get the increased memory bandwidth to deinterlace 1080i. A discrete video card would resolve this issue, considering you can get a 4650 for $50-60 that might be a good way to go. But I'd sort out the stability issues first.

Originally Posted by danOO00

or possible faulty or inadequate power supply currently 500W but an off-brand.

this could be a cause, see how running prime95 impacts the system's stability

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Stability issue asside, you've layed out all the reasons many of us have gone to extenders.

Given the problems outlined, it's most likely a HW issue (as you note) that will still be present even if playback is handled by the HD200. While the HD200 is an excellent way to extend content around the house, there's no reason why you can't have an excellent playback experience on a PC (the HD200 has warts too).

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by babgvant

If the server's hanging or giving a BSOD it's either a driver or HW problem. As Stanger notes it could be a problem with heat, one way to see if it's heat is to download prime95 and run an instance per core and monitor temps.

Only issue is that won't (I don't believe) tax the GPU/chipset which is what seems to be the problem on some Gigabyte 780G boards.

I have an ATX Gigabyte 780G system and it plays back HD very nicely, so it can work.

Mine was fine for a while (played BD well) but it always ran really hot. Eventually it got to the point where it would spontaneously shut down. Soon after that I gave up on it.

The HD3200 does very well with an AM2 proc playing progressive content, but you really need to drop an AM2+ in to get the increased memory bandwidth to deinterlace 1080i. A discrete video card would resolve this issue, considering you can get a 4650 for $50-60 that might be a good way to go. But I'd sort out the stability issues first.



this could be a cause, see how running prime95 impacts the system's stability

Yeah I ran mine off an Antec Phantom 350.

Originally Posted by babgvant

Given the problems outlined, it's most likely a HW issue (as you note) that will still be present even if playback is handled by the HD200.

Well if it's the GPU overheating when decoding HD, then moving playback to the extender would solve that issue.

While the HD200 is an excellent way to extend content around the house, there's no reason why you can't have an excellent playback experience on a PC (the HD200 has warts too).

I don't know, the whole "microstudder" issue is just way to familiar sounding. I don't think I ever had a PC playback so many types of content with the kind of smoothness and reliability the HD200 provides.

I guess I look at it this way, the OP's probably going to have to spend some money to resolve the above issues. That amount could easily be $200 (though could just as easilly be less), and there's no guarantee of success in solving the issue. That's where I was when I started having problems with my HTPC for BD playback. I could either throw money at the things that may or may not have been causing the problems, or I could buy a standalone BD player. I opted for the later and I'm glad I did.

However given that the system was stable before upgrading "to support HD" (it's not clear what those upgrades were), going back to the previous config with an HD200 would be a near guaranteed fix.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Only issue is that won't (I don't believe) tax the GPU/chipset which is what seems to be the problem on some Gigabyte 780G boards.

That's the point. You want to isolate subsystems to figure out which is causing problems. If after a couple/three hours of maxing out the cpu (all cores) the system is stable and responsive and heat is under control you can eliminate that as a potential cause.

HD playback on an IGP will also be very demanding on RAM so that would be the next thing to test.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Mine was fine for a while (played BD well) but it always ran really hot. Eventually it got to the point where it would spontaneously shut down. Soon after that I gave up on it.

RMA, you shouldn't have to live with faulty hardware.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Well if it's the GPU overheating when decoding HD, then moving playback to the extender would solve that issue.

If that's the issue (which still needs to be determined), adding cooling or RMA'g the board would be much less than $200.

Originally Posted by stanger89

I don't know, the whole "microstudder" issue is just way to familiar sounding. I don't think I ever had a PC playback so many types of content with the kind of smoothness and reliability the HD200 provides.

If it's an I/O issue (i.e. in AHCI mode but not running the ATI AHCI driver) then the HD200 won't solve the problem.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by babgvant

That's the point. You want to isolate subsystems to figure out which is causing problems. If after a couple/three hours of maxing out the cpu (all cores) the system is stable and responsive and heat is under control you can eliminate that as a potential cause.

CPU overheating would be eliminated as a possible cause, but if it's the GPU/chipset that's the problem, it wouldn't show up in such a test.

RMA, you shouldn't have to live with faulty hardware.

I'm not 100% convinced it's failed/faulty hardware. It was really a "last straw" case. I used the machine almost exclusively for BD playback, and I was never happy with the craptacular PowerDVD, the resolution issues (difficulties getting correct output timings based on content) the video level issues.

The instability just made me re-evaluate what I wanted, an my Pioneer BD player just works better in every way than my HTPC ever did for BD playback. And I've got an HD200 for my ripped BDs.

If that's the issue (which still needs to be determined), adding cooling or RMA'g the board would be much less than $200.

Yeah, maybe, but when I was looking at my options and researching what was necessary to get what I wanted, it was looking more like $400+ by the time I got a good Intel mobo, nVidia 9 series, processor, memory.....

