2 HD200's Render .MKV Differently ?

[PeteCress]

My home HD200 renders a .mkv video a-ok.

But the HD200 at somebody else's house - connected to my server over the WAN - renders that video without sound.

I am pretty sure both boxes are at the same firmware/release level.

The problem HD200 has been rebooted by disconnecting/reconnecting power.

Wondering if maybe going over the WAN changes something under the hood....

Sound also missing when they try to view the problem video via PlaceShifter on a laptop.

No issues with sound on other file formats.

Has anybody else been here?

[Fuzzy]

HD200 on a different LAN runs essentially the same way placeshifter does (transcoding on the server to a low profile, low resolution MPEG4 with stereo AAC), so the same behavior is expected in both situations. That said, there is apparently something with the format of that .mkv file that SageTVTranscoder.exe is not able to handle the audio from. What is the media format string from the file (on detailed info in sage)?

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

What is the media format string from the file (on detailed info in sage)?

MATROSKA.264 16:9 1090P@ 24FPS
AAC@48kHz 5.1 ENG
sub pic: Eng 0x0000
sub pic: Eng 0x0000
sub pic: fre 0x0000
sub pic: ger 0x0000
sub pic: spa 0x0000

Somewhere in the back of what's left of my mind, there's something about AAC being problematic in general - even with VLC Media Player.... maybe licensing issues ?

Also, I tried copying the problem video to a USB stick and then playing it on my local (problem-free) HD200 directly.

Took awhile to come up, but when it did play.... the sound was missing.

I guess my next step is to unplug that HD200 from the LAN and see if it acts the same way.


From the outside, it is starting to look like the HD200 and PlaceShifter do not do AAC, but the SageTV server on my PC does.... and maybe the WAN handling presents the low-rez .MPEG4 file (still with AAC) to the remote HD200 and the remote HD200 then decodes and plays it locally - as with the USB stick.....

OTOH, when I am at home and my own HD200 is connected to the SageTV server over my LAN, maybe the SageTV server decodes/plays the video and ships a video+sound stream to the HD200 which simply renders it to the TV screen.

Does this sound even close?

[Fuzzy]

No, I can tell you that ffmpeg (sagetvtranscoder) can handle a proper .mkv file with those tracks just fine. There is likely a problem with that specific file. You might try simply remuxing it, and see if it can deal with it then.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

No, I can tell you that ffmpeg (sagetvtranscoder) can handle a proper .mkv file with those tracks just fine.

By "Those Tracks" do you mean AAC ?

[Fuzzy]

yes, you said the issue was no audio, so that would be the AAC track that is the problem child.

[PeteCress]

Also .MKV files.

I find that when my HD200 is running off the LAN, I can press Enter on the remote, and the resulting popup gives me a Subtitles option.

OTOH when somebody else with an HD200 - but out on the WAN - opens the same .MKV, the resulting menu does not offer a Subtitles option.

Sounds logical in the context of the server decoding the .MKV and just sending a video steam over the WAN... but I just wanted to make sure that there was not some workaround available within SAGE before I re-code all the files.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by PeteCress

Also .MKV files.

I find that when my HD200 is running off the LAN, I can press Enter on the remote, and the resulting popup gives me a Subtitles option.

OTOH when somebody else with an HD200 - but out on the WAN - opens the same .MKV, the resulting menu does not offer a Subtitles option.

Sounds logical in the context of the server decoding the .MKV and just sending a video steam over the WAN... but I just wanted to make sure that there was not some workaround available within SAGE before I re-code all the files.

When you connect remotely, the extender goes into Place shifter mode - that means the server transcodes everything on the fly to save bandwidth. The code behind this is a bit outdated and doesn't make use of the latest codecs, so picture quality isn't great, and I would bet the subtitles get lost in the process.

[PeteCress]

Originally Posted by Tiki

When you connect remotely, the extender goes into Place shifter mode....

I don't suppose there is any way to fool the HD200 into thinking it is connectiong remotely instead of locally... ???

The reasoning being that maybe with the higher bandwidth we have today compared to when the PlaceShifter code was written maybe the higher bandwidth would suffice to support a LAN-type connection.