Thinking of going to windows media center

[Mailman74]

Originally Posted by doncote0

http://www.dlink.com/products/?tab=3...55&rev=DIR-655

Make sure you are using the latest D-Link firmware for your device 1.35NA (released 12/28/2010). This product has had many firmware releases in a short period of time, and many of those releases were aimed at fixing networking problems caused by previous firmware.

BTW, you cannot use securespot anymore. You might want to disable it.

Yes I have the latest firmware.

[doncote0]

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...3&postcount=18

It really sounds as though you are having significant networking issues. I would suspect those underlying problems as the source of many of your issues.

that has happened quite often. My unraid server will shut off and sometimes I reboot network after the server shut down and when it boots back up my media center gets a blue screen of death. I have gotten about 10 blue screens of death on the media pc that is running sage

[Mailman74]

Last night we we're watchin recorded show on the server and I was ripping a dvd to the server at the same time. There was horrible lag and freezing in the show but when I rewinded and replayed it played fine? Does this show that me network is the problem or server?

[gplasky]

Either your network or the hard drive appears to be the bottleneck. I would find a diagnostic program to test and benchmark both your network and hard drive to understand what you really have.

Gerry

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Mailman74

Last night we we're watchin recorded show on the server and I was ripping a dvd to the server at the same time. There was horrible lag and freezing in the show but when I rewinded and replayed it played fine? Does this show that me network is the problem or server?

I've had the same happen, but only when ripping a dvd/blu-ray to a recording drive. To avoid this just have dedicated recording drives and the issue shouldn't happen again. That is of course assuming everything is working properly like gplasky said.

[Mailman74]

So you think it is better to have dedicated recording drive?

[ttiell]

mailman mentioned that he is feeding the two switches into the one router.

I had problems like this all of the time when I was using only a router. It starts with lag when to press a remote control button to a complete hang. I then bought a switch similar to the kind that you have (dlink 5 ports). That somewhat fixed it. I went from restarting every other day to only every other week.

You are using your network even more by having HDHRs (i use internal capture devices). I would say only use your router to connect one of your switches, then connect every computer, capture device, other switches, etc. to that switch. This will eliminate the router from having to do switching. That should help some. If you want it better than that, then a nicer switch can be used. I also want to buy a nicer switch because I think restarting every other week is two often, but I haven't found the extra $$ laying around yet.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Mailman74

So you think it is better to have dedicated recording drive?

Yes. I never have any playback stutter unless I'm transferring to the same drive I'm watching a show on.

[Mailman74]

Originally Posted by ttiell

mailman mentioned that he is feeding the two switches into the one router.

I had problems like this all of the time when I was using only a router. It starts with lag when to press a remote control button to a complete hang. I then bought a switch similar to the kind that you have (dlink 5 ports). That somewhat fixed it. I went from restarting every other day to only every other week.

You are using your network even more by having HDHRs (i use internal capture devices). I would say only use your router to connect one of your switches, then connect every computer, capture device, other switches, etc. to that switch. This will eliminate the router from having to do switching. That should help some. If you want it better than that, then a nicer switch can be used. I also want to buy a nicer switch because I think restarting every other week is two often, but I haven't found the extra $$ laying around yet.

That is how I have it set up.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by Mailman74

5. What recording devices are you using? HDHR and HDHR Dual

Just saw this. Are your HDHR's on their own NIC? I really think this is the best way, thought others have had everything work great on a single NIC. (I think this is more a Windows overhead issue, than a HDHR/SageTV issue (working better with 2 NICs, that is))

[Mailman74]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Just saw this. Are your HDHR's on their own NIC? I really think this is the best way, thought others have had everything work great on a single NIC. (I think this is more a Windows overhead issue, than a HDHR/SageTV issue (working better with 2 NICs, that is))

My HDHR's are on the 5 port switch

[bits]

Originally Posted by Mailman74

My HDHR's are on the 5 port switch

Have you done any trouble shooting? If so what have you done?

