Black screen playing anything/But sound ok

[philhu]

Placeshifter runs, I enter my locator ID, gets in, authorizes, and the menus work.

All parts are v5.0.4

I select any show, imported media, etc, and the play screen comes up.

It shows the graphics buttons and the sound works from the source, but the screen is black.

Dell computer, NVidia 6800 card, 2 monitors running at 32-bit mode.

I've tried this full screen or small screen, same thing

Any ideas?

[2002cbr600f4i]

I have the exact same problem on both my desktop machine - 7900GT video card. NVidia 93.71 drivers. I get sound, the menus and the controls, but no video.

Work laptop does the same thing - Intel graphics chip on a Core Duo Dell laptop. D820.

Works fine on my personal laptop though - eMachines m6809 with ATI 9600 Mobile.

I seriously suspect it's a driver compatibility issue. I've had it working in the past on this desktop machine (before I did a full re-install of windows...)

--Mike

[dadams]

Same thing on my Dell D820 which uses the integrated 945GM express chipset for graphics. Sound is fine, but black screen. One difference though is that I upgraded to Microsoft Vista. I'm pretty sure it worked before the upgrade.

[lcddream]

same problem for me. I have an nvidia 7900gt latest nvidia 93.71 drivers, java 1.4.2_11, placeshifter trial, and sage trial. I am on a LAN.

One thing I can add is that placeshifter told me when it started the live tv that there was a problem with the video card, it was correcting it and I should restart placeshifter. I restarted and still no video.

it works fine for another computer on my LAN, and I have been able to use it fine over WAN.

[DaiTengu]

This suddenly started happening to me today, and I've made no changes what-so-ever to my system.

Although I also noticed some weird artifacts in a game I play (Eve Online) in windowed mode as well today, I'm going to check for driver updates, reboot, and I'll report back if I get it working again. Then I can deal with my new license key that doesn't work after that

[DaiTengu]

Well, after a driver reinstall, a reboot or two, some tinkering and some tweaking, I still have no video

[kwallin]

I have the same problem with the 93.71 drivers but have found a temporary fix.
1. Go to the Video & Television Categories in the Control Panel.
2. Adjust Color Settings
3. In the RGB-Gamma page, select (and unselect if you want to) Use RGB-Gamma. It looks like you only have to toggle the setting.

Now you should have a picture again.

/Kenneth

[lcddream]

that option does not show for me.

[kwallin]

On the Adjust Colour settings page (mine is in swedish why I have to guess the english names) I have four folders and a test picture. The picture is black until I choose the RGB-Gamma folder and toggle use RGB-Gamma, the first folder is Standard.

/Kenneth

[belleboyd]

This was happening to me on my laptop -- out of the blue. I tweaked and reintalled drivers ... no video. Then I changed the Aspect Ratio to FILL
(from 4x3) and lo -- the video re-appeared.

Maybe worth a shot to someone?

[lcddream]

OK

I had a few emails back and forth with George from sage tech support. I sent him some output files from tests and whatnot. He found that my video card was operating with overlay mode disabled and VMR enabled, and that I would have to enable overlay/disable VMR.

I hop into my nvidia control panel, overlay mode is nowhere to be found. I do a little googling and it turns out that in order to access that function of the nvidia driver, you need to do the following:

Download and install the Coolbits registry edit (do so at your own risk, i will not be responsible for any damage you may cause to your pc or video card) which opens up hidden features in the Nvidia control panel. Then in the clock frequency settings area, I had to select the manual overclock option, then change from Performance(3D) to Standard(2D) hit apply, then ok.

Works like a charm now. I just hope in the future one way or the other i won't have to do this when i want to use placeshifter.

I have a nvidia 7900GT. I hope this helps some of the others that were having trouble.

Note: I think you have to use the "classic" view of the nvidia control panel to access these settings.

[Sarge]

Version 6 of SageTV was working fine for me for a couple of weeks, then abruptly stopped functioning. I tried reboots, rolling back drivers, and another beer. From Norton Ghost I ended up having to restore my entire system to the original install date if version 5 of SageTV. I stayed with version 5 of SageTV. It's still working. I don't know if something from Windows, or a 3rd party, autoupdated and messed up Sage, or whatever. Version 6 was interesting, but 5 was more stable on my system.

[AR9035]

I recently bought a new Toshiba laptop with integrated 945GM express chipset for graphics and VISTA. Good sound but only a black screen - no video. The laptop's video user interface is not very extensive and not many user changeable options. I'm using version 5 of Placeshifter. Anyone have any suggestions?

From my hotel roon in Japan, my older laptop's Placeshifter works fine, but eventually I only want to carry one of these on a trip.

[johns55]

Originally Posted by AR9035

I recently bought a new Toshiba laptop with integrated 945GM express chipset for graphics and VISTA. Good sound but only a black screen - no video. The laptop's video user interface is not very extensive and not many user changeable options. I'm using version 5 of Placeshifter. Anyone have any suggestions?

From my hotel roon in Japan, my older laptop's Placeshifter works fine, but eventually I only want to carry one of these on a trip.

Same problem on my HP laptop with the 945GM. Just installed the latest video driver from Intel and now video works just fine.

[camus]

Originally Posted by kwallin

On the Adjust Colour settings page (mine is in swedish why I have to guess the english names) I have four folders and a test picture. The picture is black until I choose the RGB-Gamma folder and toggle use RGB-Gamma, the first folder is Standard.

/Kenneth

I have had this problem before with 9X.XX drivers although 93.71 "seem" to work better, the 8X.XX series seem to be much more stable.

I found that clicking anything will bring it back, I have contacted nvidia about this many times, sent them numerous files and what not with no final resolution.

If do roll back or reinstall the drivers, make sure after uninstalling that you delete the nvidia settings manually.

[Venice310]

My message number 1. A real noobie here. I am having the black screen with my Vista Premium, Intel GMA 950. I don't have the gamma control mentioned above. I am trying to stream across my wirelessg network if that might have any effect. Bottomline: black screen, all menu access, lovely audio only.

[KarylFStein]

I've had a similar problem, but only with HD streams. I'm running the SageTV Client on Java 6 with Intel X3000 graphics and an Asus ADD2 DVI card. Things will work fine for a while and then all of a sudden when I try to play an HD recording or movie trailer, I'll just get a black screen, but the audio is OK. A couple times, the picture was garbled (flashing green bars all over, or about 1 second freezes in the picture). A reboot has always fixed the problem (knock on wood). SD streams are fine. I've assumed so far that it's just a problem with the X3000 drivers. I just figured I'd bring it up since the symptoms are similar to what's been described in this thread...

[Venice310]

I'm forgot to add that my Show Statistics Summary always say 0 Kbps unless I change my settings in the SageTV Placeshifter Servers Manger "Streaming" tab from "Use Sate TV's Dynamic Streaming System..." to Manual. I enter something like 50kbps and when I launch the connection the Statistics Summary activity shows information. Maybe unrelated. Frustration mounting, but very appreciative of the help. I know bliss is on the way.