interested in upgrading SageTV from 2.x to 4.x

[mattress]

I've had my HTPC running for a few months flawlessly. I set it up with SageTV 2.2(i think?) with cayars 18 STV. I've had zero trouble or problems with this setup and have loved it.

Recently, the power flickered, and I think some files may have gone corrupt, hopefully no hardware was damaged, but this is what i'm fearing.

Here are the problems that I have now:
1) white sparklies/artifacts/pixels randomly flashing around the screen during video playbackof anything in SageTV: previously recorded, live TV, or imported video library, etc.

if I play video in windows media player, I don't get the white sparklies/flashing pixels. they only appear during video playback in SageTV. I'm using a stock ATi 9800 pro with S-Video @ 800x600 (or any res does it!), and I have VMR9 and hardware acceleration enabled in SageTV.

2) I use an IR Receiver and a universal remote control to control the HTPC. When I press volume up or down, SageTV sees it, displays the volume changing on the OSD, but the actual volume level isn't increased or decreased, it's stuck. I've fooled around a little bit, but can't figure this one out. This is the Chaintech AV710 card.
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I've updated both my video and audio drivers, but that didn't help.

So I want to try and reformat the HTPC, reinstall windows and drivers, and start from scratch. I want to know what all I have to do to go from SageTV 2.x to 4.x, and what to expect, and what new STV's there are for this version.

Thanks for any help guys, and sorry for the long read!

[mattress]

Well, I pulled the system, and checked out the radeon 9800 pro ... i'm pretty sure it's dead. the fan has siezed up, and the bottom of the fan that sits on on the heatsink has started to melt a little bit.

time to upgrade, right?

[Kanati]

Sounds like it...

Those sparklies tend to happen during 3D hardware accelleration when a card is overheating. You can see it nicely if you try to overclock a card juuuuust to the point before it no longer works at all. So I'm guessing you have hardware accelleration turned on in sage and that's why you see it.

It's probably not dead... just needs a new fan put on it. I'd try that first as a 9800 isn't exactly the cheapest video card you could choose to go with.