HD200 FW "20090429 0" Causing Jerky HD Playback

[plawlor]

I upgraded one of my HD200s to the latest Beta FW last night - Revision "20090429 0". Live TV playback is now extremely choppy. It starts almost immediately and does not go away. I am running SageTV 6.5.14 Beta and the video causing the problem is being captured by a Hauppauge HDPVR from a Bell TV HD receiver. I was only testing HD (720p) channels at the time. As soon as I rolled back to Revision "20090403 0", everything was back to normal. I still have audio-video sync issues, but I think that is related to my HDPVR drivers and not SageTV or the HDPVR.

[simonen]

Yeap, I see the same thing in some of my HDHR recordings with the new firmware. Of the recordings that are fine, I do notice that it is sluggish to continue playing after I skip ahead 10 sec. or 2 minutes.

HDPVR is ok (never had audio sync issues).

Going back to the last official firmware release puts everything back to normal.

[infocus13]

Same problem here.

Headless AMD x2 running the latest sage beta in service mode with a HD100 as a client. Hauppauge hvr-2200 as the only TV tuner.

Problems (exactly as described above) started soon after upgrading to latest HD100 beta FW.

Funny thing is, when watching the recordings on a PC, which is mapped to the LAN share where the TV recordings are - the skipping is still there when being played through VLC or similar.

[voidpt]

+1

Not entirely sure. Too little testing. But some BDMV's I have do get 'erratic' behaviour after skipping timeline some. Then takes too long time to get in sync. Might have to go back to 0403 firmware.

[guddis]

I have this problem too now. All my HD movies are choppy. Going back to an earlier FW solves this problem ...

[Narflex]

Can anyone that's having this problem with the 0429 firmware please try it with a V6.5.13 server and see how that performs? We made a change to the network buffering that will only be in effect if you use the 0429 firmware with the 6.5.14+ server; so using a V6.5.13 server effectively disables that optimization; and I'm suspicious its the cause of this.

Thanks!

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Can anyone that's having this problem with the 0429 firmware please try it with a V6.5.13 server and see how that performs? We made a change to the network buffering that will only be in effect if you use the 0429 firmware with the 6.5.14+ server; so using a V6.5.13 server effectively disables that optimization; and I'm suspicious its the cause of this.

Thanks!

I rolled back to 6.5.13 from 6.5.14 on the server (Vista SP1) I was having problems with and that did solve the freezing problem with Blu-ray playback on the HD200. Playback is fine now in Media Extender mode. This particular server is tunerless and holds my movies (Blu-ray, DVD etc).

My second server (XP Pro SP3) with 6.5.14 works fine when playing recordings and movies in Media Extender mode (this one has tuners, my recordings an a few Blu-ray movies).

So there must be something set on the tuner server that is not set on the tunerless server or vice versa. Or some difference in XP vs Vista. I have already submitted a bug report on this (yesterday) with log files etc and property files from both servers.

[voidpt]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Can anyone that's having this problem with the 0429 firmware please try it with a V6.5.13 server and see how that performs? We made a change to the network buffering that will only be in effect if you use the 0429 firmware with the 6.5.14+ server; so using a V6.5.13 server effectively disables that optimization; and I'm suspicious its the cause of this.

Didn't have backup of my 6.5.13 directory. So did a quick and dirty rollback from 6.5.14 to 6.5.13. My problems have been with my Blu-Ray rips. Without too much time for testing I'm pretty sure the following is true for me.

Rolling back to 6.5.13, keeping HD200 at 20090429 0, solved my problem. And the problem seems only to be on my VC-1 Blu-Ray rips. The H.264 seems to work fine with both 6.5.13 & 6.5.14. Tested 3 VC-1's and 3 H.264.

A little more about how I experience the problem. When I skip on timeline, or activate subtitling, my VC-1 Blu-Ray's. In 80% of the cases (sometimes skipping is ok). The audio is lost, and video goes into a 'erratic' mode for anything between 5-30secs before it gathers it's pace and gets the audio back at same time. It's like watching some FF video, without it being FF. Just the effect.

[Narflex]

Thanks for the feedback Helen. We're putting out a new beta shortly (today most likely) which should have a fix in there for this. I'm sure you'll all let us know how it goes. And no, we didn't disable the optimization, we just changed how it worked so that it should be faster in all cases now.

[aflat]

And there it is, I just went to check for a new update, 20090505 is up already.

[voidpt]

Well, the 20090505 0 firmware, alone, did not solve my problem. Not sure if Narflex ment HD200 beta or actual Server beta. Find out soon anyway

[HelenWeathers]

No help for me either. I also think it will take a SageTV beta upgrade to resolve.

EDIT: voidpt: FYI, with the 6.5.14 software I was having problems with VC-1 and H.264 movies read from my Vista SageTV server and the 6.5.13 rollback plays them all.

[HelenWeathers]

With firmware version 20090505 on my HD200:

Installed 6.5.15 on my Vista SageTV server and I'm still getting the freezing/speed up to catch up scenerio on my Blu-ray movies with occasional but rare power off on the HD200.

Installed 6.5.15 on my XP Pro SageTV server and my Blu-ray movies all play just fine from that machine on the HD200.

[Narflex]

Helen, Please submit a bug report so we can get more details on this; it's apparently not what we thought it was so we need someone who can reproduce the problem to get more data. Submit the bug report here: http://sagetv.com/bugs.html

[voidpt]

Looks like I'm in the same situation. Have now tried 6.5.15 of Server too. Still have the problem. Might be a little better, but nothing compared to how it worked ok in 6.5.13.

I will research a little, jump between 6.5.13 & 6.5.15 and see if I can create a small enough sample to use in a bug report.

[Narflex]

If you're going to get logs from both versions, set this property first:

miniclient/debug_push=true

That'll make them more useful.

[voidpt]

Have managed to make a sample that illustrates the problem. Need some more time to generate logs too (will use the property). Have to do that tomorrow. Will send bug report then.

[HelenWeathers]

I'm way over my head experience wise here. I've never used telnet before and do not have telnet on my Vista server but do have telnet on an XP machine that is attached to the network. I've tried to follow the steps I've found for telnet but here's what I get:

I type 'telnet 192.168.1.100' and press enter (192.168.1.100 is the HD200 ip)
Here's the result:
Connecting To 192.168.1.100...Could not open connection to the host, on port 23: Connect failed

I know how to get system info, sage_0.txt log but this one's got me baffeled.

[Narflex]

Helen,

The firewall on your PC is probably blocking the outbound connection. Try disabling it temporarily and see if that works. You can also use the free program 'Putty' as a telnet client as well (if you wanted to do it on Vista)

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Helen,

The firewall on your PC is probably blocking the outbound connection. Try disabling it temporarily and see if that works. You can also use the free program 'Putty' as a telnet client as well (if you wanted to do it on Vista)

I managed to enable telnet on my Vista server and after correcting the workgroup name I am able to use telnet.

Was just about to restart the server and hd200 and run a fresh set of logs.