SageTV V4.1.5 Beta Is Available

[henk99]

Well, after a few days of trying 4.1.5 i switched back to 4.1.4. That one was at least stable for me.
4.1.5 gave a lot of problems here. Very erratic behaviour. Lock-ups, boot problems, and some other small things.
When i was back to 4.1.4 i was very pleased. this version works flawless here. However, no soft power down, no transcoding. I'll wait untill things get more stable and working properly.

Henk99

[MrApollinax]

I'm having strange issues with the client running over MVP. Here are some of the issues I'm seeing:

1. Progress bar indicator is empty. I see the box where the progress bar would be but there is nothing inside.

2. After finishing watching a show the SageTV recording screen is empty and the HDD indicator shows there are no recordings and that my HDD is empty

3. I've only seen this once but while trying to load a recording I get a green screen and then it goes blank

4. I have to reload STVIs randomly after power cycling. I've had to re-load the comskip STVI several times.

5. related to #2 using malore's menus I see the shows on the left pane but there is nothing on the right pane However the episode information in the top pane.

To fix these problems I have to power cycle the MVP to reload the mvp.bin. It works for a few hours and then one of the above problems happens. It seems that 4.1.4 had a more stable client UI but was very unresponsive and had many playback issues. 4.1.5 has fixed all my playback issues but now the stability of the client UI has gone south.

[kltye]

Originally Posted by Hector

I have this exact same issue (6600GT). FSE was working great in 4.0 and has steadly gotten more flaky. The only way I can start up with FSE in 4.1.5 is to reboot and have it come up already in full screen. If not, Sage throws an execption and exits the first time you touch the remote/mouse.

Does anyone know if there is a way to force Sage to come up in full screen mode other than at startup? Like a command line parameter?

I am curious as to whether this problem is only solved with a reboot or its just that Sage needs to come up in full screen mode if its in FSE (realizing that is not usually the case).

Yes, if you use the parameter -startup, Sage will launch according to how it's been configured to launch on startup in the ui/startup_type (1 is for fullscreen). I've tried it and it works without needing a reboot.

[Stuntman]

I too have now seen what others have posted about the MVP going unresponsive after sitting unused.. Last night I watched a couple hours on the MVP.. lots of channel changes and show changes.. worked Great! About 30 minutes after turning off the TV (Not the MVP) I went online on my PC.. just out of curiousity I checked out SageTV via the web plugin and noticed that one of my 2 mvp's was not registering.. so I tried telneting to them both.. one I got into, the other was 'gone'.. so I powered up the TV's again and noted that one of the two was displaying only a gray screen on the TV, yet the power light was still on.. I used the remote to turn the unit off successfully.. then turned it back on.. the unit loaded the app, proceeded to 'starting the application' then went back to that gray screen without displaying the "Sage" screen... I did this several times, each resulting in exactly the same gray screen.. so then I physically unplugged the power from the MVP and everything loaded up perfectly.. The OTHER MVP had mysteriously powered itself off overnight as well...

Strange things are afoot!

Is there any difference in powering off the MVP via the remote and pulling the power plug? Sure seemed to make a difference for me?

[Hector]

excellent man, thanks. I just logged on to search for this.

peace . . .

EDIT: works perfectly here too.

Originally Posted by kltye

Yes, if you use the parameter -startup, Sage will launch according to how it's been configured to launch on startup in the ui/startup_type (1 is for fullscreen). I've tried it and it works without needing a reboot.

[jptaz]

Originally Posted by MrApollinax

I'm having strange issues with the client running over MVP. Here are some of the issues I'm seeing:

1. Progress bar indicator is empty. I see the box where the progress bar would be but there is nothing inside.

2. After finishing watching a show the SageTV recording screen is empty and the HDD indicator shows there are no recordings and that my HDD is empty

3. I've only seen this once but while trying to load a recording I get a green screen and then it goes blank

4. I have to reload STVIs randomly after power cycling. I've had to re-load the comskip STVI several times.

5. related to #2 using malore's menus I see the shows on the left pane but there is nothing on the right pane However the episode information in the top pane.

To fix these problems I have to power cycle the MVP to reload the mvp.bin. It works for a few hours and then one of the above problems happens. It seems that 4.1.4 had a more stable client UI but was very unresponsive and had many playback issues. 4.1.5 has fixed all my playback issues but now the stability of the client UI has gone south.

