Unhappy with 6.0.19 upgrade (memory, choppy playback, no Google video,...)

[metropole]

As a long time customer I purchased the 6 upgrade.
I just did the upgrade from a 5x version to 6.0.19.

My setup:
- A P4 1.7GHz, Hauppauge 350,...
- primary display: not used for sage (only for TT)
- secondary display: used as a control display (LCD screen)
- Sage is running on the secondary display
- I use the TV out on the PVR-350 to watch Sage TV (Sony projector)

Here are the new issues:
1.) memory usage is new 100MB!!!, even in standby
2.) CPU is going to 50%
3.) choppy playback on the secondary display, TV out is OK
4.) Google video are not play (secondary display, TV-video out)
5.) an old bug is back: right click on the sage tray icon displays the menu options on the primary display instead of the current display. This is a bug that got fixed a long time ago and is back.
6.) Channel change takes forever

Help and fixes would be appreciated.

[astribli]

Looks like you are experiencing what I and others have found with 6.x.....

[joe123]

Originally Posted by astribli

Looks like you are experiencing what I and others have found with 6.x.....

If you are into torture, go to the Beta forum and get the latest betas.

I did that last year and found myself stuck in Beta Vortex of Hell chasing bugs away by jumping from latest beta to the next latest beta.

Each beta fixes 10 bugs while it introduces 9 new ones. It is progress, but progress of Hell.

I have to be honest and say that the latest stable 6.19? release has been ok for me. But never again will I jump into the Saget Beta Vortex hell again.

[wjohn]

Originally Posted by metropole

As a long time customer I purchased the 6 upgrade.
I just did the upgrade from a 5x version to 6.0.19.

I went back to 5 myself.

[stevech]

Originally Posted by joe123

But never again will I jump into the Saget Beta Vortex hell again.

That's odd - why in the heck do you think that beta testing any software is other than smooth sailing?

[stevech]

Originally Posted by wjohn

I went back to 5 myself.

What was the main issue? I want to use my upgraded software but not risk the WAF. Guess I could fall-back easy enough?

[wjohn]

Originally Posted by stevech

What was the main issue? I want to use my upgraded software but not risk the WAF. Guess I could fall-back easy enough?

I had just gotten rid of the rotating icon by increasing my memory to 2Gigs. As soon as I tried using version 6.019, the rotating icon was back. Also, I still had to revert back to version 4 DirecTVSerialControl.dll as I had to with version 5. This makes me worry that some day the version 4 control will no longer work.

I am generally upset with todays' crop of programmers who have the latest and greatest computers with oodles of memory and storage and therefore have no concept of size. Just look at Vista!

[joe123]

Originally Posted by stevech

That's odd - why in the heck do you think that beta testing any software is other than smooth sailing?

I've written lots of software and I been on both ends of the beta process.

No, Beta's are just that, HOWEVER and this is the big HOWEVER, when you create new software, you try to minimize surprises by doing some amount of testing before releasing the beta.

My personal observation is that very little testing is done inside Sage, the beta software is released so that the public will do the work of "testing" it.

[reboot_this]

Originally Posted by joe123

My personal observation is that very little testing is done inside Sage, the beta software is released so that the public will do the work of "testing" it.

But the SageTV Beta process is not a required step in using the software, it's for those people who are wanting the latest and greatest features, those who want to test out their systems or to help "better" the product, and for those that just cannot resist tweaking the hell outta things, etc.

After all, if there was extensive "in-house" testing via the Sage guys, I would assume the software would have a bloated price tag like Microsoft products. I'd rather pay lower prices and help the development of SageTV (or not help the development, it's my choice) I have pretty much always played part in the betas around here and have learned a lot in tweaking my setup.

I do usually wait until the version in stable here lately, because I'm married now and WAF has to remain high... (the "dog house" is just not comfortable any which way you lay in it , although am looking into heated/cooled/carpeted models just in case)

just my .02

[astribli]

Maybe some of the frustration is it appears 6.0.19 has had several problems and maybe it wasn't tested enough before release? (just look at all the threads about stuttering, hd problems, etc., people having problems after "upgrading" from 5 to 6)

I used to be a test engineer and unfortunately, most people don't think testing is very important. Managers and marketing types are always pushing to get the new product out the door while test engineers and quality assurance people want to test it thoroughly first. It's a balancing act. Its understandable however releasing an unreliable product has huge concequences. That's why I suggest Sage publish a set of reference hardware/software so all us newbie types can simply buy that, put it together, and voila, it works. All the testers inside and outside Sage can focus on testing with those sets of hw/sw and it becomes hugely reliable = more sales = more market share

