New SageClient 2.1 install, no video

[gprichardson1]

Hi all,

My first post. I just purchased SageTV last week. I was far very dissatisfied with WinTV2000 and was looking for something more robust and Sage fit the bill perfectly.

I'm mildly familiar with how SageTV works now after about a week. It works fine on my desktop, both recording shows, watching live tv, and playback of archived shows. I thought I'd give the client a try so I downloaded it from the website and installed it on my laptop.

When I start up the client on my laptop I can connect to my desktop server, see the archived library and LiveTV guide, however if I try to watch any shows, be it live or from the media library archive, I get a black screen; no video and no audio. When I left-click in the window I don't get any information like I do on my desktop server.

I've read some posts about the Sage Service being the culprit in some problems so I stopped the system service on my desktop and opened up SageTV on my desktop. No change on the client.

Anyone have any ideas what might be going on? Sorry if this had been answered in another thread. I searched around but couldn't find anything that applied to what I'm seeing - heh, or in my case, what I'm not seeing.

Thanks for any help!

-Gary

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by gprichardson1

When I start up the client on my laptop I can connect to my desktop server, see the archived library and LiveTV guide, however if I try to watch any shows, be it live or from the media library archive, I get a black screen; no video and no audio. When I left-click in the window I don't get any information like I do on my desktop server.

You might try UNC path names for your video directory - that worked for me.

At the very least you need to use mapped drives with the same drive letter on both computers - but this doesn't work with the service mode so stick to "\\server name\share name\directory name" in your video library setings.

BobP.

[gprichardson1]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the pointer. I just tried UNC pathes on both the server and client. This got me, I guess, a littel farther. I got a quick glimpse of the show info when I go to Live TV but then get the following error window:

There was a Playback Error in playback. Details:
sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-4, 0x80040217):
There was a problem rendering the video portion of
the content for playback.

I don't get any sound or video. When I left-click in the window I get the date/time and volume in the top/right of the window. Right-click gives me the menu where I can close the file.

Same thing happens if I try to watch an Archived show.

FYI, on my server run WinXP SP1 (no SP2 for me yet) and I have a Hauppauge 350 and am running SageTV 2.1.10. The client is running Win2k SP4 and SageTV Client 2.1 (whatever was on the site last night).

I've confirmed that the client has write access to the video storage area, regardless of whether I map the drive or use the UNC path.

When setting up the client is there anything special that needs to be done? I'm wondering if I missed some step. I haven't come across any directions specific to the client so I don't know if I've covered all the bases with the client or not.

Thanks again,

-Gary

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

At the very least you need to use mapped drives with the same drive letter on both computers - but this doesn't work with the service mode so stick to "\\server name\share name\directory name" in your video library setings.

I don't know if you meant that you _have_ to use either mapped drive letters or UNC paths. You do not _need_ to use either one; it will work just fine to leave SageTV using the actual paths on teh server PC.

Originally Posted by gprichardson1

There was a Playback Error in playback. Details:
sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-4, 0x80040217):
There was a problem rendering the video portion of
the content for playback.

When setting up the client is there anything special that needs to be done? I'm wondering if I missed some step. I haven't come across any directions specific to the client so I don't know if I've covered all the bases with the client or not.

Do you have an mpeg-2 decoder installed on the client?

In Detailed Setup -> Video, what do you have set as the renderer & decoder? Have you tried changing either of those?

- Andy

[gprichardson1]

Hi Andy,

Well, now I really feel foolish. I never bothered to a) check what decoder it's using or b) even install a decoder! Doh! Once I got an encoder on the client SageTV-Client worked just as I hoped it would.

Thanks for the help. I should have known to look at the decoder setting...

-Gary