-4,0x80004005 what could cause this error?

[tvmaster2]

Ever since receiving my RMA'd HD PVR, I have been getting this error quite a few times: -4,0x80004005 - playback rendering error.
I re-installed all the Hauppauge and SageTV software, with latest drivers and Java updates as they appear

For example, when SageTV changes a channel for a scheduled recording, when the clock runs through the top of the hour (or any time when a program change occurs on a channel based in the TV guide data), and when manually selecting a different channel.

Also, using my HD200 in a different room can trigger this error code to appear on my server running SageTV Media center.

Usually, I also lose any program data from the point where the error occurs until I either reset everything, change a channel, etc., aka SageTV stops it's recording completely.

I have noticed this error reported across many threads, but there seems to be a great lack of resolution concerning it.

[rbruce25]

Sage TV playback error (-?,0x80004005)
Sage TV playback error (-?,0x80004005) or most playback errors.

I tried many suggestion to get the problem resolved but all of the suggestion were a dead end. I tried re-installing SageTV and ny Hauppuage DVR-1850 tuner card drivers but that did not work as well. I tried removing all entries in the registry and from the hard disk and that did not work either. I tried the debug and the logs and that was a dead end also. Finally I just started to work backwards as to what had changed on my system. I had not installed any programs or any updates for weeks, what was the problem.

Well after following the system restore log, the windows installer logs, the event logs, I find a little simple change that was not an update, installation, repair or even a quote & quote change.

it is this simple. If you have multiple media players ( WinDVD, CyberDVD, media player classic, VLC, iTunes, etc...) and video capture software ( SageTV, Pinnacle Studio, AvertV, etc...) I found that they are all fighting to register as the default playback device for file types. I found the by just running say Windows Media Player 11 but have Windows Media Player Classic set as my default, Windows Media Player 11 changes the default playback association, Now you think this is minor, but in this case it is not. Because I have AC3Filter, FFMPEG, MainConcept MPEG2, CyberLink Decoder, Pinnacle Studio Decoder and my list goes on. This caused and in correct mapping for the decoder for audio (in some cases video but have not proven that though) but I have for audio. Just by opening a video from explorer and looking at the audio render that was being used and then matching that to the render in SageTV correct the playback error. After testing several different senior's, I was able to correct the playback error each time by selecting the the current audio render that was in focus.

I have set my file association to have Media Player Classic and my default audio player, and the external plug-in set to AC3filter for MPG streams and this is now working fine. Since I cannot prevent auto association especially for Microsoft products I created a vb script that reverts me back to my default Media Player Classic.

I tested this by opening Media Player 11 and guess what SageTV had the playback error again. Ran my script and open SageTV and the error was gone.