Thinking of going to windows media center

[Mailman74]

Sage is my first home media dvr since canceling my satellite months ago. I have not been pleased with the performance of sage and the hd300 extenders. I do not know if it is my ntwork, server, saege, or media pc causing the problems. Often I have to reboot extenders multiple times and restart pc for them to connect and then there is the spinning circle I get that freezes up the navigation. My pc is powerful with 16gb ram and quad core amd black 965. Network is wired cat5e to every room with dlink gigabit switches and router.

It just seems like I can never turn on tv and watch without having to reboot something. I am thinking of going with media center and 360 extenders and selling my hd300's. Any suggestions on a fix or do you think media center will give me the same problems?

[davidjames]

Originally Posted by Mailman74

Sage is my first home media dvr since canceling my satellite months ago. I have not been pleased with the performance of sage and the hd300 extenders. I do not know if it is my ntwork, server, saege, or media pc causing the problems. Often I have to reboot extenders multiple times and restart pc for them to connect and then there is the spinning circle I get that freezes up the navigation. My pc is powerful with 16gb ram and quad core amd black 965. Network is wired cat5e to every room with dlink gigabit switches and router.

It just seems like I can never turn on tv and watch without having to reboot something. I am thinking of going with media center and 360 extenders and selling my hd300's. Any suggestions on a fix or do you think media center will give me the same problems?

My setup is significantly less robust. I have the entry level Dell Zino, with just 2GB or RAM. Wired 100MB network and 1 HD300 and 2 HD200. I never have connection issues, A few months back I had some issues with the HD200's, but they've cleared up with SageTV updates. The only performance issue is about once a week, I'll suffer the freeze then catch up scenario.

I'm not savvy enough to help you debug, but from everything I've read, I'd guess your problems are not with native SageTV.

SageTV is far from perfect, but it does what I need and does it well enough that I have no interest in moving elsewhere.

Good luck whatever decision you make. If you end up selling your HD300's, let me know.

[matt91]

you could try some network diagnostics between your server and the 300 to see if there might be any gremlins in there.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...02&postcount=8

I agree with the prior post that sage, run on a far slower system can be "rock solid" and shouldn't need to be rebooted routinely.

[Mailman74]

I feel like my set up is solid and I invested a lot of money it. This morning extender was hung up on connecting to server, the screen after auto connect. I have soo much lag at times that I want to throw remote at tv. I will check the network and thanks for your help.

[bits]

I have been running SageTV as a service from my main PC to (1)HD200 and (2)HD300 for a very long time(2yrs+) and it has been highly stable and reliable. We use the extenders every day to watch everything from full BD rips to SD recordings. We also use it to watch Netflix and Hulu.

I have never had to reboot my PC or the HDs in order to get them to work. I do not nor have I ever had video studdering or any issue related to SageTV.

A while back I did have some issues that at first seemed like something was wrong with SageTV/Extenders but after replacing my Netgear router the problems ended.

I should mention that my main PC is also my server. I do all manner of simultaneous things while Sage is recording, comskip is comskipping and my wife is watching recorded HD shows.....no issues all!

I am a WM7 convert and there is no way that I will ever go back....not as long as there are options like Sage!

[panteragstk]

I remember someone else having issues similar to this and it ended up being a NIC driver that was causing the problem.

[Audacity]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I remember someone else having issues similar to this and it ended up being a NIC driver that was causing the problem.

I think you may be remembering my previous issue with SageTV clients having video stutter, but when I read the OP's symptoms they sound different than my symptoms. In my case rebooting didn't help, and yes it turned out to be a network driver.

It's always good to update your drivers. There are good tools like Driver Detective that help you identify which of your drivers are out of date. Much better than relying on Windows Update to determine what driver releases you should be running. If you're like me, you keep your video card driver up-to-date and don't pay much attention to other devices on your motherboard. Updating all your drivers when you're having issues is what I learned to do from my experience troubleshooting my new SageTV setup.

[doncote0]

I have also heard about people having issues due to networking configuration or system problems. Bad or improper wiring, bad DHCP, double DHCP and static ip addresses in the DHCP zone have been known to cause problems. Throw in IPX in a network that doesn't need it, a bad HOST file, improper entries for DNS or WINS, pc or router firewall issues (blocking some communications between pc's on a LAN), and the network can get a little messed up and "confused". I have seen issues with different MTU's, autonegotiate problems and ip cache issues. I have even heard from others that PEAP can cause issues and should not be used.

I guess the main point is that your problems may be a least partially network- related. To top it all off, some devices especially audio devices can cause network performance issues (see Realtek).

