Smooth fast forward, rewind, and slow motion on HD300?

[timg11]

I'm thinking of buying an HD300. I've never been able to get acceptably smooth playback without pausing and jitter on my system that uses SageTV running on the computer. In another thread someone suggested the HD300 might do a better job.

Another thing I don't get with SageTV is smooth fast forward, rewind, and slow motion. All I get is skip forward or back by X second intervals. Can the HD300 support smooth fast forward, rewind, and slow motion?

[timg11]

Hi HuntHunt - I see you have the HD-300. I've been using SageTV with the computer directly. It only supports skip forward and back by "n" second increments, and does not do true (smooth) FF and REW.

Does the HD-300 provide smooth FF and REW and slow-motion as well as the skip forward and back functions?

* merged *

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by timg11

Does the HD-300 provide smooth FF and REW and slow-motion as well as the skip forward and back functions?

Yes, the HD Extenders always have (all the way back to the HD100).

[Shield]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Yes, the HD Extenders always have (all the way back to the HD100).

True, but for me it's been a mix 'n' match of success. When I use the slow ff/slow rew, it'll work perfectly for say, a ripped .mkv file, but not work well for HD Homerun content (mpg). It's strange.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Shield

True, but for me it's been a mix 'n' match of success. When I use the slow ff/slow rew, it'll work perfectly for say, a ripped .mkv file, but not work well for HD Homerun content (mpg). It's strange.

All I have are HDHRs and they've always worked. Admittedly I don't use the smooth option hardly at all - I almost exclusively use the jump buttons - but in the few times I have used it or accidentally pressed it, it has always worked fine.

[paulbeers]

The smooth fast forward/Remind really isn't all that "smooth", it is almost like it jumps forward by a certain amount of frames but even then it isn't really all that smooth. While this is only a guess, my thoughts on this are for several reasons:

1. Hard dives have a seek time. Usually this is in the 10's of milliseconds.
2. There is also network latencies.

Both of these combined means that it would be hard for a device to truly do perfect smooth fast forward/rewind especially when it comes to high data streams like HD. I think it's pretty close (when I've used it). Heck I was never even impressed by parents original Tivo and that didn't have network latency and was only SD. Although my wife and I just use skip (when something hasn't been comskipped yet). Fast forward and rewind are really remnants of the old VCR days. On a DVD you skp chapters right?

[Taddeusz]

Smooth ff/rew have been horrible for me. I get instances where I'll be fast forwarding and all of a sudden it will jump several minutes forward and then I'll have to rewind because it went too far. I assume it's something to do with the video because it will happen in the same spot every time.

[MrMark]

Originally Posted by timg11

I'm thinking of buying an HD300. I've never been able to get acceptably smooth playback without pausing and jitter on my system that uses SageTV running on the computer. In another thread someone suggested the HD300 might do a better job.

Another thing I don't get with SageTV is smooth fast forward, rewind, and slow motion. All I get is skip forward or back by X second intervals. Can the HD300 support smooth fast forward, rewind, and slow motion?

It has a smooth fast forward button, but honestly, it's not all that smooth. I have one of my two HD300's connected to the server via gigabit Ethernet but that doesn't seem to help. What actually happens is that during fast forward at any speed greater than 4X, the displayed still frames tend to fall behind the timeline. Sometimes it will hang on one particular frame for longer than usual, and when that happens, a lot of time typically passes so that you miss the point you were trying to find, such as the end of a commercial. You'll find yourself a minute or two into the show, so then you have to skip back multiple times to get where you want to be.

I had been using skip forward instead of Fast Forward and that seemed to work as expected, so I may go back to that method..but I would have to re-program my universal remote to send skip instead of fast forward, so it would take a few minutes.

I also wondered if there was any way to configure the server or extender to advance at 8X instead of 16X...it might be able to keep up better at 8X, but as it stands right now, one button press is 4X and a second button press is 16X...I looked for a configuration option, but didn't see it in the amount of time I had before my wife started getting weary of my tinkering.

With that said, the 300, in general, has proven to be much more like an appliance than the Windows client, so I'm happier than I was (although I'd still like to know why I have to un-plug and re-plug the HDMI cable on the HTPC in order to make the SageTV audio work)...

-Mark