SageRecorder + SageTV Client locks up machine

[mlar]

This is the deal. I have a PVR-350 on my client machine. I'm using the TV out on the PVR-350 to connect to the TV, and I'm also running SageRecorder on the same box to add a third encoder to my system. If I run only SageRecorder, everything works fine, if I run only SageTV Client everything works fine. But as soon as I start them both at the same time, things will appear to be fine, until all of a sudden (usually 30 - 60 minutes later) the whole computer locks up. Nothing works, no the mouse, keyboard, nothing. It's just dead (its an EPIA-M10000 btw). I'm wondering if anyone else has been experiencing this? I've tried updating/downgrading driver's, etc, to no luck. I've added insane amounts of cooling, replaced the powersupply, to try to remove some of the potential hardware issues from the picture.

What I've been able to determine so far, is that it only happens if I have SageRecorder and SageTV client running at the same time, and ONLY if I have watched something with SageTV client. If I just start both up, without watching a recording, it will work. But if I watch a recording for just 1 second, go back to the main menu, and put SageTV client to sleep, the machine will lock up after X number of minutes. Logfiles etc leave no indications of what the problem might be.

I guess, for now, I'll have to decide what is more important for me, good TV out quality or three tuners ;)

[Narflex]

The drivers hauppauge just released suposedly has some updates related to the TV out on the 350. Have you given those a try yet?

[mlar]

I didn't try the 1.7.21143 drivers on shspvr, simply because someone wrote:

"
A LOT worse for me....

Colors reset back to some weird default, not the same values as the default button.

TV-out doesn't work on my PVR-350...
"

so I didn't even bother. Maybe I should try them and see what happens. I'm currently running the 1.17.250.21126 drivers (beta) that I found on the same forum.

[shodge]

I was going to start a new thread but....

I've been playing with my new PVR-250 card with SageTV and SageClient on a nearby computer. I settle on a program and let the server go and start the Client. The Client runs for 45-60 minutes then starts to stutter, then locks. The Client computer keeps running and I can use the Task manager to kill the Client. Re-running the Client works for another hour or so.... then we repeat.

I noticed that the Client was LEADING the server by 1-2 seconds. This seems odd to me. What I am wondering is if the Client somehow gets ahead of the server and chokes. My latest test uses a small delay on the Client [to put it behind the server]. I am still running after 1.5hrs and no lockup.

Is this similar to what you are seeing?

-Stan

[Narflex]

That's an interesting idea Stan.

So if you just pause the client for a couple of seconds every hour, it can go without hanging?

If that's the case, then I understand the problem. It's clock drift between the client and server which cause the client to get ahead of what is actually live. And pretty bad clock drift at that (couple seconds an hour). The clock on your sound card is what controls the timing for playback. What kind of sound card do you have on the client?

[mlar]

As far as the issues I'm seeing, I doubt that they are related to this. My machine crashes even if I'm not watching watching anything, as long as both the SageTVClient and SageRecorder are running at the same time.

FYI, the latest drivers from Hauppauge does not have working TV-out for PVR-350, all you get is colorbars and the sound. I tried making a hybrid by using parts of the old driver and new driver, but it is still crashing in the same manner. I haven't yet been able to determine if the crashes happen whenever SageRecorder stop/starts recording, or if it is completely random. My next step will be to try running some other recording software (maybe WinTV?) at the same time, to see if it is SageRecorder itself that is causing the crashes, or of it is a driver/hardware issue.. Maybe I'll be better off with an Xcard for TV-out instead, and put the PVR-350 in some other machine, purely used for encoding.

On interesting thing I did notice yesterday btw. Even though the mouse and keyboard are completely locked up, and there is no harddisk activity - as soon as a press the power button on the box (which is supposed to be shutdown), the harddisk starts working, and the OS actually shuts down cleanly. Very strange.

[shodge]

Sounds like my issues are different. The machine does not lock up just the Client. If I kill it off and restart it, were ok until 30-90 minutes later.

Yes if I delay slightly, I've seen no lockup in 2hrs of playback. Seems only a LiveTV issue as well. [goes back to my theory].

My sound card on the client is a Creative Live! value.

-Stan

[Narflex]

Stan, try upgrading your sound card drivers. If that doesn't fix it, you've got a bad sound card in your client.

[shodge]

While I'll agree that Creative is not so great on drivers, the Live! card has been out for a few years now. And yes I am running the latest drivers for XP.

If I think about it I'll try the client on my laptop and see it it also crashes. [second data point without Live! soundcard]

This does not seem to be a problem when watching recorded videos. I watched two 1hr recorded [favorites] last night with no issue.

I'll try and play with live tv tonight....

-Stan

[cmalinowski]

I hate to dig back up something from seven months ago, but did this get resolved?

I have a new dell 2400 running the client and the recorder with a 350 running video out to my tv (I have a monitor on top that shuts off after one min). Anyway, twice it has locked up the vid-out on the 350 after fast forwarding through about 5 mins of video. It has been pretty stable besides that, but I am concerned that my machine will be recording while I am watching something with the client and it will lock up and I'll have to reboot. I can shut the client down through task manager (although, it does not respond).

I run xp-home, the 350 irremote, client, recorder and that's about it. The sound card is whatever came with the 2400 onboard.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

[shodge]

Hmm,

I cannot say which Sage version cured this, but my issues no longer exist. I've never had an issue with FF/REW. My system running 1.4.10 has been running for over 2 months straight. My guess is you have a problem with the 350 video encoders [output]. It seems there are other with similar issues.

-Stan

[mlar]

I'm still having issues, but not as frequent (ie, SageTV + SageRecorder combination crashing my machine). Average uptime on my PVR-350 client system is about 2 days now. I was up to about 7-14 days with one version of the PVR-350 driver, but I upgraded, and since then I haven't been able to get back to that stable state. At least for me it looks like this is due to the combination of drivers and hardware, and not SageTV itself.. Still frustrating nonetheless.

[cmalinowski]

Knock on wood, my problem does not happen a lot. I am trying to pause every now and then just in case that has some effect on it. My thought is that the tv-out on the 350 gets off-timed with the computer/sage, and then confusion happens and it just locks up.

since I have a monitor just above the TV, I've noticed that the timing between the output to the monitor and to the tv is not consistent. Sometimes it is right on, sometimes it is a fraction of a second off. I don't know if this is a culprit, but...

Thanks for the info, I think there is another thread on this in the SageTV Software section. I will head over there.

Chris

[mikejaner]

since I have a monitor just above the TV, I've noticed that the timing between the output to the monitor and to the tv is not consistent. Sometimes it is right on, sometimes it is a fraction of a second off. I don't know if this is a culprit, but...

This is a different thing. What you are seeing is the difference between the software decoder, and a hardware decoder playing back the same video.

mikejaner

[cmalinowski]

Originally posted by mikejaner
This is a different thing. What you are seeing is the difference between the software decoder, and a hardware decoder playing back the same video.

mikejaner

Got it. Thanks. So far, up for a few days.