I am having all of these issues as well as an unresponsive MVP the next day...just a SageTV screen saver bouncing around the screen. I tried every button on the remote and it did not wake up. It powered off by remote and started again.

John

[neuromancer9]

Well, for once I seem to be in the minority with beta issues, of which I'm having virtually none after updating to 4.1.5. The MVP client response times have improved to a very acceptable level, and I'm even transcoding DivX files successfully! I'm only running a P4 1.5GHz on the server so I figured it was a lost cause for real-time transcoding, but it seems to do fairly well as long as the bitrate isn't excessive. For higher bitrate files I seem to get audio and no video for quite a while before the video finally kicks in (if it ever does). I will occasionally have a small stutter now, but by and large it seems to be vastly improved (in my setup at least) over 4.1.4. Since the nature of a forum like this is usually to elicit problems or negative comments, I thought I'd take the opportunity to post my positive experience with this release. I'm so happy to have DivX transcoding working so I can ditch the hauppauge client finally

I'm running Sage Server 4.1.5 on a P4 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM and a PVR-150 on WinXP Pro, a network encoder running on another WinXP Pro machine with a PVR-350 and one MediaMVP on a wired lan.

-Mike

[VinceInSeattle]

A couple of basic questions on 4.1.5 beta. Setup is a server PC, a client PC, and 2 MediaMVP clients. I downloaded 4.1.5 beta twice and have rebooted a couple of times since.

1. Both the server and the MediaMVPs report Version 4.1.4.68 under System Information. Is there a bug in the report, or did the 4.1.5 install not work?

2. Do I need to do anything to the MediaMVPs to upgrade, other than power-cycle them? Do I need to install the SageClient on the server PC?

3. Is there transcoding support for wma Windows Media music files on the MVPs?

Thanks - VinceInSeattle.

[gplasky]

Just wanted to report in that the wife pointed out to me last night that the MVP "started playing the recording, the guy got 3 words out of his mouth and now I'm looking at some green screen thing I had never seen before. Fix it!' So a MVP reboot and unplug the power didn't fix it. I stopped and started the Sage service on the server and after a long, silent, seemed-like-forever moment the MVP came to life. Seemed like every first action in every screen was initially slow. But if you repeated it, it was actually quick from that point on.

Gerry

[MrApollinax]

Question on the transcoding. Will it transcode all video files not supported by the MVP natively? ie WMV or OGG/OGM formats? I suppose I could try it out for myself but I'd rather not do while I'm still having these UI issues.

[ke6guj]

Originally Posted by MrApollinax

Question on the transcoding. Will it transcode all video files not supported by the MVP natively? ie WMV or OGG/OGM formats? I suppose I could try it out for myself but I'd rather not do while I'm still having these UI issues.

I've messed with the transcoding a bit. I found that I can watch all my .avi files (.xvid/divx with/without AC3 audio) and some .wmv files. Some .wmvs play fine, and others error out with a "no media player available" error. .vob files will run, but I get no picture or sound. I haven't thrown any other file types at it. The list that ffmpeg will do is a lot larger than Sage is configured to look for. It might even be possible to add in filetypes that Sage could only transcode to the MVP, and not even be able to watch natively through Sage.

I read the ffmpeg docshttp://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/ffmpeg-doc.html#SEC16 that Sage uses for the transcoding and it does show that it will do .vobs with AC3, but needs something extra configured to do that. Also, the .wmv issue is because ffmpeg does .wmv7 fine, but has some issues with .wmv8. .wmv9 is not even mentioned.

But since this is all experimental, there isn't any Sage info out yet.

[MrApollinax]

excellent info! Thanks for help, I guess we'll have to wait for Transcoding to become a "offical" feature to get the details.

[MrD]

VOB's are detected as MPEG-PS streams, which means Sage handles it natively (i.e. does not send it to the transcoder).

Until this is changed, I am not sure how VOBs will be able to be streamed to MVP without pre-processing.



-MrD

[rickgillyon]

Anyone else seen this behaviour? I have 6 tuners, and each of them gets channels 1-6 (plus others). If I set manual recordings going for those 6 channels, one after the other, I get a conflict reported on the second manual record (but if I say do nothing it starts the recording anyway). Right up to the sixth manual recording, which once again works, but reports all 5 conflicts! So to get six recordings going I get 15 erroneous conflict warnings...

Is this a bug? Setting the same six as favourites, records them with no conflicts reported...