Radeon 5770 + SageTV grief

[GTwannabe]

Recently upgraded my desktop from an nVidia 8800GTS to a Radeon 5770. Fully removed the nVidia drivers and the card works wonderfully in games. The card also seems to work nicely in Sage Client (none of the OSD flicker I saw when my HTPC was running a Radeon 4670)

However... I'm having severe problems with video playback crashing the display driver. HD video has the fewest issues, but it consistently locks/reboots the display driver when you stop video playback. SD video has tons of issues. Fast forward too many times: driver crash. Pause or stop playback: driver crash. Enter/exit fullscreen mode with video playing: driver crash.

Any ideas?

[null_pointer_us]

Same here!

Load an SD show, hit the skip forward (10 sec.) button three times: instant driver crash!

I tried opening Catalyst Control Center and restoring all the factory defaults -- no change.

I tried these renderer settings:

- EVR w/ ATI decoder
- VMR9 w/ ATI decoder (black screen, NO video)
- VMR9 w/ SageTV decoder + DXVA
- Overlay w/ Sage decoder -DXVA

Only the last one prevents the driver from crashing. The quality is terrible, though, compared to the other options. Rarely, it still goes haywire (i.e. pixel format changes halfway through the show, resulting in diagonal blocks), but this can be fixed by stopping and restarting playback.

Strangely, I remember resolving this before, but I cannot remember what fixed it. Maybe the fix was to install a different driver version.

EDIT: Reinstalling the video driver did NOT help.

[archie658]

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

Any ideas?

Which driver version? I returned from 10.3 to 10.3beta because SageTV kept crashing. No such problems in 9.12, 10.1 or 10.2.
The 3D settings in Catalyst CC do influence SageTV's OSD when using EVR.

Otherwise it's a great combo.

[korben_dallas]

HD 5770 here running on Win7 x64.

Some combination of the following got rid of my driver crashes completely:

Catalyst 10.3 (didn't have any crashes in 10.2 either)
updates (client side only) for SageTV Client on Win7, found in beta thread
EVR + DirectShow for MPEG4 playback + Default Audio Renderer

I haven't seen a crash or lockup in a good 6 weeks or so.

[Savage1701]

Originally Posted by GTwannabe

Recently upgraded my desktop from an nVidia 8800GTS to a Radeon 5770. Fully removed the nVidia drivers and the card works wonderfully in games. The card also seems to work nicely in Sage Client (none of the OSD flicker I saw when my HTPC was running a Radeon 4670)

However... I'm having severe problems with video playback crashing the display driver. HD video has the fewest issues, but it consistently locks/reboots the display driver when you stop video playback. SD video has tons of issues. Fast forward too many times: driver crash. Pause or stop playback: driver crash. Enter/exit fullscreen mode with video playing: driver crash.

Any ideas?

Respectfully, have you considered demo'ing a DirectShow decoder pack from Main Concepts or Cyberlink or Core rather than using the "in house" decoder? Your system certainly has the muscle to handle it if it's an i3. It's just a thought, not a guarantee of cure.

I've had good luck on a Win 7 64-bit system with Cyberlink Decoder Pack offloading really well to my 4670. On the other hand, my son's client has a lot of OSD "jitter" with EVR on his 4670, although the programs don't crash.

I have also had many quirky problems with SD off a PVR-USB2 or Hauppauge cards with hardware MPEG engines than OTA ATSC HD, and especially with EVR.

Best wishes in your endeavor.

[null_pointer_us]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

HD 5770 here running on Win7 x64.

Some combination of the following got rid of my driver crashes completely:

Catalyst 10.3 (didn't have any crashes in 10.2 either)
updates (client side only) for SageTV Client on Win7, found in beta thread
EVR + DirectShow for MPEG4 playback + Default Audio Renderer

I haven't seen a crash or lockup in a good 6 weeks or so.

After trying the above, I get driver crashes after seeking six times (instead of just three).

[korben_dallas]

Originally Posted by null_pointer_us

After trying the above, I get driver crashes after seeking six times (instead of just three).

My program content consists only of HD PVR 1080i capture, if that matters.

