HD Media Extender and Online Videos

[skyeclad]

I just received my HD Extender today and have played with it for about an hour. So far I've had mixed results. My first impressions were that I must have had a great unit because I didn't see any UI slowdown issues, HD playback was great and even my IR was more than satisfactory.

Then I came back to the unit after dinner and I noticed that the UI was extremely sluggish. I checked my client and noticed that the SageTVService kept spiking it's CPU utilization. I decided to kill another Java app, DVarchive. This ended up crashing Javaw.exe which was a good thing. Once down, my CPU utilization for SagetvService went way down and the HD Extender UI became very responsive and snappy once again.

Anyway, one thing that I have not been able to do with the Extender is to play the new streaming online videos for more than 10 seconds before they stop. When I went to play one of the podcasts that need to be downloaded first, it began to play but the voice was very high pitched and unlistenable. I'm going to be sending in a support request. Anybody else experience this?

[garyellis]

Did you update the firmware?

With mine, I had problems with the online videos..Once I updated the firmware, the online videos played fine..

Gary Ellis

[Tej]

I had a similar experience at first. Upgrading to the latest version of Java (mine says 1.6.0_03) dropped the CPU utilization from 50% to under 5%. Might be worth trying.

[hemicuda]

I tried one of the Hubble HD 'channels' that were added w/ 6.3x but never got any audio off of it. waited several minutes for the mandatory buffering too.

[skyeclad]

Updating to the latest firmware was my first activity. Well I just checked the extender again and I was able to view streaming videos but the same videos that Iwas downloading and then viewing still play back with the audio sounding more like Alvin and the Chipmunks. The particular videos in question are the Let's Go Show music videos in the Kids area. Can you try these?

[Ron]

I can't get online video to play at all. It gives me a message that it won't support AVI, MPEG4 and something else. I don't get it, as on my client I can play online videos just fine.

I was trying some of the HD ones. Any suggestions??

BTW-I've got the latest firmware.

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by Tej

I had a similar experience at first. Upgrading to the latest version of Java (mine says 1.6.0_03) dropped the CPU utilization from 50% to under 5%. Might be worth trying.

Yes, I've been using the latest version of Java too.

[skyeclad]

I've noticed a new and more troubling problem with online videos. Quite often when playing a video I notice that when the buffered portion of the video has finished playing, the Extender drops back to the video browser screen as if the video were done. For some reason it stops downloading any more of the video after maybe 15 seconds of buffer has downloaded. I don't have this problem on the server.

Also, even after updating to the latest firmware, I still can't play the Let's Go Show music videos in the Kids area without hearing high pitched audio. I would love it if someone else could try this and let me know if they hear the same thing.

[skyeclad]

Well, with the latest firmware the chipmunk audio is gone from the Let's Go Show Podcasts but the issue where only a 10-15 second buffer is played and then the video stops altogether is still occurring. I actually think it's worse now because I couldn't get any videos, other than ones that only play after completely downloading, to play.

Does anyone else have this problem? If not, is there a parameter that causes this in the properties file?