HD300 menu slows down and speed up then slow down

[TechBill]

One of my HD300 is acting strange, I two HD300 on my home network.

Sometime when you change or move on SageTV menu, one of my HD300 would slow down to a crawl and blue led on HD300 would go off then led come back on and menu start moving again or pick up speed.

It would happen off and on but it seem to be happening more often now.

HD300 is connected directly to a Netgear N600 router, I have read another post about gigabyte network may be causing the issue and locked my network to 100MB but the result still appear when network is lock to 100 MB speed.


Any idea what up with this?

Thank you

Bill

[TechBill]

I am hoping someone can chime in on this

It happening to 2 of my HD300 extenders now

Bill

[parkimar]

I've had a lot of problems recently with my HD300.
I would have sloooooow menu access that would then suddenly play catch-up.
same on some video files - and navigating the tv guide was horrible !

I removed all themes and went back to the stock theme and also got rid of the plug in that enabled sage restart from the menu and now (fingers crossed ) it seems to be working nicely. (only for a day or so - so I'll keep monitoring).

My advice would be remove as many plugins as you can and see if that helps - then add them back one by one until the problem starts again. (Assuming it stops !).

Good luck !

cheers

Mark

[KryptoNyte]

Just a few other things that may be worth trying;

1) I have one HD300 that will occasionally slow down for unknown reasons, say once a week or so. I can only get it moving again by pulling the power plug out of the back of the unit, leave it out for about 20 seconds, and plug it back in. This brings the unit back up to full speed each time.

2) This thread talks about clearing out the properties file for each client/extender;
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...82&postcount=7
That properties file stores all the info for the respective extender, for example, if you have Gemstone installed and you remove the properties file for a given extender, the extender has no config and will start fresh with the SageTV interface. This might be an option, to start fresh with each extender.

3) It could be a plugin like Parkimar mentioned. Or maybe even the Java Heap setting depending on your installed plugins. I was, however, under the impression that the java heap size had more impact on computer based clients than extenders.

4) Network speed/quality issues. I'm not sure what an optimal connection to an extender should look like, or how to test it. Maybe if Routerunner stops by this thread, he may have some methods for testing the path from the server to the extender. One gent did mention that his laggy extender problems were solved by purchasing a quality gigabit pcie ethernet adapter, rather than using the on-motherboard ethernet adapter (on the server). I've considered doing this myself, just to have a dedicated piece of hardware on the server that negotiates the network traffic.

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by parkimar

I've had a lot of problems recently with my HD300.
I would have sloooooow menu access that would then suddenly play catch-up.
same on some video files - and navigating the tv guide was horrible !

I removed all themes and went back to the stock theme and also got rid of the plug in that enabled sage restart from the menu and now (fingers crossed ) it seems to be working nicely. (only for a day or so - so I'll keep monitoring).

My advice would be remove as many plugins as you can and see if that helps - then add them back one by one until the problem starts again. (Assuming it stops !).

Good luck !

cheers

Mark

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

Just a few other things that may be worth trying;

1) I have one HD300 that will occasionally slow down for unknown reasons, say once a week or so. I can only get it moving again by pulling the power plug out of the back of the unit, leave it out for about 20 seconds, and plug it back in. This brings the unit back up to full speed each time.

2) This thread talks about clearing out the properties file for each client/extender;
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...82&postcount=7
That properties file stores all the info for the respective extender, for example, if you have Gemstone installed and you remove the properties file for a given extender, the extender has no config and will start fresh with the SageTV interface. This might be an option, to start fresh with each extender.

3) It could be a plugin like Parkimar mentioned. Or maybe even the Java Heap setting depending on your installed plugins. I was, however, under the impression that the java heap size had more impact on computer based clients than extenders.

4) Network speed/quality issues. I'm not sure what an optimal connection to an extender should look like, or how to test it. Maybe if Routerunner stops by this thread, he may have some methods for testing the path from the server to the extender. One gent did mention that his laggy extender problems were solved by purchasing a quality gigabit pcie ethernet adapter, rather than using the on-motherboard ethernet adapter (on the server). I've considered doing this myself, just to have a dedicated piece of hardware on the server that negotiates the network traffic.

One thing I noticed on my HD300 anytime it slow down or pause on the menu for a second or two before jumping to the next line, the blue LED will stay out in sync with the animation speed on the menu when it paused then come back on when it moving.

If it moving fast then it will be flickering fast until it hit slowdown then it would flicker slower in the same speed with the menu.

I don't have that problem with my Live TV menu, just the main menu and recording menu is where I notice the problem most occurs in.

In the TV Menu it pretty zippy for me and I just hold down the channel down or channel up button and the TV guide will zip on by pretty fast. Maybe once a blue while it would pause then resume zipping but that most happen on my bedroom HD300 which is using the powerline adapter for networking.