If it's an I/O issue (i.e. in AHCI mode but not running the ATI AHCI driver) then the HD200 won't solve the problem.

I'd be surprised if "microstudder" was an I/O issue. It sounds more like the relatively normal PC/windows playback imperfections. And FWIW I didn't really realize the problems with PC playback until I started using hardware devices (HD100/HD200/BDP-51FD) that didn't have them.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by stanger89

CPU overheating would be eliminated as a possible cause, but if it's the GPU/chipset that's the problem, it wouldn't show up in such a test.

Again, that's the point.

By testing each subsystem individually you can eliminate possibilities. If it passes the CPU test (the most common cause for these sorts of problem is an issue with the CPU install or heat build up). Then you move on to the next most likely cause (memory), and so on. It could be the GPU, but the hard part about testing a GPU is that it's difficult to test w/o stressing the other substems as well (esp RAM on a IGP).

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'm not 100% convinced it's failed/faulty hardware. It was really a "last straw" case. I used the machine almost exclusively for BD playback, and I was never happy with the craptacular PowerDVD, the resolution issues (difficulties getting correct output timings based on content) the video level issues.

Fair enough, but the HD200 isn't a fix all for every problem. If the content's damaged because of I/O issues or the system isn't stable because of some hardware or driver issue a HD200 isn't going to fix that (although in the short term it may mask some playback issues).

On my plasma, the HD200 doesn't look (or sound) any different than my 780G when rendering content (I'd say my G45 actually looks better for BR but that's a different topic), but menus in Sage (esp text) look terrible on comparison to the PC.

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'd be surprised if "microstudder" was an I/O issue. It sounds more like the relatively normal PC/windows playback imperfections. And FWIW I didn't really realize the problems with PC playback until I started using hardware devices (HD100/HD200/BDP-51FD) that didn't have them.

I was having this issue with my 780g until installing the AHCI drivers.

[jkohn]

After a good 2 years of trying, I finally came to the conclusion that getting glitch-free playback of 1080i MPEG-2 from OTA HDTV (and QAM cable) is just not a possibility with today's HTPC's. 720p MPEG-2 is no problem, and H.264 and VC-1 are even fine with the newer video cards. But I haven't been able to get what I consider acceptable MPEG-2 playback on an HTPC from all of my local networks no matter how much hardware and software I throw at the problem.

My latest HTPC upgrade was to a quad-core CPU with 4GB of RAM. I've tried late-model video cards from both NVidia and ATI. I've tried every decoder under the sun, I've tried XP/Vista/Win7Beta, I've tried Reclock, I've tried Overlay/VMR9/EVR. Certain combinations of decoders and video cards would work pretty good for one or two of my local networks (most of the time). But none of them would give me consistently good playback for all of my channels.

To be fair I don't think this is Sage's fault. Most of the blame lies with the ATI and NVidia, their hardware and software is so buggy it's pathetic. And hardware deinterlacing doesn't seem to get much attention from them because 3D-gaming performance and Blu-Ray playback are more marketable features.

You can avoid the hardware decoder bugs by using software decoding, but that has its own problems as even the latest, fastest CPU doesn't seem to be sufficient to completely avoid occasional stutters or slowdowns; I think a preemptive multi-tasking OS like Windows just isn't very well suited to this kind of processing. Plus the software decoders mean you're going to get bobbed 1080i instead of proper deinterlacing for most broadcast TV.

In the end I threw in the towel and bought an HD200 extender. It handles 1080i (and a lot of other video formats) much better than an HTPC. It does have a tendency to revert to bobbing when it shouldn't, but 1080i plays back very smoothly, with no stutters, slow-downs or other glitches like I was getting on the HTPC. And since my pre/pro has a Reon processor in it, I can just set the HD200 to output 1080i content without deinterlacing and let the pre/pro do a proper job.

The HD200 is not perfect, the UI can be a bit laggy, and it sucks as a photo slideshow viewer (scaled image tend to look very soft). I still use my HTPC for music (with Winamp and Milkdrop), so the HD200 is just used for TV viewing. But for that it works very well.

[jkohn]

One other thing I'll add. The SageTV server itself has proven quite stable for me. I run it in service mode on a dedicated machine, but it's an older machine running XP. Recordings are very reliable, even when recording 4 simultaneous shows at once from my 2 HDHR's. I do have 3 individual HD's dedicated to recording, with the tuners assigned to specific drives so that I can spread the disk I/O out for better multi-tasking.

My problems have been specifically with playback on the client, and as I said I don't think they're Sage's fault. If you're getting reboots and crashes on the server, I would think it's likely to be hardware issues.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by jkohn

After a good 2 years of trying, I finally came to the conclusion that getting glitch-free playback of 1080i MPEG-2 from OTA HDTV (and QAM cable) is just not a possibility with today's HTPC's. 720p MPEG-2 is no problem, and H.264 and VC-1 are even fine with the newer video cards. But I haven't been able to get what I consider acceptable MPEG-2 playback on an HTPC from all of my local networks no matter how much hardware and software I throw at the problem.

