Hauppauge Colossus HD-PVR

[sumrtym]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Video decoder will have lots to do with how things playback. On the foxconn box, no decoder but the TMT decoder will work properly. Even on my HT client with a much more powerful card the TMT decoder is still the best one. All the others have some sort of strange issue or another. Really irritating.

Hmmm...

Ok, I have the arcsoft TMT decoders selected. I didn't when I registered the .ax file have that .dll from doom9, but have since placed it in the TMT5 codecs directory.

I just RE-INSTALLED showbiz from the hauppauge disc. Selecting HDMI optical and HDMI video results in a perfect picture. Thus, somehow, it has to be a setting in Sage causing the audio / video issues.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by sumrtym

Hmmm...

Ok, I have the arcsoft TMT decoders selected. I didn't when I registered the .ax file have that .dll from doom9, but have since placed it in the TMT5 codecs directory.

I just RE-INSTALLED showbiz from the hauppauge disc. Selecting HDMI optical and HDMI video results in a perfect picture. Thus, somehow, it has to be a setting in Sage causing the audio / video issues.

Not sure. I use my colossus' all the time and don't really have issues that can't be fixed by a simple restart of the server.

[TechBill]

I am having a strange issue with the Colossus which is starting to occur more often than before.

Once a week the colossus would just disappear from the server meaning SageTV no longer detect the colossus. (Yellow ! shown on Colossus drivers in Device manager)

Rebooting server does not fix the issue or restore the colossus again.

Shutting down (complete power off) the server then booting it up fixes the issue and the colossus is detectable again by SageTV.

I have 2 colossus in my server and both of them does that at the same time so I don't think it can be a colossus going back or I am unlucky person to have 2 colossus going bad at the same time.

Anyone have any idea what may be causing this issue once a week?

Does anyone know if the issue coming from colossus or from the server?

Thank you

Bill

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by TechBill

I am having a strange issue with the Colossus which is starting to occur more often than before.

Once a week the colossus would just disappear from the server meaning SageTV no longer detect the colossus. (Yellow ! shown on Colossus drivers in Device manager)

Rebooting server does not fix the issue or restore the colossus again.

Shutting down (complete power off) the server then booting it up fixes the issue and the colossus is detectable again by SageTV.

I have 2 colossus in my server and both of them does that at the same time so I don't think it can be a colossus going back or I am unlucky person to have 2 colossus going bad at the same time.

Anyone have any idea what may be causing this issue once a week?

Does anyone know if the issue coming from colossus or from the server?

Thank you

Bill

Mine suddenly started that a few months ago. Updating the driver stopped it completely.

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Mine suddenly started that a few months ago. Updating the driver stopped it completely.

For me updating driver is what started it, so I went back to the last version driver but it didn't help or stop that problem.



Bill

[plnewton]

Hi all,

I was just wondering if it is possible to setup sagetv and the colossus card so it is simply an input rather than sage actually recording at the same time?

The reason I ask this is because I have a satelite TV service hooked up to it that is actually a PVR and I do not do any recordings from it to sage. If I can set it up as a simple imput then I will not have the lag with the remote control, as there is about a 2 second delay between each button press it can be quite frustrating

Any pointers would be appreciated

Cheers

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by plnewton

Hi all,

I was just wondering if it is possible to setup sagetv and the colossus card so it is simply an input rather than sage actually recording at the same time?

The reason I ask this is because I have a satelite TV service hooked up to it that is actually a PVR and I do not do any recordings from it to sage. If I can set it up as a simple imput then I will not have the lag with the remote control, as there is about a 2 second delay between each button press it can be quite frustrating

Any pointers would be appreciated

Cheers

I think you are asking if it is possible to use Sage to watch a source "live" without recording it?
If that is your question, then no, this is not possible.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by plnewton

Hi all,

I was just wondering if it is possible to setup sagetv and the colossus card so it is simply an input rather than sage actually recording at the same time?

The reason I ask this is because I have a satelite TV service hooked up to it that is actually a PVR and I do not do any recordings from it to sage. If I can set it up as a simple imput then I will not have the lag with the remote control, as there is about a 2 second delay between each button press it can be quite frustrating

Any pointers would be appreciated

Cheers

Dumb question, if you don't want sage to record, why is it plugged into sage? The delay comes from it being received by the colossus, encoded, then displayed. My DTV boxes do the same thing.

[plnewton]

the reason for having it connected to my sage server is so I can basically have it where ever I have an extender, the box is a pay tv service so it saves having to pay for extra boxes

[Dave Beddows]

I'm running a Colussus with Driver version: 1.5.30151.0 dated 5/30/2012.

After about 2 weeks I started to get recordings where the audio would drop for about a second every 10 seconds or so.