Our family room HD300 is hardwired directly to the SageTV server.

I did try changing the duplex etc because I saw about this in the other post but it doesn't help at all.

However one thing I do notice is that when you first power on HD300, it nice and zippy then a couple hours later and after watching couple of recorded videos, it would start to have that pausing effect in the menu.

Thanks for your input and I will check the properties files

Bill

[phelme]

I've been having issues with my HD300 too. Tonight the interface jerkiness correlated directly with recordings that were occurring at that moment on my HD-PVR's. If I stopped the recording processes, the UI on the HD300 stopped dragging, started them up again and it started to balk.

One of my HD-PVR's is a network encoder attached to a PC that is on the same gigabit switch the HD300 is on. Now I'm thinking that may have something to do with it.
---
Addendum:

I checked and found the encoding PC and HD300 weren't connected to a true switch, but instead a Linksys WR310N router I have for covering wireless in that part of the house (which in turn is connected by cabling to the main switch in the house). I connected the PC & HD300 to an actual gigabit switch I had lying around and that seems to have fixed my issue.

[KryptoNyte]

After purchasing a separate network adapter, I have only seen this behavior when my SageTV server's CPU is maxed out. If the CPU is idle, or less than 25% usage, then I never see the laggy interface on the extenders. I've never actually been recording when it occurs, and sometimes the extenders work just fine when the CPU is full throttle, so I can't put my finger on what the issue is exactly.

[Evil_Attorney]

This just started happening to one of my HD300's last night. I was tired and didn't play around with it too much. My first thought was that the network port was going bad, but it streams shows fine. I was also thinking that maybe the transformer was going bad. Are there any instances of the wall transformers going bad, like with the HD-PVR?

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by Evil_Attorney

This just started happening to one of my HD300's last night. I was tired and didn't play around with it too much. My first thought was that the network port was going bad, but it streams shows fine. I was also thinking that maybe the transformer was going bad. Are there any instances of the wall transformers going bad, like with the HD-PVR?

Since I posted this last January, it still happening

I have not been able to figure out why it happening but we started to get use to it and learned not to let it bother it since we haven't been able to solve it with all the possible solution found in this forum.

If anyone discovered a solution please share it with us in this thread

Thank you
Bill

[routerunner]

Please test the network performances on your HD300 by following the instruction below:

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

Thanks
Eddy

[Evil_Attorney]

I will test my network performance sometime this week. I also (finally) ordered up a multimeter so I can confirm that my wall wart is providing the power that it should. I have had network issues in the past, but have never seen the blue light stay off for a second or two after an IR command, not to mention that my two other HD300s were working fine yesterday.

[trk2]

The slow down, speed up behavior can sometimes be caused by the delay it takes a sleeping hard drive to wake up.

See this thread:
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53382

[Evil_Attorney]

After a hard reboot of my HD300 and my server, all is well. It was either a fluke or is intermittent.

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by routerunner

Please test the network performances on your HD300 by following the instruction below:

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

Thanks
Eddy

I will give it a test and report back as soon I get time to test my network.

Thank for sharing this.

Bill

[bjkiller]

just power cycle the extender(by disconnection power cable from jack), and it's will back to be fast...

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by bjkiller

just power cycle the extender(by disconnection power cable from jack), and it's will back to be fast...

Done that. It only a temporary fix. I think it the network that causing the issue.


Bill

[TechBill]

Reading many of the posts on this forum about this issue, all seem to point the network as the cause of this problem.

I am thinking of buying a good 8 or 16 port gigabyte switch and connect everything to the switch,

Anyone here know a good off brand switch that may work best for SageTV and extenders network setup?


Bill

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by TechBill

Reading many of the posts on this forum about this issue, all seem to point the network as the cause of this problem.

I am thinking of buying a good 8 or 16 port gigabyte switch and connect everything to the switch,

Anyone here know a good off brand switch that may work best for SageTV and extenders network setup?


Bill

I normally buy LinkSys business line or Netgear Prosafe line (GS116 is a classic) and never got wrong with it.

Eddy

[TechBill]

Originally Posted by routerunner

I normally buy LinkSys business line or Netgear Prosafe line (GS116 is a classic) and never got wrong with it.

Eddy

Thank for the inputs.

I am still trying to determine if I should get a plain switch (no web management etc) or get a managed switch (web management).

Anyone here using managed switches can tell me what the benefit of paying extra for a managed switch? Is it worth the extra cost? Will it benefit SageTV any?

Thank for your inputs and feedbacks

Bill

[TechBill]

I am thinking of this switch, seem to have numerous of good reviews compared to the bad.

http://www.amazon.com/TRENDnet-16-Po...pr_product_top


Anyone reading this post have used or using TRENDnet switches? If so would you post your result? pro cons?

Thank you

Bill