HD-PVR on Windows Home Server. Placeshifter is black

[psychoholica]

Just ordered the bundle and am having some strange behavior. I have the HDPVR with the SageTV addin installed on Windows Home Server. I have installed placeshifter on several computers but they all have the same result, a black screen from my cable box. Whats strange though is if I use the Xbox 360 as a component source it works fine. The video records fine, I can watch the .ts file with Media Player Classic.

Basically, the video records but with Placeshifter I get black video.

I have tried both XP and Vista with both ATI and Nvidia graphics.

Any ideas?

[ghostlobster]

Have you installed the arcsoft decoders on your client? I'm not 100% certain if they are required, but that would be my first guess.

[psychoholica]

That wouldnt explain why my 360 works as an HD source but my cable box component output does not. 360 i see clearly, STB is black on placeshifter yet records fine.

[Yorick]

I discovered a peculiar issue last night where placeshifter just shows a blank screen when trying to playback an HD-PVR recording. It will play everything else just fine, including OTA HD, but HD-PVR files are a no go. My HD Extenders will play back everything without issue.

I don't know if this is related to the new software that just came out. I upgraded everything but I don't know if the problem existed before the upgrade or not. I just got the HD-PVR recently.

BTW, I was using placeshifter over a wired network last night. I was searching the forums this morning for a solution when I ran into this thread.

[psychoholica]

Mine is black all the time, regardless of what is coming from my cablebox. Strangely I installed the Sage Client and it works just fine. Im not really quite sure the difference between them actually just that the client works, placeshifter does not.
I did install my HVR-1600 card and it works just fine with placeshifter. both OA HD and Svideo work fine.

[Fuzzy]

I don't believe the SageTranscoder that does the conversion/streaming to SD clients and Placeshifter supports the H.264 files generated by the HD-PVR. I believe work is being done on the ffmpeg front to make them work, it's just a matter of that work making it's way to sage. It will require a fairly powerful Server CPU to do the transcoding, when it DOES get here.

[scoob101]

Originally Posted by Yorick

I discovered a peculiar issue last night where placeshifter just shows a blank screen when trying to playback an HD-PVR recording. It will play everything else just fine, including OTA HD, but HD-PVR files are a no go.

I have the same issue. I recently download the trial sage software for WHS, and I have installed placeshifter on 2 laptops.

One laptop will show TV, including HD content when I view over my home LAN.

The other laptop shows a black screen when trying to view HD.

Can someone tell me how H.264 is decoded on the client with paceshifter? Is it using its own codecs, or it it relying on the user to install teh required codecs seperatley?

Really hoping i can get this working in the next couple of weeks, so I have a reason to buy the software and an extender or 2!!

[psychoholica]

My problem cant be the decoder because it works with the xbox but not the cable box. also the same machine that has placeshifter and the client works, but only the client. placeshifter is black.