blank/black screen, no sound during recording, remote not responding

[Sunkman]

I am getting a black/blank screen, no sound during recording. Also the remote does not respond except for the mute button and the live tv button. The live tv button brings up some kind of menu about winTV2000.

Sage seems to be ignoring my PVR250. I can watch live tv through WinTV but not through sage. Also, I can watch previously recorded shows through sage.

I did have my system hang and rebooted. Everything seemed to start OK. Since then I have been experiencing the capture problems.

I have check my sage.properties file for the ignore_encoders property and nothing is listed which is correct I believe.

I did try to remove sage and reinstall it but that did not fix the problem.

Can someone please give me some direction. I can post any files necessary.

Thanks for your help in advance

[Opus4]

Originally posted by Sunkman
Also the remote does not respond except for the mute button and the live tv button. The live tv button brings up some kind of menu about winTV2000.

For the remote, did you check the button to install support for the Hauppauge remote when you installed SageTV? See this FAQ entry to see if it helps regarding the remote.

For the blank recordings, is the input set up correctly for your encoder card? Perhaps go to Setup -> Setup Wizard and double check the settings and/or reinstall the source.

- Andy

[Sunkman]

Thanks Andy, I did have the button checked during the install. I have been using sage for about 4 months now. I was running ver 1.4 for a while and installed the beta version back in March. Everything has been fine until last night.

I believe the recording issue and the remote issue are related since they started to occur at exactly the same time.

I did run the set up wizard again last night but nothing changed.

As far as reinstalling the source I understand that it is a little more involved to uninstall the Hauppauge software. It was something I was going to try if I cant resolve the issue.

- Tom

[Opus4]

OK... I'll leave the rest to people who are more Hauppauge hardware knowledgeable than I am.

One more thing about the remote, though -- if you install a SageTV upgrade & check that box, any changes that you had made to the ini file will get reset. Just mentioning it so that you are aware of it in teh future.

- Andy

[falchulk]

What audio/video codec are you using?

[Sunkman]

I am using the Intervideo Non CSS Video/Audio Encoder for Hauppauge which seems to be giving the best picture, least amount of choppiness.

Doesn't this setting have to do with recording playback? If so I should mention I am able to watch previously recorded programs without a problem, except the remote doesn't respond.

The remote responds to MUTE and the LIVE TV button. The LIVE TV button pops a menu about WINTV. I am going to post an image of the menu when I get home later.

- Tom

[Opus4]

Originally posted by Sunkman
The remote responds to MUTE and the LIVE TV button. The LIVE TV button pops a menu about WINTV. I am going to post an image of the menu when I get home later.

That's why I mentioned checking irremote.ini -- by default, the Go button will pop up a menu of Hauppauge applications & the mute button will mute Windows sound. Neither of these have anything to do with SageTV responding to the remote.

- Andy

[falchulk]

Hmm, I could understand the blank screen during recording but the no sound is very strange. Have you tried copying your sage.proprties somewhere and deleting it and the sage.properties.backup from the sagetv directory? A new one will be created when you launch sage. You will have to set your cable provider and other custom settings backup. Anytime I have had problems with the betas, its always been the sage.properties file.

[Sunkman]

The menu that pops is the same as when you click WinTV Remote control system tray icon, like Andy mentioned.

I checked WinTV again and I can watch live TV with sound and the remote does work.

I made copies of sage.properties as well as the backup. Restarted Sage, it created the sage.properties and the backup, prompted me to go through the capture setup.

I noticed last night when it stopped working it was set to composite so I set it to composite again and same thing, no viseo, no audio, no remote.

I went ahead and changed the capture to TV Tuner and what do you know, a pixcture with sound.

I do not know how this got set. I was between shows 24 and NYPD Blue. 24 works, NYPD Blue, black screen, I know I wasnt in the menus.

Anyway I still have 1 problem. the remote is not responding to sage. It does respond to WinTV though.

It there a way to check its settings in the property file? a way to reconfiure it in within sage.

I llooked at the irremote.ini but it doensn't make alot of sense to me and I dont have an old version to compare it to. I attached my irremote.ini (changed th name to .txt)
Can someone please tell me if it is missing the mapping it needs and possibly post some the mappings to paste into it.

Thank you all for your help. If you didn't point me in the right direction I wouldn't have never found the problem

[falchulk]

Composite? Do you have your video/audio made with composite connections? Or areyou using the 250's tuner? IF You are using the tuner and you set it to composite,thats the problem.

[Sunkman]

The menu that pops is the same as when you click WinTV Remote control system tray icon, like Andy mentioned.

I checked WinTV again and I can watch live TV with sound and the remote does work.

I made copies of sage.properties as well as the backup. Restarted Sage, it created the sage.properties and the backup, prompted me to go through the capture setup.

I noticed last night when it stopped working it was set to composite so I set it to composite again and same thing, no viseo, no audio, no remote.

I went ahead and changed the capture to TV Tuner and what do you know, a pixcture with sound.

I do not know how this got set. I was between shows 24 and NYPD Blue. 24 works, NYPD Blue, black screen, I know I wasnt in the menus.

Anyway I still have 1 problem. the remote is not responding to sage. It does respond to WinTV though.

It there a way to check its settings in the property file? a way to reconfiure it in within sage.

I llooked at the irremote.ini but it doensn't make alot of sense to me and I dont have an old version to compare it to. I attached my irremote.ini (changed th name to .txt)
Can someone please tell me if it is missing the mapping it needs and possibly post some the mappings to paste into it.

Thank you all for your help. If you didn't point me in the right direction I wouldn't have never found the problem

[Sunkman]

I am using the tuner and but was set to composite. That was what the issue was with the blank/black screen was. I now just have an issue with my remote response. I just got an irremote.ini from a friends system and after comparing his to mine it seems the [sagerecorder] section is completely missing from mine. I am going to copy that section in my file and see what happens

Thank you Falchuck. If you didn't point me in the right direction I wouldn't have never found the problem.

[Opus4]

Re "composite" vs. "tv tuner" -- that's what I meant in my first reply when I said to go to the setup wizard & double check the settings. I guess I didn't make that clear enough.

Re the remote: that is also what I said in the first reply: follow the link I gave you to the FAQ entry & the first question in that entry will lead you to another post that has a basic irremote.ini file to download. The ini file you posted is the default file that is created when you install the Hauppauge drivers; it has no support for SageTV in it.

- Andy

[falchulk]

Opus4 is all over it. I just was trying to help. No offense, I did not meant to butt in, if thats what you were pointing him to Opus4.

[Opus4]

Originally posted by falchulk
I just was trying to help. No offense, I did not meant to butt in, if thats what you were pointing him to Opus4.

Did I sound annoyed? If so... oops. Of course there was no offense & you weren't butting in. If someone else feels they have something to add, why shouldn't they try to help too? Sometimes my guesses are way off the mark, so I would certainly expect others to offer suggestions... _someone_ is bound to be right.

What my last post really meant was:

1) I was acknowledging that I wasn't clear about what I thought should be checked regarding no picture/sound.

2) I was trying to tell Sunkman where the solution to the remote problem could be found w/o having to retype all the remote explanation stuff I've written previously.

- Andy

[falchulk]

Yep. I knew you were right about the remote issue. I was just curious about his audio/video issue.