Does Frey Tech Acknowledge 2.1 is Buggy?

[cmaffia]

I long for the stability of 2.0.20.
Frey Tech please fix our SageTV

[Opus4]

What issues are you having & did you submit your problems to tech support? (See the last line in my sig lines, below.)

There was a new dll posted for tuner related problems. Have you tried that?

- Andy

[cmaffia]

Originally Posted by Opus4

What issues are you having & did you submit your problems to tech support? (See the last line in my sig lines, below.)

There was a new dll posted for tuner related problems. Have you tried that?

- Andy

I bought a PVR-150 for my Sage 2.1 upgrade and I have many many UI lockups. Sometimes so bad that I have to do a hard shutdown..
Switching between menus yields un-patterned pauses as if my remote commands are queued up. An uninstall 2.1 and reinstall of 2.0.10 fixes all my issues. It did this even with my Rosyln card with 2.1 which I have returned to Frey and am waiting for a PVR20MCE replacement.

[jptaz]

I hope they release a patch soon since I was told by support that several of my current issues have been addressed and will be in the next release:

- Actisys IR Blaster not working after waking up from Standby or Hibernate.
- High CPU usage when high number of MP3 files are in the import directory.

Also I believe there is a stuttering issue in recordings. I tried an older version of the tuner fix dll, but I still need to see if the new version if it corrects the problem. This is not playback stuttering, but actual missed frames. I believe several people have said that going back to one of the betas resolved this, but I have not tried it. What is strange that with the curren version just recording 4 shows and not running the UI or any clients uses much more CPU than previous versions.

John

[bhageman]

I had multiple problems and reverted to 2.0.1 rather than try to wade thru hours and hours of debugging. I'll give it another shot after the next release.

Weird part for me, I was running the 2.1 beta with absolutely no problems.

[stanger89]

Have you filled out support requests? Remember this is a user forum, while you can get a lot of questions answered and problems solved here, it's not an official SageTV support channel.

In the words of Dan himself:

Keep in mind that this is a user forum only and is not the source for official support of Sage software and related hardware. For official support needs, please go to the support section of our website at www.sagetv.com/support.html.

Jeff's take

[Lucas]

I for one have place support requests for every issue that arose during the short 4-5 hour use I made of 2.1.

Frey support were very good compared to other software companies.
Coming from a software background I know that there are dozens of issues they are trying to tackle so I am being patient since it hasn't been that long since the 2.1 release. I another month goes without any news then I could justifiably start complaining.

For the moment I am exploring the virtues of 2.0.20 with nielm's STV...

[cmaffia]

My common issues are with the UI anomolies and also my Streamzap remote just stops working.

These issues are not patterned.

I can not duplicate the issues as they are random and frequent and this is why I deem 2.1 "buggy".

2.0.20 is reliable as any STB.

2.1 feels very much like a cool computer application that just isn't quite ready for prime time.

NOTE* My sig notes that I am currently using Cayars14.stv but I experience the same issues with OriginalV2.stv. I have uninstalled and reinstalled 2.1 several times on 2 of my Sage Boxes and have experienced the same problems. I'll wait for the fix.

[jptaz]

For the most part I have not seen any UI bugs in a while, but I did see some earlier in our usage. My wife still occasionally sees a problem with Live TV locking up all of a sudden on the client. But I have not seen any times where the Streamzap remote stops working, but we do not use the StreamZap remotes on our primary client only on the others and honestly my wife hardly ever uses her streamzap in the kitchen. My only complaint is that the StreamZap on the SageTV Server box seems unresponsive at times and if I wath the CPU monitor I see both SageTV and the StreamZap process using a lot of CPU. The biggest problem with SageTV 2.1 is it has very bad CPU management. It appears to go off for no reason and start using a lot of CPU once in a while.

cmaffia,

Do you have the problem with the arrow keys where occasionally they will cause SageTV to go back to the main menu? This is my biggest annoyance with the StreamZap. I have learned to always aim right at the IR Receiver and the problem seems to improve, but if I am not exactly aiming at it or let it reflect off a wall it will jump to the menu.

John

[jphhughes]

On November 12 I reported this problem to Fry support:

"On page 23 of the SageTV 2.1 Manual under the Power
Management heading pargraph 3 it states "If needed, all capture devices and
video hardware will be reinitialized so that SageTV will continue to be able
to use them." I recently upgrade from 2.0 to 2.1 and I have two problems.
1. The USB-UIRt no longer function when Sage comes out of Standby and the
Hauppauge 350 is not restarted so no video is deisplayed. It appears that
the cpature devices and USB-UIRT are not being reinitialized."

ON November 14 I received this reply:
"
We are currently in the process of trying to duplicate this issue here. I
will let you know what we come up with."

Not havingheard anything since then I send a follow up request yesterday.
"Have you made any progress on this issue?"

