Multiple Recordings stopped working. Please Help!!

[PiX64]

Let me just start by saying that I absolutley love SAGETV, and am extremely grateful for the great online forums for all the help.

So I have had a strange issue crop up in the past few days and I am at a loss on how to fix it.

First my setup:
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I have the following tuners:
1 x HDHR (2 QAM tuner)
1 x HVR1600 (analog)
1 x ATI external USB tuner for STB capture.

Server:
Dual Core Pentium D 3.0 GHZ
2 GB DDR2
2 x 250 GB SATA II drives
Windows XP Pro SP3
Latest SageMC stable build
10/100 Mbps NIC

Clients:
1 x HD200
1 x client PC
1 x server client

Nas:
FreeNAS running PERC 5i raid 5 with 3x1TB drives
1 Gbps

Voip:
ITPVoip

Network:
I have all oft he video equipment NAS included connected to a 8 port Gigabit switch with an uplink into my 10/100 roouter for sage internet access.

I should also mention that this setup has been working correctly for 3 months now!!!

The Problem
-----------------
I was, up until a few days ago, able to record 2 HD, 2SD (or any permutation of that) at the same time while watching a DVD, DVR program, or even one of the recording shows. I was having problems with my Comcast cable and after a week of fighting with them i was finally able to get all of my service back up and working appropriately. The problem i am having now is as follows:

I can now only record at most 2 shows. If i record 2 and watch live tv on the 3rd tuner, both recordings become pixelated, and unwatchable. Live TV also does the same thing. As soon as i record more than 2 shows everything goes haywire. All recordings are either unwatchable, or so badly dirupted i can't slavage them.

So far i have tried the following solutions:
- New network card (10/100)
- Removing Voip as i thought it was possibly flooding the network
- Removing all drivers for HVR1600 and ATI capture card
- Reverting to an old install
- Disconnecting video network from router to isolate the video traffic to truly only be video

The only other things i can come up with are maybe my hard drives are going bad in the Server, and i am unable to read/write full streams, Possibly my server is just taking a crapper on me (it is a few years old and lived in a smoke infested house before i got it), or I need to upgrade the NIC card in the server to a gigabit.

All suggestions and opinions are welcome. Please help!

[zoundz]

Are you using UNC paths with your NAS? If so you might want to look at this thread
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41530

I had a similar problem caused by high cpu usage when recording 2 HDHR shows. The solution to the problem defies logic on some level, but it worked.

[PiX64]

Thanks so much for the reply, and im sorry it took me so long to report back...busy day..

So I was familiar with that post you pointed me toward, and what i did last time to get this to work was i installed the NETBIOS as instructed so that i could use \\servername\share ....That was working fine for roughly 2.5 months.

For whatever reason NETBIOS decided to stop working correctly on my server and started hanging it as you described in the post.

What I did was changed the share names to use the static ip address of the server \\x.x.x.x\sharename and now everything works PERFECTLY once again!!!!

Thanks so much zoundz!


~Mike

[zoundz]

Glad to help, Mike. The real question that was never dealt with in the original thread is WHY? I find it hard to accept that all programs using UNC shares will suffer from this high cpu usage if Netbios is not installed. There has to be something, either in the SageTV code or the HDHR BDA driver code that is causing this to happen. The Netbios "solution" is really just a workaround to a problem that really should be dealt with at some point.

I also both fear and wonder what caused your Netbios to suddenly cease working as a workaround for this problem. It does sound like a lot of other M$ odd little things that maybe need a reinstall of this or that or the other, but I really worry about stuff that just changes without rhyme or reason.

Maybe one or another of the SageTV honchos might weigh in here and let us know if there is anything being addressed about this. It's a real problem with an apparently iffy workaround. I really can't imagine why so much cpu time is needed to transfer a digital stream from the HDHR to a hard disk. It's already encoded, so what's the processor doing to the data? While my machine isn't the fastest kid on the block, it's a Sempron 3000+ and it takes 50% of the cpu to handle 2 HDHR streams AFTER the workaround. Pegged it at 100% without the Netbios fix. Clearly any thoughts I might have about a second HDHR are out of the question. Since I can record 3 analog streams at 12 mbps without even blipping the cpu, I really am mystified by this one.

[gplasky]

When working with Windows workgroups, NETBIOS is the only way way to get name resolution on the network. NETBIOS will allow you to browse for a network name through the Network Neighborhood. If you use a Windows server you will need a functioning DNS for name resolution. NETBIOS is not a workaround but the way Windows workgroup was designed to work. You need to make sure all machines are in the same workgroup. NETBIOS is NOT supported for IPv6.

A Windows machine's NetBIOS name is not to be confused with the computer's host name. Generally a computer running TCP/IP (whether it's a Windows machine or not) has a host name (also sometimes called a machine name or a DNS name). Generally the host name of a Windows computer is based on the NetBIOS name plus the Primary DNS Suffix, which are both set in the System Control Panel.

There may also be "connection specific suffixes" which can be viewed or changed on the DNS tab in Control Panel → Network → TCP/IP → Advanced Properties. Host names are used by applications such as telnet, ftp, web browsers, etc. In order to connect to a computer running the TCP/IP protocol using its HOST name, the host name must be resolved into an IP Address. Host name- or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)-IP address resolution is typically done by a Domain Name System (DNS) server


Gerry