Severe video stutter / freeze - SOLVED

[storello]

I'm new to SageTV and this is my first post so I'll try my best.

I have SageTV server 6.5.9.204 running on a PC with an HD HomeRun Tuner. Video is quite good on the PC - just some very minor stutter, which I'm sure would disappear with a better graphics card.

I just got a new SageTV HD Theater and hooked it up to the same TV and same Gigabit hub as the PC. I downloaded the latest firmware: 20081230 0 and noticed the info says it's running SageTV 6.4.5.1.

The problem is that all Video display is almost completely frozen. It will draw a frame or two a second, if that. I know my network is fine, and I've viewed HD video at other PCs with very good results using VLC. I've also tried live TV and pre-recorded video on the HD Theater. All exhibit the same results.

Any thoughts?

[freedml]

Have you tried watching a video file in standalone mode?

[storello]

Sorry, I'm not sure what stand-alone mode is. Is that using a device hooked into the USB port? I don't have anything connected, but I do have a USB drive so I could try that.

[PiX64]

when the hd200 starts up you have the option to conect to a sage tv backend or not. if you have it setup to auto connect simply press the stop button while auto connecting is in progress. If you do not have auto connect setup, then you are in standalone mode.

[storello]

I have the box setup so I have to manually connect to the server so I guess it's already set for standalone. I hooked up a usb drive with a .ts file and I could view it fine which would lead you to believe its a network problem. The puzzling thing is that I know my network and the PC with the SageTV server is OK because I can view the same .ts file via VLC from another PC just fine. Also, I can open the on-line icon and view videos in the HD Video selection and they look beautiful. Finally, I can see that the network is running at about 12% capacity on the PC where the SageTV server is running.

[storello]

It's working

Turns out I had to select the "Force HDMI" option to yes.

[storello]

It's back. Everything was working fine last night but this morning the stutter is back. All I did was shut down the PC and the HD Theater and the Force HDMI setting was still set to "yes".

One other observation: I noticed if I started watching a video recording then skipped back to the beginning, the first part would play fine. The longer I watched, the longer the good stretch was so it was as if it was buffering it. If I stopped playing the video and then selected it again to watch it went back to being bad right from the beginning.

And here, I was all set to put an order in for a 2nd HD theater today.

[PiX64]

Did you try the new RC server and the new BETA firmware for the HD200?

Also can you please post your setup:

1) Server Specs
2) Router/Switch make,model,speed
3) network cable used (5,5e,6)

etc.

~Mike

[storello]

Since it worked fine last night and nothing is different today the server and network should be fine but I just realized that the server exhibited some funky network issues about a week ago so I'm going to try installing the server on a different PC to see if that one works better.

Both the server and HD200 are plugged into a D-Link DGS-2205 10/100/1000 desktop switch. I'm using the ethernet wire that came with the HD200.

The current server is a Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz hyperthreaded CPU with 1.5 GB RAM running Windows XP SP3.

[PiX64]

Since the HD200 has only a 10/100 nic in it i would double check to make sure that the router is allowing a 100 based connection between your server and the hd200. Prior to upgrading my equipment i was having an issue where my DLINK router would not allow for communication between 1000 base connected devices and 100 base connected devices. This very well may have been a router issue and not necessarily a router setting issue. Nevertheless, my issue was fixed when i purchased a new switch.

Does your HD200 connect directly into the router or is there a terminal inbetween? (hd200 is in a different wall and plugs into the wall where you put an outlet terminal)

If there is a terminal in between i would also double check to make sure that run is good.

Do you notice stuttering on the server directly?

[storello]

Both the server and the hd200 are plugged into the same gigabit switch so there's nothing in between them. I also tried an older 10/100 hub and that did not help.

I'm really starting to think it's the network on my server PC. It just lost it's mind again today and claimed the network wire was not plugged in. I powered it off and on and it was happy again. I bought a new gigabit pci board but I'm having trouble getting that to work. The PC better watch out because I'm very close to replacing it with a Mac

FYI, watching video on the server PC is fine.

[PiX64]

I think you hit the nail on the head. At least that is the next thing i would do. Try a different NIC in the server and see what happens.

Is it possibly you got spyware/adware/malware hijacking your NIC?/

[storello]

Well the new nic worked for about 5 mins. so now I'm reloading Windows from scratch. If that doesn't do the trick it's off to MicroCenter for a Mac mini. The worst part is having to reload Windows Meda Center, which was so terrible that I wound up here in the first place.

Thanks for the help.

[PiX64]

is the mini to replace your server?

If so do you only have external capture devices?

Also if you already purchased a SageTV Windows licence, you will not be able to use that key for mac mini. you would have to purchase the software for the mini seperatly.

just a few thoughts

[storello]

Thanks for the help. I think this time I really do have the problem solved. There must have been some rogue software trashing the network on the server. It's worked fine ever since I reloaded Windows XP.

I do plan to eventually replace the Windows XP server with a Mac Mini but now that can wait until it acts up again.

[PiX64]

Awesome. Glad to here you got it workig.