I was recording at 1080i on component and optical cable.

I recently installed the latest version of Show Analyzer and it may be related as the timing is about right. Not to sure if I like the latest Show Analyzer. It doesn't seem to be working that great and it leaves at lot of orphan files.

I have now set my STB to output at 720p. Does anyone have any feedback. I don't want to have to do restarts if can help it.

The PC is a Quad core on XP Pro with very little else other than Sage required software installed. I primarily use it a a hard drive farm and printer server. It runs McAfee. There are no software suites like MSOffice installed, it is a pretty clean machine. I am using the latest Sage 7.


I have disabled Show Analyzer and may try Comm Skip. I will have to wait to see if my problem comes back.

[Dave Beddows]

Just installed Donate vs of Comskip. So far I really like it and the wonderful plugins that are available for version 7.

[Dave Beddows]

The skipping audio problem came back. I am feeding the card 720p and using comskip now. I haven't tried going to analogue audio cables yet. That may be next. It does seem like Stopping & Starting the Sage TV Service fixes the issue for a time. The time between the issue seems to be dependent on the number of hours of recordings by the Colussus.

I'm beginning to agree with the memory leak in Sage therory. Anyone have a solution yet that doesn't require a restart?

Has anyone seen a plugin that will check to see if a recording is happening before it restarts the Sage TV service. Such plugin could then be set to run every few days.

[Dave Beddows]

Apparently you can configure the driver by going into ArcSoft ShowBiz. Has anyone got any experience with manipulating the Colussus drivers?

[wayner]

Originally Posted by Dave Beddows

Has anyone seen a plugin that will check to see if a recording is happening before it restarts the Sage TV service. Such plugin could then be set to run every few days.

I think Slugger has written an SJQv4 script that does this.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by wayner

I think Slugger has written an SJQv4 script that does this.

You wouldn't happen to have a link for that would you?

[wayner]

It is either in the SJQv4 thread (which is pretty long) or in the Google code repository for SJQv4. In a quick look I couldn't find it in either location but I am sure Slugger would know right away.

[Slugger]

/*
    SageTV backup tool tester (i.e. is it "safe" to stop and backup SageTV?)
    Last Modification: 10 Apr 2011
               Author: Derek Battams <derek AT battams DOT ca>
               
    Use this script as the test for the full_backup.groovy script.  Basically this
    script just checks a bunch of conditions to determine if it is "safe" to shutdown
    SageTV and perform the app dir backup.  Remove/add/modify conditions to your needs
    below.
    
    Remember, return 1 to push the task back to the queue, 0 to tell SJQ to run the backup script
    or 2 to tell SJQ to skip the backup.
*/

import com.google.code.sagetvaddons.groovy.api.GlobalHelpers

    // Not safe if there's one or more clients/extenders connected
    if(GlobalHelpers.isAnythingConnected()) {
        println "There is a client and/or extender connected!"
        return 1
    }
        
    // Not safe if something's recording
    if(GlobalHelpers.isSomethingRecording()) {
        println "There is something recording!"
        return 1
    }

    // Not safe if there's a recording scheduled in the immediate future
    def reqdMins = 30L
    if(GlobalHelpers.getSecondsUntilNextRecording() < (reqdMins * 60L)) {
        println "A recording is scheduled to start within the next $reqdMins minutes!"
        return 1
    }
    
    // Looks to be safe, let's do this!!
    return 0

[sacrament055]

Originally Posted by Dave Beddows

The skipping audio problem came back. I am feeding the card 720p and using comskip now. I haven't tried going to analogue audio cables yet. That may be next. It does seem like Stopping & Starting the Sage TV Service fixes the issue for a time. The time between the issue seems to be dependent on the number of hours of recordings by the Colussus.

I'm beginning to agree with the memory leak in Sage therory. Anyone have a solution yet that doesn't require a restart?

Has anyone seen a plugin that will check to see if a recording is happening before it restarts the Sage TV service. Such plugin could then be set to run every few days.

I think if you look at it what most of us have found is it's not the length of the recording but instead it's the number of recordings. If you stop and start recordings often you'll see it return and this has been confirmed as reproducible by Huappage. They say it's a sage problem so they won't fix it which leaves you to constantly restart the sage service or move the the original HDPVR which for me has worked perfectly.

[phareous]

I restart daily and haven't had any problems. It is just something you have to do with this card

[Dave Beddows]

Skiingwiz made a nice plugin that does a restart from the sage setup menu. It would be nice to modify it to run once a day or once every XX amount of hours if Sage isn't recording. One could then set it for some obscure time like 3:45am.

Thanks for sharing the code Slugger unfortunately I don't know how to apply it. Guess it's time to learn.

I'm guessing a good place to start is:
https://code.google.com/p/sagetv-addons/