So Many Video Playback Problems

[John Colburn]

I had a very buggy first installation of my Sage TV server, client, and wireless MVP, coupled with the bad advice of the Haupp manual that mandated disabling the XP firewall. After a virus, I did a clean install of XP Pro, installed the PVR500 drivers, updated them using the new web files, opened all of the proper Firewall ports specified, and everything worked fine. My cable company just happened to fix their transmission issues on the same weekend and I was immediately thrilled with Sage system performance.

I was ready to apologize on-line for my lack of faith in the Sage/Haupp products (had so many bugs in the first go-round), but I thought I would give it a week to see if the fixes would hold.

So here is where I am after one week.

I have recordings that now vary significantly in quality from show to show and channel to channel even though I am getting great reception on the monitor that is on a splitter leg only 6 feet away from the Sage Server video input connection.

The recorded colors are not right. I do not see any way to control color or black levels.

Finally, the Client and MVP can play back all recorded videos and I can set recording selections from the Server, Client, or MVP, but -------------

Some of the recorded videos as well as Live TV will not play on the Server. I get the message:

-4, OX80040217 "Problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback"

This is bad as Microsoft's Visual Basic development package which gives crytic error messages as well, but there at least one can search MSN to explore what the message might mean.

Before I uninstall and reinstall everything from Sage (I will not reinstall Windows or all of my other software), I want to know if there is an easy fix for this problem.

Finally, where in the heck is the physical "Archive folder". Once you archive recorded, such files can only be found via the Sage interface. I lost all of my archived files when I had to uninstall Sage as there was no way to port them elsewhere. Now, I am moving excess files to another hard drive where I hope to burn DVDs if I really want to keep the files for posterity.

Thanks,

John

[blade]

p. 155 of the manual covers color calibration of your capture devices. If you haven't already, you need to calibrate your display using AVIA or DVE before messing around with the capture settings. The factory settings on displays tend to be way off and unless you've properly calibrated your display already then you don't really know if the colors are correct or not.

There is no physical archive folder. Archived files remain in the recording directory they're just flagged so that they won't be deleted. If you saved your old wiz.bin file you should have all of your old show info, favorites and watched history.

There are lots of things that can cause the error message. Switching from windowed to fullscreen when using FSE, certain audio decoder settings, changing mpeg2 decoders, etc....

Usually a reboot takes care of it and I don't have the problem arise again until I start tinkering with the settings too much.

[John Colburn]

I have not yet calibrated color, but I do appreciate the instructions. Sage manual would not load due to a chqnge in Acrobat version, so had not looked for such info in the manual.

Never knew there were directives on how to back up and not lose info. Is there a backup option somewhere, or does one simply find wiz.bin and write it to one's own custom folder?

Finally, it has been a number of days since I posted. Numerous recordings since then that will play on other client notebooks or the Media MVP. Still having no luck on the error problem above. The message comes up only on the server installation for ALL video files whenever created. Plus the video will not even render for Live TV.

I am beginning to suspect that the latest Direct X update and my poor video card are the issues.

I tried reinstalling the latest Direct X and reinstalled tuner drivers but it made no difference to the server display.

Would like to hear from anyone who had the video rendering issue identified by the error message noted above who believes DirectX or video cards may be the culprit.

Thanks,

John

[Polypro]

See if any of this helps... #6

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...46&postcount=6

Also, What type of hardware are you running? (Mobo Chipset, VGA Card, etc...)

By Default, Sage sets up your recording directory in the default Sage install folder... that can be changed trough the UI. All recordings are kept there and just marked as *Archived* if you so choose...they don't move anywhere. I've never seen a Sage un-install wipe out the recordings, but anything is possible.

I don't use a client or MVP, so others will have to chime in.

P