What you could try:
1. Make sure nothing is blocking or inhibiting the flow of communications on the LAN. Sometimes telling your pc and router firewalls that the local network is trusted is all that you need to do. Some of the more complicated firewalls, require more work. For them, it is helpful to just turn off all firewalls during troubleshooting until the problems are found and eliminated. When in doubt, turn the firewalls off for troubleshooting.
2. Remove any systems that do not use standard networking cable. Turn off wireless or powerline networking temporarily for troubleshooting. If the problems go away, you know the source. Remove or disable any non-standard networking configuration (e.g. link aggregation, vlans, etc)
3. I have also seen people having issues due to networking configuration or system problems. Bad DHCP, double DHCP and static ip addresses in the DHCP zone have been known to cause problems. Throw in IPX in a network that doesn't need it, a bad HOST file, improper entries for DNS or WINS, local firewall issues (blocking) and router local firewall (blocking some communications between pc's on a LAN), and it can get a little messed up. Problems have also come from a difference in MTU's, auto negotiate problems and ip cache issues. I have even heard from others that PEAP can cause issues and should not be used.

The main point is that your problems may be a least partially network- related. To top it all off, some devices especially audio devices can cause network performance issues (see Realtek).

What you can try:
1. Make sure nothing is blocking or inhibiting the flow of communications on the LAN. Sometimes telling your pc and router firewalls that the local network is trusted is all that you need to do. Some of the more complicated firewalls, require more work. For them, it is helpful to just turn off all firewalls during troubleshooting until the problems are found and eliminated. When in doubt, turn the firewalls off for troubleshooting.
2. Remove any systems that do not use standard networking cable. Turn off wireless or powerline networking temporarily for troubleshooting. If the problems go away, you know the source.
3. Type NETSH INT IP RESET ALL at a command problem. Use ipconfig /all to see if your system network configuration looks normal. Type NET VIEW in a command prompt (cmd.exe) and see what you get. (If you do not see any of other computers on your network, you could have a problem.) Reboot and check again.
4. Go to grc.com https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 and check your "shields up!" to ensure your system is resistant to attack from the internet. (this is optional, but still a good idea).
5. Go to broadbandreports.com http://www.broadbandreports.com/tools and run their tweak tester and speed tester. Make corrections as necessary.

Other possibilities could include DirectX and Java issues.

These are only suggestions, but I have never heard of anyone successfully fixing all of their problems just by leaving Sage.

[doncote0]

1. What OS (32 or 64 bit)?
2. Are you using EVR?
3. What video card?
4. How much RAM?
5. What recording devices are you using?
6. How tech savy are you? (Optional, but helps us avoid communication problems.)

[stevech]

Kind of sounds like OP has DHCP renewal faults, where some DHCP clients and servers don't implement the DHCP standard protocol correctly. A cure might be to put a DHCP static reservation for the MAC address of the extender that hangs up overnight.

[isuelt]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I remember someone else having issues similar to this and it ended up being a NIC driver that was causing the problem.

Confirmed. I've had the problem of a bad NIC and it created all kinds of issues. At first only intermittently, later constant. I've had SageTV for about 6.5 years and I've also seen motherboard issues cause some crazy things to go on with SageTV. Bad caps, bad power supply, bad drivers, all of them will do everything from make you scratch your head to tear your hair out.

[Mailman74]

1. What OS (32 or 64 bit)? 64
2. Are you using EVR? No it is set on VMR9 now
3. What video card? ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
4. How much RAM? 16GB
5. What recording devices are you using? HDHR and HDHR Dual
6. How tech savy are you? (Optional, but helps us avoid communication problems.) Yes I am a little tech savy

[doncote0]

Kind of sounds like OP has DHCP renewal faults, where some DHCP clients and servers don't implement the DHCP standard protocol correctly. A cure might be to put a DHCP static reservation for the MAC address of the extender that hangs up overnight.

Good thought, stevech. That's what I do.

If you can set the DHCP renewal to a less like frequency or time, even better.

1. What OS (32 or 64 bit)? 64

Could be an easy fix for you. If it is Win7(X64) and sage is in the c:\program files (x86) directory, it is most likely a UAC issue. Try turning UAC off first. Reboot and try again.