When I first hooked up my HDHR I had it going to my router. I did notice in task manager that network utilization was running around 70-80% when the HDHR was recording a show and I was having some studdering video on my HD200. I happen to have a motherboard with dual GB LAN connections so I hooked it directly to my PC. Problem solved and I have not seen network utilization come anywhere close to 20% let alone 70-80%again.

[hockeyfan]

Mailman74, I *highly* recommend troubleshooting your system before jumping ship. I can find Sage to be bothersome when things go wrong, somethings the errors don't line up with the actual problem but when you spend time and isolate the fault it does run well.

Windows media center may have bling but when you have recordings blocked due to broadcast flags you'll realize you've made a mistake.

[WestView]

Note that if you do jump ship, you will experience the same difficulties with WMC and Xbox 360's as it is certain you have either network issues or server issues (reboots may be due to bad DIMMs or a bad harddrive among other things).

[stevech]

Assuming the client and server are on the same LAN subnet, the router's firmware/functions aren't involved. The switch in the router, and/or external switches are.

I had a Linksys and a D-Link gigE 5 port switch. Both went to the trash can. I think these were gen-1 of the low cost consumer gigE switches. I have a gen-2 (later chipsets, lower power/heat) Negear and two Fry's $25 wonders. All work fine/long time but getting over 300Mbps or so on my LAN is difficult - as the devices' IP stacks and CPUs are too slow. I did one artificial test from fast PC 1 to fast PC 2, full-sized packets only, no disk I/O, and got to about 800Mbps.
Most consumer routers have a packets per second rate in the product spec, I guess based on the chipset they use.

PS: I've tried windows media center several times. On windows 7. It's pretty at first glance. But long story short, it's a case of it's usability disagrees with its cosmetics.

[Mailman74]

Ok I am not really planning on switching to media center after hearin all this. I said that out of frustration and not well thought out plans.

I will try my hardest to troubleshoot my network with all the info supplied here. I greatly appreicate all the help from everyone. I wish that I was as technical as the members here. But I can wire and set up the network no problem but when it gets into the details I have trouble. I have to admit that some things mentioned here I do not understand.

[SomeWhatLost]

if you have a network issue, it wont matter what software you use... you will still have a network issue...

just because a switch is new, or working, doesn't mean it really is working... I had a nasty network issue for a while... everything worked fine most of the time... but HD TV recordings would stutter badly sometimes... DVD's were always fine... ended up being a bad switch...never found it until the switch went very bad (ie got really hot and no more linky)... but it seemed fine the whole time...

[Fuzzy]

HDHR's are serious network hog's, and should be accounted for. Watching a single HD channel live from your HDHR is passing the 14.5Mbps stream from:

HDHR  ->  Switch -> SageTVServer
                         |
                     (writing)
                        \|/

                        HDD

                         |
                     (reading)
                        \|/
Client <- Switch <- SageTVServer

That's for a single recording at a time. Having 3 HDHR recordings going on a time, while reading just a single one is pretty hard work on a network adapter.

Harddrive bandwidth is also significant. Sage will perform much better with 3 or 4 smaller recording drives than it will a single large one. Ideally, if you've got the potential to record 3 programs at a time, you'd be best off having 3 separate recordings drives (and have sage set to 'Bandwidth' mode to spread it out to all 3 of them).

[stevech]

Multiple drives discussed above: I understood that Sage opens a new recording file on THE drive with the largest free space. Don't know if this scheme spreads recordings on two+ drives, ever.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by stevech

Multiple drives discussed above: I understood that Sage opens a new recording file on THE drive with the largest free space. Don't know if this scheme spreads recordings on two+ drives, ever.

Sagetv 7+ has two different methods to use. The first ("Space") is as you describe, each recording will be placed on the drive with the most free space. The second ("Bandwidth") will place the recording on the drive with the fewest number of recording in progress on it that has the most free space. So for example:

Drive 1: 500GB free
Drive 2: 300GB free

Recording one will go on Drive 1
Recording two will go on Drive 2
Recording three will go on Drive 1
etc.