HD-HomeRun, Sage, and capture device failure while starting recording

[wildgoose]

Ok I am having an annoying issue with my Sage TV setup, and I can’t seem to find a solution.

I have Sage v7.1.9.256 running on Win7 64bit system. HD-homerun with latest firmware, 20120128. Every now and then, especially if I restart my Win7 machine, I’ll get some errors when Sage starts recording. The result is I’ll miss the first 1 or 2 minutes of the recording while sage resets the device and try recording again.

It usually throws two errors, one after another:

8:00pm

Error – Capture Device Failure while Starting Recording

The capture device input Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner XXXXX Digital TV Tuner had a failure while trying to start the recording of “….” On …. On physical channel xxx at [date].

8:01pm

Warning – Halt Detected in Recording

The device input “Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner …” stopped producing data while recording “….” On XXX on physical channel XXX. SageTV will try to reset the device. This may be caused by a channel that is no longer available.

I seem to have better luck if I manually start the HDHomeRun by watching some TV in Sage, which sometimes triggers a similar warning. But if I try again, it works, and subsequent recording seems to start successfully.

This is a clean install of Win7 with clean install of SageTV (other than migrating my old .bin file). I swear I did not have this problem when Sage was running on my old XP system. When I upgraded to Win7, hd-homerun software install forced me to upgrade the device, and I started to having trouble ever since.

Has anyone seen similar problems? I am not sure if it’s a problem with Sage, a problem with hd-homerun’s Win7 driver, or Windows 7 itself. The computer/hd-homerun is connected directly via a HP gigabit switch.

Also recently hdhomerun released a new firmware, and I upgraded to it. At first the issue seems to be better, but lately it came back again…

Thanks in advance.

[gplasky]

I have seen this with my HDhomeruns and OTA stations. I made some NIC changes and it seemed better. But it is randon and usually only the first tuner that is used. Usually a minute or two and then it's fine the rest of the evening. Although if enough time lags between recordings it might happen again. On WHS 2011 with an Itel NIC. Not the latest HDHR firmware yet.

Gerry

[wayner]

I also have had this problem. I don't do a ton of recording of OTA shows but this was happening to me when recording 30 Rock on my HDHR (I have one of the older ones with two inputs) - I would get the error message and the first 1-2 minutes of the recording would fail, but the rest would be fine.

I haven't updated the HDHR firmware in a year or two.

[drewg]

I wonder if it is an ARP cache problem on the HDHR. I've seen this problem very occasionally also, but with a Linux server. I cannot reproduce it.


If anybody can reproduce it, does it help if you open a command prompt and start a ping of the HDHR, and then just leave it running forever?

Drew

C:\cygwin\home\drew>ping -t 192.168.200.110

Pinging 192.168.200.110 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.200.110: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.200.110: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.200.110: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.200.110: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
<....>

[wildgoose]

Ok I thought it might be the firmware update that broke something, but since some of you are seeing this on old firmware too, then that might not be it..

The problem seems to occur when Sage hasn't recorded for a while. I have a recording yesterday at 10pm, and thought I test it by just watch some TV, and sure enough, the first time it fails, and tune to the channel again worked. After that, the 10pm recording worked without any problem.

For this ping/arp test, do I need to ping hdhr from the SageTV server? Or would a different machine work? My sage server is not up 24x7. Perhaps I can try a test to just ping the hdhomerun before I start the recording to see if this helps...

[wayner]

Originally Posted by wildgoose

The problem seems to occur when Sage hasn't recorded for a while. I have a recording yesterday at 10pm, and thought I test it by just watch some TV, and sure enough, the first time it fails, and tune to the channel again worked. After that, the 10pm recording worked without any problem.

This is consistent with what I am seeing. It is almost like the HDHR needs a couple of minutes to "warm up" before it is able to capture the stream.

Has anyone tried contacting Silicon Dust?

[drewg]

Originally Posted by wildgoose

For this ping/arp test, do I need to ping hdhr from the SageTV server? Or would a different machine work? My sage server is not up 24x7. Perhaps I can try a test to just ping the hdhomerun before I start the recording to see if this helps...

Yes, you'd need to ping between the sagetv server & the HDHR to test this theory..

Drew

[wildgoose]

Yesterday I had a recording from 9-10pm on ABC, and at about 10:20 I used the HD300 to watch ABC again.

The recording from 9-10 was fine, but the manual watching triggered the error again which was a bit surprising. I have two tuners on the HDHR and not sure if the recording/watching was using the same one or not.

Have not contacted silicondust. Won't they just say, it must be a bug in Sage and since it's no longer being supported, you are SOL?