SageTV v3.0.5 Beta

[Scott]

Originally Posted by Scott

I'm doing a little tooling around in the channel set up screens and I noticed the channel changing problem is in fact limited to my to my D10 tuner. I have another tuner attached (not a D10 - but a RCA DRD486H) and it works fine.

Follow Up: I went back to Best Buy - they only offer the D10. Circuit City offers only the D10. I searched the web and I can only buy the D10. It seems the DRD486H is no loger available! This is not good, if true. I have 3 receivers hooked into my PC via COM ports. Two of the these receivers are D10, and if neither can change channels - my set up is blown. Does anyone know how I can get the receivers that actually have serial ports that work properly? I know Directv was trying to put all the web-based equipment re-sellers out of business and it seems that they have suceeded. If I can only purchase the D10 and D10 doesn't work properly - than maybe I should switch over to Dish Network? (If those receivers have a serial port, that is).

Has anyone else run up against this and have any ideas?


many thanks!

[Opus4]

Scott: you might want to see this thread about the D10.

cipher: I moved your questions about the "Default" settings in v2.2.8 to your other thread here.

- Andy

[Ken C]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Perhaps see: What is DX9 Full screen exclusive mode?

- Andy

Yea, read that previously. Maybe I should consider myself lucky as there wasn't any 'studder', at least, none I could see. Heck, I was going to try and find an excuse to get a new video card.

Ken C

[Scott]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Scott: you might want to see this thread about the D10.

Andy, thanks for the link. I looked it over and it seems highly technical and involves using Girder which I do not use and have no desire to begin using. But thanks for letting me know that people are working on it. If there is ever a non-techical/Non-girder solution, I would love to hear it.

In the meantime I think this is a major issue for SageTV and its Directv users, which I have to imagine is significant in number.

It seems the only basic Directv receiver available nowadays is the D10 and the D10's serial port does not work properly with Sage. Maybe that is the fault of Directv and the D10, but Directv could care less - I know becuase I called them today. I told them about the D10's serial port not working properly and the response was basically "what do you care - there should be no reason for using it anyway". Unfortunately, this attitude puts the onus on Sage to figure this out! In the meantime the value of the Sage set up for me has decreased drastically!! Oh. well....

[stanger89]

Tell them it won't work with your Tivo and they might care.

[Scott]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Tell them it won't work with your Tivo and they might care.

Tried that - they said it was an "unsupported" set up and to buy a combined Tivo/Directv receiver. I think this is all about Directv controlling our hardware!

[Goodspike]

It would be nice if they could figure out a way of making this public beta temporarily available to people who have cards not supported by the prior version (e.g Fusion) that you pay for. I did the same thing someone above did--downloaded 2.5 and then the beta only to find it wanted a key. I could see why they wouldn't do that right away, for it would probably flood them with issues from people who simply don't know about the program (like myself). But it would be a nice test before they get ready for an official release. While playing with the trial version, it did seem very nice.

Is the ability to use dual cards going to be dependent on the software or the driver for the particular card?

[mayamaniac]

Just did a complete update from 2.28 to 3.05 after testing 3.05 for a few days. I have all the plugins I used working in 3.05, which are Webserver, Dynamic Menu Import, and MVPClient. SageTV 3.05 seems to run smoother, less stalling. MVPClient performance didn't improve too much over 2.28, but I never got the MVP to perform well, I have no idea why.

On the bright side, my PVR-350 TV-out has been working quite well. I have not experienced any lock-ups or end-of-file (EOF) bugs yet. I wouldn't say my 350 problems has been fixed, I need to test for a longer period of time (a month or so) before I come to any conclusion. But so far, so good.

As I said before, 3.05 is more responsive when interating with the menu and playback controls. This is the reason I decided to upgrade. Since I don't have any HD tuners, I don't really benefits from anything else in 3.05, comparing to 2.28.

One thing new in 3.05 that I think should be improved, the menu icons. I'm talking about those little icons that indicate First Runs, Reruns, Watched, Manual Record, etc. They are informative, but needs to be refine. I kinda like the way Cayars STV does it with the single icons bar on top, instead of it next to the show titles as it is in STV3. With cayars, the icons are bigger and easier to figure out what they mean. In STV3, the icon colors also need to be improved, especially the "RecordAny" and the "RecordMR" icons, they almost look identical. Couldn't they at least be different colors or have different colored outlines?

[ukmgranger]

Is there a problem rendering 1080 in 3.0.5?

I have just tried this resolution and I get the 'there was a problem rendering the video' error using the nvidia decoder. When using the sage decoder I get sound but just a black screen.

I'm using VMR9 and renderless.