You could also make a copy of the sage directory in that folder, and work to move to it's own directory on c (for example, c:\sagetv). Sage will not have some of the issues to worry about in its own directory at the root of C. How to move it? Shutdown SageTV fully. Copy sagetv directory. Uninstall SageTV. Install SageTV to c:\sagetv Copy wiz.bin and sage.properties files to new directory. Check sage.properties file for C\:\\Program Files (x86)\\SageTV and change to C\:\\SageTV\\SageTV anywhere you see it. Copy any *.frq and *.scn files from old directory copy to new directory.

Did you ever install Java (X64)? If so, install the 32 bit version now (unless moving sagetv as detailed above). See the Java sticky for more info. (Sage must be shutdown completely during java upgrade).

2. Are you using EVR? No it is set on VMR9 now

EVR could speed it up a bit, but you need ui/disable_ui_composite_surface=true in sage.properties for ATI cards. SageTV must be fully shutdown (including SageTVService) to edit the sage.properties file. File has ui/disable_ui_composite_surface=false by default. Change it to ui/disable_ui_composite_surface=true

3. What video card? ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

nice

4. How much RAM? 16GB

very, very nice

5. What recording devices are you using? HDHR and HDHR Dual

No problem there.

6. How tech savy are you? (Optional, but helps us avoid communication problems.) Yes I am a little tech savy

Good.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Mailman74

1. What OS (32 or 64 bit)? 64
2. Are you using EVR? No it is set on VMR9 now
3. What video card? ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
4. How much RAM? 16GB
5. What recording devices are you using? HDHR and HDHR Dual
6. How tech savy are you? (Optional, but helps us avoid communication problems.) Yes I am a little tech savy

With a system like that there has to be a driver or network issue in there somewhere.

[Mailman74]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

With a system like that there has to be a driver or network issue in there somewhere.

That is what I was thinking. You should see a video playing back now. It is choppy and pixelating.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Mailman74

That is what I was thinking. You should see a video playing back now. It is choppy and pixelating.

Do you have an extra NIC laying around you could toss in your server? Preferably with a totally different chipset. For our purposes it won't matter if it is 10/100 or 10/100/1000. If that doesn't work you may try to set up a temporary server on an alternate pc and see if the extender can playback anything from that. The only time I had this problem was when I tried powerline networking and wasn't getting enough bandwidth. Plugging back the long cat5e cable solved the problem. How do the files you are trying to play on the extenders play on the server? If they play fine it can't be the files.

[Mailman74]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Do you have an extra NIC laying around you could toss in your server? Preferably with a totally different chipset. For our purposes it won't matter if it is 10/100 or 10/100/1000. If that doesn't work you may try to set up a temporary server on an alternate pc and see if the extender can playback anything from that. The only time I had this problem was when I tried powerline networking and wasn't getting enough bandwidth. Plugging back the long cat5e cable solved the problem. How do the files you are trying to play on the extenders play on the server? If they play fine it can't be the files.

I am going to spend time on this today. I have some home projects to work on a little then I am shutting off the server and media center pc. My mobo has the built in gigabit network and I checked firmware and it up to date. My network is a Dlink DIR655 router that feeds 2 Dlink switches(DGS2205 & DGS2208). I really appreciate all the help here that everyone supplies.

I just feel like my set up should be powerful enough to run almost anything and I am having problems with Sagetv. There is one thing that has happened quite often. My unraid server will shut off and sometimes I reboot network after the server shut down and when it boots back up my media center gets a blue screen of death. I have gotten about 10 blue screens of death on the media pc that is running sage.

[doncote0]

My unraid server will shut off and sometimes

Magically? What is causing that? Does your SageTV PC record locally or to the unraid server?

I reboot network after the server shut down

What does that mean? Do you reboot the unraid server or power cycle your switch? If it is the unraid server, I would suspect that as being one of the likely problems you need to resolve. If it is your switch, then you need to resolve that. Your switch or router should rarely, if ever, need to be restarted.

[doncote0]

http://www.dlink.com/products/?tab=3...55&rev=DIR-655

Make sure you are using the latest D-Link firmware for your device 1.35NA (released 12/28/2010). This product has had many firmware releases in a short period of time, and many of those releases were aimed at fixing networking problems caused by previous firmware.

BTW, you cannot use securespot anymore. You might want to disable it.

[ElGato]

Originally Posted by doncote0

http://www.dlink.com/products/?tab=3...55&rev=DIR-655

Make sure you are using the latest D-Link firmware for your device 1.35NA (released 12/28/2010). This product has had many firmware releases in a short period of time, and many of those releases were aimed at fixing networking problems caused by previous firmware.

BTW, you cannot use securespot anymore. You might want to disable it.

Assuming it's not an EU model, then the latest is 1.31EU