Hopefully they will fix it.

[cmaffia]

Originally Posted by jptaz

For the most part I have not seen any UI bugs in a while, but I did see some earlier in our usage. My wife still occasionally sees a problem with Live TV locking up all of a sudden on the client. But I have not seen any times where the Streamzap remote stops working, but we do not use the StreamZap remotes on our primary client only on the others and honestly my wife hardly ever uses her streamzap in the kitchen. My only complaint is that the StreamZap on the SageTV Server box seems unresponsive at times and if I wath the CPU monitor I see both SageTV and the StreamZap process using a lot of CPU. The biggest problem with SageTV 2.1 is it has very bad CPU management. It appears to go off for no reason and start using a lot of CPU once in a while.

cmaffia,

Do you have the problem with the arrow keys where occasionally they will cause SageTV to go back to the main menu? This is my biggest annoyance with the StreamZap. I have learned to always aim right at the IR Receiver and the problem seems to improve, but if I am not exactly aiming at it or let it reflect off a wall it will jump to the menu.

John

I get that too and in addition I get scenarios where there is absolutley NO remote control at all unless I shut sage down and restart it

[teedublu]

It would save a lot of folks a lot of hassles if there was an offical "Known Issues - ver x.x " thread.

The wading thru posts gets deep and often are frustrating dead-ends. Like no one mentions the version til .... (the last) post. When we finally learn, this is a 2.0 not a 2.1 issue. Etc. Etc.

I know easier said than done, but certainly it would reduce the amount of "noise". Certainly it could save Frey time too by getting less bug reports for the same problem. Once a sub thread for a bug/issue is started, it could have a mechanisim for users to report to Frey their experience with this problem and indicate their configuration, workaround, etc. These focused feedbacks would be useful for us too.

Well, I can dream can't I!

TW

[jptaz]

Well I downloaded 2.2.1 and it still has all the bugs I previously reported. I sent another bug report with the logs. I hope they can resolve these issues since I want to use SageTV as a service and use power management, but if the Actisys no longer works after a resume and it scans my directories every 5 minutes the system will never go to sleep and even if it did recordings would fail on wake. SageTV should not be scanning directories every 5 minutes since this is just ineffecient, but also since I use UNC paths every access to those directories is considered a network access and resets the idle timers so the system will never go to sleep.


John

[jphhughes]

I received the following reply from support regarding the 2.1 issues I have with the 350 and USB-UIRT. This post is not intended in any way as a criticism of Frey's support or product, but rather an effort to share information which may be helpful in resolving these problems.

"John,

I'm able to somewhat duplicate the PVR-350 issue. The PVR-350 will not show
the UI on my TV, but it will show a video. If I disable/enable the UI then
the UI will come back. Is that similar to your issue. This will be fixed in
the next release.

Can you describe to me more your UIRT issue? What happens if you go into the
Setup Wizard -> your source -> Tuner Control and test out the codes. I've
been able to test successfully each time coming out of Standby and also
changing channels.

George"

My reply:
George thanks you for your reply and continued support. I have reverted back to version 2.0 so it will be difficult for me to do any additional testing. Regarding the issue of the 350 it was not just a loss of the UI. Their was no video as well. As I stated in my original report the 350 does not reset itself when coming out of standby (I believe the 250 does) that was the reason I was using the Microsoft Devcon program. The impression I got from the manual's statement was that SageTV had solved this problem by resetting all tuner cards when coming out of standby. If that were true then it should work.

As regards the USB-UIRT its just dead (does not respond to remote) when coming out of standby as I said if I restart SageTV then it starts working again. I don't believe I am the only one having these problems as other have reported them on the forum, with the possible exception of the 350 which is less widely used. At this point I suggest you consider these issues as still open and if I can get back to 2.1 version I will try to do some additional testing.

Thank you again for your help.

My question to the forum, is their anyone using the power management feature in 2.1 successfully with the USB-UIRT or 350?

[sleonard]

My question to the forum, is their anyone using the power management feature in 2.1 successfully with the USB-UIRT or 350?

I tried setting my server to sleep for the first time yesterday. When it came time to wake and record, the system woke up and Sage started recording but the USB-UIRT was not responding and the channels did not get changed. I turned PM off for now until I can troubleshoot further and submit a proper bug report.

[mls]

Supposedly the PM problem has been fixed in the latest Beta release. Give Beta v2.2.1 a try and see if it works better or not. As always, file any bug reports thru Freys bug report section of their beta web site.

[jphhughes]

I did end up re-installing 2.2.1 to do some additional testing and the PM stuff still does not work. The USB-UIRt does not respond to any signal from the remote. This was also confirmed in this thread: http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ead.php?t=8637

I will report it to support after I do some additonal testing. ALso will post future replys in the software beta forum , seems more appropriate.