Strange SageTV HD200 Behavior

[ptaylor]

It could be something related to Windows, because just a few weeks ago, I moved from Windows XP MCE, to Windows 7 Professional for my server. It's running Java 6, Update 10. The HD200's are running 20090903 firmware (the latest release version).

Several days ago, my wife complained that Sage stopped working on both HD200s while I was at work. When I got home, I started up the SageTV UI on the server and it seemed fine. I stopped and restarted the Sage Service and all was well again with the HD200s.

Today, it happened again. While my wife was in the middle of watching a show, the screen simply went black. She could turn off the HD200 and turn it back on, and it would go into standalone mode, then auto-reconnect to the server, at which point the screen would simply go black again.

I got home, checked the Windows Event Log on the server, but everything looked pretty much normal. I could start up the Sage GUI on the server just fine. There was one big difference this time though. My daughter started a Sage Client on a PC, and it worked fine. (Not a Placeshifter client)

I understand that the HD200's work as PlaceShifter clients, so I'm guessing that something is hosing up the server, related to PlaceShifter clients.

I ultimately rebooted the server. Within just a minute or two, the HD200's came up, attached to the SageTV server. Before they came up, they were on a black screen (after starting the auto-connect to the server), just sitting there, and without me doing anything else, they came up, connected to the server, like they were just sitting there waiting for the server to respond to them the entire time. This makes me think that the PlaceShifter server portion died and didn't restart, though the fact that the HD200's saw the Server on the network really makes me wonder. Perhaps a Windows Firewall issue?

[PiX64]

What do you have your MAX java heap size set at on the new server? If you are running 2 HD200(s) letting Sage decide whats best for the JVM isn't necessarily the best. I have 3 HD200's running and have my java heap size set to 1024MB MAX....This seems to do the trick when all are in use, 5 shows are recording, streaming blu-ray etc.

If you haven't tried this, there is a tool in the downloads section which will allow you to modify the SageTV registry settings from a very simple UI...

Hope that helps.

~Pix64

[wrems]

Whenever I've had issues like you're explaining it always seems to be network related...

[ptaylor]

Thanks for the tip - I've not altered any Java related settings. The defaults seemed to work fine on my old system, but this is Java 6 update 10 (which was installed with SageTV), verses Java 6 update 19 that was on the old box. I know there Java 6 update 20 is out now...

I'll look into that utility you mentioned - I'm sure it couldn't hurt to up the Java memory settings. I have 2 GB on this box, and it's pretty much dedicated to SageTV...