[snoopy]

I agree Maya,
Cayars did a great job with those little icons didn't he? At least they are there though. That was a sticking point for me.

[turak]

Originally Posted by snoopy

I agree Maya,
Cayars did a great job with those little icons didn't he? At least they are there though. That was a sticking point for me.

I think toxmox added those icons to cayers STV.

[dagar]

Originally Posted by Scott

Tried that - they said it was an "unsupported" set up and to buy a combined Tivo/Directv receiver. I think this is all about Directv controlling our hardware!

Yeah, they get a lot of hate and discontent from Tivo/Replay/etc users on that and then some CSRs say 'buy our stuff'

My D* system is getting set up on Friday. So I'll be using Girder for it

[jlindborg]

Yeah, the fine folks at DirecTV dropped a couple dozen notches on my respect-o-meter with this little stunt - the Tivo forums have been buzzing about it for a month. Those of us that had working systems that were rendered inoperable with their snappy little "upgrade" we didn't ask for were less than pleased to say the least. Saying that hardware I paid for is not in my control and they were free to turn off the serial port if they liked is questionable on the legal side of the fence and definitely wrong on the moral side.

The arrogance and stupidity of some middle management dweebs that think they can actually use this to force their cruddy little PVR onto folks is amazing to me.

I went out on EBay and bought several D240Es - they're slower but they can't have their programming updated over the air and the serial link works. Got a couple spares just in case.

Unfortunately the Dish folks don't have serial control on any of their receivers, at least so far as I can find - perhaps they should consider offering it so they can slurp up some of the annoyed DirecTV folks. The night they updated my programming and broke this I would have jumped over to them in a heartbeat of they offered a workable package.

[Scott]

Originally Posted by jlindborg

Saying that hardware I paid for is not in my control and they were free to turn off the serial port if they liked is questionable on the legal side of the fence and definitely wrong on the moral side.

I don't think its illegal, but it shows the dangers of a selfish, controlling, monopolistic organization. I agree that if Dish offered a working serial port they could pick up a lot of business. I would probably switch, myself.

Update: Maybe this could be a business oppurtunity for SageTV - form an alliance with Dish of mutual support and development. Dish could become the official satellite provider for Sage and Sage could build a PVR for the non-techies for those who do not wish to use a PC. What do you think Andy?

[Ken C]

Something has happened. Continually getting "Playback Error - sage.PlaybackException:ERROR(-4,0x80040217):There was a problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback"

I've tried default, overlay, vrm9, FSE on and off. Re-installed, actually used the "repair" option. Still a no go.

Any suggestions ?

Ken C

[ToxMox]

Which video decoder are you using Ken?

[GbrNole]

the only time i got that error was when my quartz.dll was still butchered to use to dx 9.0b file in place of the 9.0c one.

fix this and it should fix your problem.

[Ken C]

As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say "Never mind". All seems fine now. Just took a 'few' reboots among other things.

This is just a bit upsetting. But, I guess it's to be expected when using a beta.

Ken C

[GbrNole]

ps. when you get that decoder error you pretty much need to set it to overlay and then completely shut down the pc and restart before it will take.

ken c, still verify your quartz file because it will do this every time you try and use FSE if you're still using the 9.0b quartz.dll

[srothwell]

Sent this to the bug site twice..... maybe someone here has had the same problems:

1. .m2t files still do not show up as imported files.
2. If you remane a .m2t file to .mpg, Sage 2.2 would play it just fine, but Sage 3.0.5 gives a render playback error.
3. On my system (using overlay, 3D accel) if you go to full-screen mode (not exclusive) while something is playing the text overlay will tear up on the screen. If you go to full-screen mode THEN selecting something to play, you will get a render error then Sage will lock up and you have to kill it and start over. This same thing happens whether I'm using VMR9 or overlay. FSE or non-FSE mode. Doesn't matter. Sage 2.2 didn't do any of this. Incidnetally, full screen on my PC is 1920x1200. Don't know if that matters or not.

However, to put a kink in things, Sage doesn't always misbehave in the same way with these circumstances.

For instance, sometimes I can playback a file then go to FullScreen mode and it will bring the playback fullscreen, the OSD won't break up and it will appear to work fine---until you tell it to back to non-fullscreen mode. When you tell it that, Sage screen goes black but the audio continues. I have not ever been able to get the video (or OSD) back after going back to non-full screen mode.

Throughout all the intermittent problems, if I go TO full-screen and back again, the screen is black and Sage will always keep it's window on top of other windows and will eventually lock up. This doesn't matter if you have video playing back or not. Even when a menu is is up toggling between FS and non-FS will cause the problem.