HD Recordings Won't Play

[blammo585]

I'm having a problem that I need serious help with. A few weeks ago when I reinstalled my son's PC that uses MCE 2005 I noticed a problem. He wanted to watch a couple of recordings (that were recorded from OTA HD) that I had made on my own HTPC on his computer. I set MCE to see my recorded folder and tried playing the file. The file started and then immediately froze. I tried several other players...WMP, MPC HC, and PowerDVD. All did the same thing. For some reason, I installed Total Media Theater and that would play the files. But even if I used the Arcsoft decoder in MCE, it still wouldn't play the file. I just figured it was some glitch with his installation.

Lately, I had trouble with my own HTPC and decided to reinstall. This time I went with Vista. I still have all my previous recordings on a USB hard drive. After I got things set up, I tried playing one of the recordings in VMC. The recording did the same thing as my son's PC did. It starts for a second and then immediately freezes. No other players will play the file either. I installed SageTV back on the PC, and Sage plays the files fine. Why? I never had this problem before. On my old XP installation, any program would play these files. Also, before I reinstalled my son's PC he was running the same OS as he is now that he's having problems, and recordings played fine. This is only happening with HD recordings. The ones made through S-Video will play in any player on any PC. Is Sage doing something? Is it putting some kind of "protection" on these recordings that make it impossible to play in anything but Sage?

I thought it might just be with my old recordings, so I tried playing the recording I made Sunday night of The Celebrity Apprentice in my new VMC. It started and then stopped. So even current recordings are doing this. What's happening?? It doesn't do me any good having all these shows recorded if I can't share them among my PC's.