Simultaneous Multi-Channel Playback

[SkierHiker]

I have just moved from a single SageTV box to a Client/Server model. Occasionally, my SageTV Server (Windows 2008, HP PVR-350) goes into a simultaneous multi-channel playback mode. It looks like its showing at least three channels, two are fixed and in front while the one your watching is in the back. They look like they're partially overlayed on top of each other and then flip back and forth very rapidily. The sound is totally distorted. I have tried everything I can think of to get it to reset and the only thing that works is to restart the service. Anybody experienced this behavior or can offer any suggestions as to how to stop it? So far it has messed up several recordings and I'm starting to have a family revolt.

Things I have tried:

1. Restart Client
2. Change channels (messed up), watch recordings (ok), watch video (ok)
3. Remove IR channel changer transmitter
4. Restart Comcast STB

Thanks, Mark.

[Opus4]

Do you mean there seem to be multiple videos playing, or do you mean that multiple menus are getting drawn on top of each other? If you mean multiple videos are playing, like you seem to mean, then I don't remember hearing about that before.

- Andy

[SkierHiker]

Yes, they're multiple TV shows playing at the same time. They're not stacked exactly on top of each other but rather offset so you can see the front one and portions of the other two. It flips rapidly between the top two so you see no motion. The station you want to watch is behind the others (zorder last) and you can't really see it. It's also being recorded like that and the audio is scrambled (maybe a combination of all three) and sounds like it's in fast motion.

I thought it might be the PVR-350 but I would think that if that was the culprit you would have to reboot to set it right. All I have to do though is to restart the SageTV service. Thoughts here?

I suppose it could be Windows Server 2008. I have WHS and W2K8 R2 Beta(Windows Server 2008 on Windows 7 core). If no one can help here, I may try these other two OS's and see if that makes a difference. The box is a dedicated SageTV server so all I have to do is take the time to install the other OS.

I have tried to recreate it but I can't find the right combination of events to get it to occur when I want to. If I could do that, I could probably narrow it down. Any ideas to try?

Thanks - Mark.

[Tiki]

Are you using the default STV or one of the alternates (such as SageMC)? Do you have any imports (STVi's) installed?

If you are not using the plain default STV with no imports, try that and see if it makes any difference. I have not heard of this specific problem before either, but step 1 in troubleshooting should be to get rid of any of the unsupported extras and see if you can isolate the problem.

[Opus4]

Is this multi-video effect in the recorded file? I would start wondering if the tuner has gone bad. You could try using the PVR-350 with the Hauppauge WinTV software to see what happens. If that is fine, then contact SageTV support.

- Andy

[SkierHiker]

Ok, I'm back. I've been monitoring this behavior now for a few weeks and it definitely is linked to watching a recording. If I don't watch anything, all the recordings during that time frame are fine and live TV is fine. I'm still trying to determine if it is related to watching while recording or watching all the way to the end. But live TV gets all whacked out most of the time after we have been watching something and any recordings will also be affected.

My Client is a fresh install of the default STV with imports. I have not tried a pure vanila Client without any imports yet. It's tough eliminating all the imports when the family wants to use it. I'll do it as a last resort though.

My Server is however a copy of my previous standalone installation (with the Server option turned on). I want to do a fresh install of the Server but don't want to lose any recordings. Is it safe to say that if I install SageTV from scratch, then copy my existing wiz.bin over, I shouldn't have any leftovers from before that could be causing this?

Thanks - Mark.

[SkierHiker]

Fixed It!!! It's been running smooth as glass for a month now. For all you lazy bums out there (yes, I'm one), here was the solution:

INSTALL SAGETV FROM SCRATCH!

What I had done was to copy my previous client over and turned on the server and service properties (ie. being lazy). For whatever reason, this was causing all my problems. I then bit the bullet and installed native SageTV, all my add-ins, my recording and video directories, and let SageTV find all my recordings (I might have copied wiz.bin over so I didn't loose all my recording info, can't remember actually). But anyway it's running real good right now and I learned a good lesson.