Placeshifter Error (-19) There is no MediaPlayer that can playback the selected file

[Addict]

Hi folks.

New to this whole PVR thing... (tired of my old Tivo Series 1) ...I'm very computer savvy, but am new to the video world. SageTV, after comparing a number of different PVR's available, seems to be the best UI with the most broad range of features.

However...

I've searched high and low on the forums but have only come up with really old and somewhat irrelevant results to my issues. I'm running the trial versions (with the hopes of buying) of the latest *stable* (non-beta) releases. Hopefully someone can help me with this issue...

I have some DVD's that I've copied to a HD using DVDShrink (no compression, full quality, etc).

I can play them just fine on the SageTV server. I set up a PlaceShifter on two different laptops (one really old, one brand new). Both of them result in the same error message while trying to play any of these DVD's via the imported video section in Media Center:

Error (-19) There is no MediaPlayer that can playback the selected file

I also installed the client (honestly, I haven't figured out what the differences are between the client and placeshifter yet) and came out with a different error message:

There was a Playback Error in playback. Details:
sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-3,0x80070057):
There was a problem accessing the filesystem for playback.

[GKusnick]

There's a FAQ detailing the differences between Client and Placeshifter. One of them, you'll notice, is that Placeshifter cannot play DVDs.

The error you're getting with Client is most likely that you used drive letters for your imported videos, and those drive letters don't exist (or don't contain those files) on the client machine. File paths must be the same on server and client, so you must either map the same drive letters, or import your videos using UNC paths (\\server\share\) so that the client can see the files in the same place the server sees them.

[Addict]

Hey Greg, thanks very much for pointing me in the right direction (and quickly)!

Fixed the drive mapping, but got a new error. Is there anywhere I can get a list of errors and details pertaining to them so I can try and troubleshoot on my own? Below is the new error, any thoughts?

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.

Overall, I'd really like to use the Placeshifter features to occasionally watch movies remotely. Is there any roadmap to include this functionality in the future that anyone is aware of?

Thanks again!
AL

[GKusnick]

There's a Troubleshooting chapter in the manual, but it doesn't include a comprehensive list of error messages. You can usually get some general info about DirectX errors by Googling the hex error code (0x80040217 in this case).

This particular error means DirectX couldn't find a suitable decoder. SageTV includes a generic MPEG2 decoder, but not a DVD decoder. So you'll need to install some third-party DVD decoder to watch DVDs on your client.