My latest HTPC upgrade was to a quad-core CPU with 4GB of RAM. I've tried late-model video cards from both NVidia and ATI. I've tried every decoder under the sun, I've tried XP/Vista/Win7Beta, I've tried Reclock, I've tried Overlay/VMR9/EVR. Certain combinations of decoders and video cards would work pretty good for one or two of my local networks (most of the time). But none of them would give me consistently good playback for all of my channels.

To be fair I don't think this is Sage's fault. Most of the blame lies with the ATI and NVidia, their hardware and software is so buggy it's pathetic. And hardware deinterlacing doesn't seem to get much attention from them because 3D-gaming performance and Blu-Ray playback are more marketable features.

You can avoid the hardware decoder bugs by using software decoding, but that has its own problems as even the latest, fastest CPU doesn't seem to be sufficient to completely avoid occasional stutters or slowdowns; I think a preemptive multi-tasking OS like Windows just isn't very well suited to this kind of processing. Plus the software decoders mean you're going to get bobbed 1080i instead of proper deinterlacing for most broadcast TV.

In the end I threw in the towel and bought an HD200 extender. It handles 1080i (and a lot of other video formats) much better than an HTPC. It does have a tendency to revert to bobbing when it shouldn't, but 1080i plays back very smoothly, with no stutters, slow-downs or other glitches like I was getting on the HTPC. And since my pre/pro has a Reon processor in it, I can just set the HD200 to output 1080i content without deinterlacing and let the pre/pro do a proper job.

The HD200 is not perfect, the UI can be a bit laggy, and it sucks as a photo slideshow viewer (scaled image tend to look very soft). I still use my HTPC for music (with Winamp and Milkdrop), so the HD200 is just used for TV viewing. But for that it works very well.

When properly configured I don't see a difference b/w the HD200 and 780G for the same content (ATSC, SD, or BR). The place where the HD200 really shines is audio stream selection and subtitles. But the laggy menus and text rendering is really detrimental to the experience; the device also chokes when rendering particularly taxing content and you try to do anything else with it at the same time.

The problem with the PC is that each person's experience is directly tied to their expertise and tolerance for getting it right. Where the HD200 is a drop in solution; my experience should be the same as yours (w/in some margin of error to account for the tv it's attached too).

Native output is cool, and it works pretty well on my plasma. But I had to turn it off on my DLP (5yrs old) because the tv didn't handle the transition b/w resolutions well. I think the video processor in that TV is a little weak too so the HD200 may do a better job at D/I and scaling anyway (I didn't leave native output on long enough to do extensive testing).

[danOO00]

Thanks for all the replies and advice- I decided to ditch the on board 780G, and installed a HD4550 video card. After a reboot of the PC, the card was recognized, and is active. I watched a few programs last night and everything seemed fine for the most part- no lockups or crashes as of yet, but time will tell- So it seems as if the onboard graphics is bad on my specific board, or just flaky in general?

I still see some tearing on VMR9, so switched to overlay, and it seems to work 99% with the occasional stutter on the first few seconds of playback, or when format is switched on the HD stream-(in and out of commercials).

I was quick to blame Sage because I was able to play back all my HD records on VLC player fine with the onboard 780G, but whatever- a $50 card seems to have resolved my problems for now.

The real annoying (or lucky) part of all this is that my client machine (used to be the server) is an Athlon T-bird 1.4GHz on a A7V-133 mobo w/ 512 MB RAM from way back.. it has a Radeon 9500, and decodes and displays the 1080i HD content from the server flawlessly for the most part- ocasional studder, but it smooths out nicely. So I guess with HTPC's there are so many variables to consider when benchmarking video playback that it can be frustrating. For Blu-Ray I use a PS3- I dont even want to mess with HTPC in this area.

Also, I am using SATA on IDE mode- never even considered AHCI.. what are the benefits/drawbacks? I tried just enabling AHCI in the BIOS, but the HD wouldn't load XP.. just rebooted and went back to BIOS.. Should I even try to make it work in this mode, or will SATA IDE mode usually be sufficient?

Again, thanks for the advice from all- I am going to let the server burn in for a while and report back if I have any more issues.

Thanks,
Dan

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by danOO00

Also, I am using SATA on IDE mode- never even considered AHCI.. what are the benefits/drawbacks? I tried just enabling AHCI in the BIOS, but the HD wouldn't load XP.. just rebooted and went back to BIOS.. Should I even try to make it work in this mode, or will SATA IDE mode usually be sufficient?

I don't think XP includes a AHCI driver that will work with the board, so you'd need to install it before making the switch in BIOS. It's possible that it still won't recognize the disk until rebuilding (requiring a floppy drive with the driver and pressing F6 during the install).

For most use cases IDE is probably fine, I think the biggest benefit to using AHCI is NCQ which really only helps if you're doing a lot of random I/O.