HD Extender suddenly stuttering

[Enormous]

I got the dreaded "The T.V. doesn't work" call from the wife yesterday. It seems the HD Extender will no longer playback 1080i HD content (playback is extremely slow and jerky), and playing back some DishHD content (recorded as SD via S-Video) it stutters every 5 to 10 seconds. I have done tests, and the problematic playback does not stem from bad recordings. It can play back regular SD content recorded from Comcast just fine. It can play back imported videos just fine.

Prior to these problems, I had not made a single change to anything on my setup for at least a month. The Extender had been running like a champ just the night before. I have been running SageTV 6.3.10 since it's release. Last night, in an effort to resolve this, I tried upgrading to the latest beta (6.4.4) and that did not clear things up. I am running the latest beta firmware on the Extender (and have been since it first came out).

All of my drives are formatted using 64k clusters (and have always been). I checked all of the network connections, and they are secure. No observed CPU spikes on the server when playing back, no network spikes either. The Extender is not overheating, and is cool to the touch. Everything seems normal, except this shoddy playback!

Help! It's as though my rock-solid HD Extender just took a nose dive!

[othy]

When you say you tested to see that the recordings were not bad, you referred to SD recordings. Do you have a way to play the problem recordings on a computer (rather than the HD100) to see if the problem exists there as well?

Are the HD recordings from your HVR-1600s (looking at your sig)? Does it affect all 1600 recordings?

Incidentally, before I got my extender I had my recordings suddenly go choppy on me after months without problems. Troubleshooted for a full day before I finally called my cable co and they told me there was a problem in my area. Doesn't sound like your case, but something to keep in mind.

Tim

BTW, noticed you're from Littleton. I live in AZ now but grew up right by Southwest Plaza mall.

[Enormous]

Originally Posted by othy

When you say you tested to see that the recordings were not bad, you referred to SD recordings. Do you have a way to play the problem recordings on a computer (rather than the HD100) to see if the problem exists there as well?

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I have checked HD recordings, as well as the SD recordings made from DishHD. Everything plays fine on my computer (which is separate from the server).

Are the HD recordings from your HVR-1600s (looking at your sig)? Does it affect all 1600 recordings?

Yes, all recordings that are true HD are made from the HVR-1600s. The extender has trouble playing back recordings from either encoder.

The extender will play back 720p avi files though...

Incidentally, before I got my extender I had my recordings suddenly go choppy on me after months without problems. Troubleshooted for a full day before I finally called my cable co and they told me there was a problem in my area. Doesn't sound like your case, but something to keep in mind.

I would rule this one out as well, because the extender currently won't play back recordings that my wife had successfully watched a few days before.

BTW, noticed you're from Littleton. I live in AZ now but grew up right by Southwest Plaza mall.

We're only a couple of miles from the mall!