[mike1961]

I'll would like to comment and say that I love all the features that Sage has to offer. Now, with that said I must add that the 6.0 - 6.0xx version has introduced some major bugs that now has me considering going back to 5. The main reason I went to 6 was the internal mpeg4 support. I used GermSage before that in V5 so I was still able to play mpeg4 files. But, these bugs are not tolerable at all and I have to find a solution fast:

1. FileServer Issue - SageService must be restarted every couple days or it no longer automatically changes channels via the com port on one of the tuner cards (which tuner card is random). I've started a thread on this with no responses.

2. Workstation Issue - Way way more PlaybackException Errors on workstations. I then have to exit Sage and go back in again.

3. General slowness but tolerable.

#1 is the worst and both 1 and 2 are causing the entire family to hate Sage (going way down on that WAF scale).

Mike

[flavius]

Originally Posted by joe123

My personal observation is that very little testing is done inside Sage, the beta software is released so that the public will do the work of "testing" it.

I doubt that. I would assume that there's some sort of Alpha process in place. Anything else would just be too risky, too many people are running those betas in *production* style environments which is exactly what Sage would want.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by wjohn

I had just gotten rid of the rotating icon by increasing my memory to 2Gigs. As soon as I tried using version 6.019, the rotating icon was back. Also, I still had to revert back to version 4 DirecTVSerialControl.dll as I had to with version 5. This makes me worry that some day the version 4 control will no longer work.

I am generally upset with todays' crop of programmers who have the latest and greatest computers with oodles of memory and storage and therefore have no concept of size. Just look at Vista!

I would argue that the feature set of Vista not the skill of the developers is the reason for Vista requirements.

There is no free lunch in nature. Features require resources. Performance requires resources. Robustness requires resources.

[metropole]

In any case, am I the only one who can't play google video?

[FZ1]

One known isssue with 6.0.19 and Google videos is that they don't work using VMR9 with "overlay color keying" disabled. Sage support says it'll be fixed in the next release.

[stevech]

We'd all benefit from some sort of poll/survey on how many people are satisfied with 6.x vs. not.

[naln]

I'm having similar memory and CPU usage issues in Sage 6.0.19....

I am seriously considering going back to Sagev5....for the last week or so, Sage has been building up the amount of CPU usage...it works fine for a day or so after a restart....but the CPU usage increases to almost 60 - 70% (on a XP2100, 512mb ram system)- I wonder if it is some kind of memory leak going on....

and yes- the dreaded spinning sage icon is driving me nuts......
I use an MVP client to watch..
I do not have sage service running, nor do I watch TV on the server except for maybe an hour a day at best....most viewing is on the client.

The CPU usage just beats me....let me not even start getting into the DirectTV dll that was discussed a few posts earlier...I just reverted to a dll a year or so old- and it works great. The new dll would just not change channels after a few hours....

[naln]

Originally Posted by jominor

There is no free lunch in nature. Features require resources. Performance requires resources. Robustness requires resources.

We can assume that most users on the forum have more than the requirements that sage recommends.....

I agree with most of what you said- I just did not think the new SageV6 would be so demanding on resources!!

As for me - I'm considering reverting to SageV5 if these memory and CPU usage issues with Sage6 continue....just don't find it cool to have to restart the media server every other day and have videos freeze during playback on a client.....can't keep upgrading my hardware each time a software update is released!...just wish I had not paid for the v6 upgrade

[astribli]

Looks like it isn't just related to HD.

Just turned on my TV and it is showing photos via the screen saver, which is fine, but it has a spinning icon and can't get to live TV or the main menu, nothing. Funny thing is the screen saver is still cycling through photos and every time it changes a photo, the spinning icon speeds up, then slows back down until the next photo a few seconds when it speeds up again, then slows back down.

All along I thought the high cpu was related to HD material but according to others posting here, seems to be an issue with version 6 as others have had problems with SD or HD. I obviously left my SageTv in some menu or something where it knew to kick in the screen saver, and now it is stuck in that.

Too bad it isn't very reliable. All the features in the world don't mean much if the core doesn't work consistently does it?

[naln]

I've stopped using HD recording....all the high CPU usage problems I have is just with SageV6- only recording...and watching off a MVP client.....

Tuners are hauppauge 250,150 and Aver M180 HD.....

I agree with you that all the additional features mean naught- if you have to deal with these kinds of issues on a "PVR media server"....