[davephan]

Another way to fix the problem is to use a HD-200 instead of trying to use a video card. The next step after that is to run the SageTV computer as a headless, dedicated system and put the computer in the basement or some rarely occupied room. Then use the client computer just as a general purpose computer.

Dave

[Savage1701]

I think Dave is correct - I have a couple Clients and an HD200. The HD200 costs $180, but includes a client license and custom remote, so that, in my mind, drives it down to $130 or so.

The lack of headaches alone from a HD200 is worth $130. It saves a ton of energy. I have not found an oddball video format yet it cannot decode decently, and I've got a bunch of them going back a long way. I have one episode of CSI with the bullet time and time slicing that I can decode better on a 4670 than on my HD200. Big deal. I use that episode as sort of an acid test only.

HDMI and audio is so much easier as well. And the power consumption is so low on an HD200. I mean, most higher-end video cards burn 100+ watts just sitting idle, and Sage uses little that they have to offer for gamers anyway. Factor in your computer and you will be lucky if you can get a modern idle system less than 150-250 at idle.

There's that old saying, "I'd rather fight than switch." In this case, I'd rather switch than fight.

[SWKerr]

If you have a PC attached to the TV already and want to do other things with it then a HD200 doesn't make sense. You can't play games, you can't surf the web and Online content is easier and looks better than with playon. Fact is he should be able to get it to work.

Things to check:
Make sure you are current on all Microsoft updates.
Make sure you have the latest video driver directly from ATI\nVidia
Download the latest DirectX http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...7-5ab8109cb4f5
Download the latest Java http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp#win
Install Haali Splitter http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Haali_Media_Splitter
Install FFDShow http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ffdshow
I would use Cyberlink or Arcsoft codecs. You need to purchase these but you probably have them already. The newer ones don't register themselves but you can do it manually if necessary or there are some DVB codec packs that will do it for you automatically.

[null_pointer_us]

@dave and Savage:

This is my PC. My room, my recordings, my screen. I really don't feel like trying to hook up a HD200 to my monitor just to watch the TV programs SageTV has recorded on my PC.

You just don't understand the problem. SageTV brings down the video driver while trying to playback *any* video. Windows Media Player, Real Player, etc. play the same videos without issue; SageTV brings down the video driver.

It's not a problem with the occasional oddball recording. Hitting Live TV *will* kill the video driver. Previewing any channel in channel setup *will* kill the video driver. This only happens on the PC with the HD5770, not the other server (HD3xx0), nor any of the clients (8600GTS, 8600GT, X1550, 9xx0).

My PC worked fine for recording, so I've been using it to diagnose the household video server's cable signal quality issues. SageTV taking down the damn video card driver (which takes 20 sec. to recover every time?) every time I try to do a channel preview has turned a 5 second picture verification into a series of driver restarts and sometimes the video driver restarts leave the SageTV window unresponsive.

I'm going back to overlay, no dxva, which is less of a headache (although the picture quality is awful).

[null_pointer_us]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

Things to check:
Make sure you are current on all Microsoft updates.
Make sure you have the latest video driver directly from ATI\nVidia
Download the latest DirectX http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...7-5ab8109cb4f5
Download the latest Java http://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp#win

Yeah, I did all that before posting. It must be a driver issue. And SageTV might also have a bug that causes the driver to go nuts -- I really do not know enough to comment on that.

Install Haali Splitter http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Haali_Media_Splitter
Install FFDShow http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ffdshow
I would use Cyberlink or Arcsoft codecs. You need to purchase these but you probably have them already. The newer ones don't register themselves but you can do it manually if necessary or there are some DVB codec packs that will do it for you automatically.

Why are these programs necessary?

[null_pointer_us]

I did an "express uninstall all ATI software," rebooted when prompted, and installed Catalyst 9.12 (for HD5770) and Theater 10.3 (for HD650 PCIe). Now EVR+DXVA works fine.

I suppose I'll file a bug report with ATI at some point, but for now I'm off to diagnose cable signal issues and disable the channels that Comcast has begun encrypting.

Moving the family SageTV server to a 2x STB + USB-UIRT setup will be a lot of fun. Quality should improve slightly, though.