What is your WAF?

[Beefcake550]

Well, my server took a turn for the worse right before the game started. I have those wonderful 1.5 TB drives from seagate. I had no problem with them under Vista, so I just installed WHS and turned on the "enable advanced performance" under "Policies". Bad move. I had started a defrag earlier in the day and didn't check up on it. It hosed the server, so I had to do a reboot.

Luckily, when Sage wouldn't work, I had the cable input to the TV active and I just put in on in HD using the clear QAM signal from the cable co. Unfortunately, the way I have things setup, that meant no surround sound.

Now, things got better. I rebooted the server and tested out sage in my bedroom to make sure all was good. It was, and I went downstairs to change it over to Sage and my budy says "What the hell are you doing?". I told him to shutup and wait for it.....then sage kicked on the channel and started pumping out the surround sound and life was good again.

I've since turned off the "enable advanced performance" feature and I've successfully defragged 1 of 3 drives (using perfectdisk10 for WHS). I'm going to work now, but it doesn't have any problems thus far this morning.

I'm sorry to hear that everyone had trouble. It really sucks when such a great technology fails us for whatever reason when we really want it to shine. I would bet that for every 10 complaints about something going wrong last night, there were 1000 compliments. I had mine in the form of a 1 second commercial. We were just talking about them when one came on and my wife's friend said, "hey, can't you rewind that?" I promptly obliged her request and life was good.

-B
-B

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by webwalker

Well, my WAF just fell through the floor. And my parents, who were over for the superbowl for the first time in years.

Sage crashed THREE times. The HD200 huge FOUR times.

But my lowest point came when my mother told me she was so relieved that she had Comcast and didn't have these kinds of problems.

So right now, I look like a $1000 fool. Because that's how much cash I have sitting in hardware and software that can't even stay running for the extent of a football game.

Way to go Sage.

I take it you are using one of the current Betas. Do you happen to have a copy of the log files, so SageTV support can tell you what might have happened? Sorry to hear about this. Its always funny how things tend to break, when people are over watching.

[evilpenguin]

Ouch, bad luck. My HTPC usually gets performance anxiety and dies whenever I have company, but this year it held up like a champ. Even still, I had my cable ready for backup and an OTA antenna ready for backup backup. Can't be too careful

[turak]

Originally Posted by turak

For years my WAF was extremely high. SageTV was reliable and worked well. Over the past year it's dropped considerably. This drop in WAF has more to do with the R5000 + Dish Network + SageTV combo then with SageTV itself. It misses a lot of recordings these days because things like the Dish receiver getting stuck on an unauthorized channel and Zap2it channel line up data being wrong. I have issues with fast forwarding and rewinding in H264 encoded R5000 shows. I'm starting to miss my old firewire + Comcast setup that only got the local HD stations.

I spent a couple of hours figuring out how to prefix channel changes with a "Channel UP" on both my R5000 and HDPVR. So far it seems to have solved my dish network issues. I also started using the beta demuxer. This has improved my FF/RW situation. I doesn't seem to just seek all over the place now. WAF is slowly on the rise again.

[Patilan]

Speaking of WAF, I found this helpful guide by a guy named Chip somewhere on the web. Enjoy.

------------------------------
Glossary to help determine WAF
1.) FINE: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

2.) Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five Minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

3.) Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

4.) Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

5.) Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing.)

6.) That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

7.) Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome.

8.) Whatever: Is a women's way of saying *&%$#! You!

9.) Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking "what's wrong", for the woman's response refer to # 3.

This may help improve WAF, as we strive for HT nirvana
Good Luck

[TallMomof2]

Superbowl was solid for me on the HD200 and I was streaming from the HDHR. Neither the HDHR, the server, nor the HD200 had a hiccup. My client crashed 3 times but that was for secondary watching.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

Superbowl was solid for me on the HD200 and I was streaming from the HDHR. Neither the HDHR, the server, nor the HD200 had a hiccup. My client crashed 3 times but that was for secondary watching.

My HD100 only crashed once at the very end and only because I was monkeying around hitting forward and back. Ever since I turned animations off, my HD100's have been rock solid. I have an HD200, but it is only in the bedroom right now as I am too lazy to unhook one of my HD100's (which means crawling behind an entertainment center).

[ybrew]

I keep a directv hddvr in my media room. I used that for the superbowl.

Shortly after the game, my receiver went crazy requiring a reset, and missed the first 7 minutes of the office. (I watched the part I missed via Hulu/playon on my directv hddvr.)

I also have a sagetv hd100 in my media room. I watched the playoffs on that thing 2 weeks ago. About 15-20 minutes before kickoff, my sage DIED. I was frantic.

The fix was easy. My UPS bit the dust. I had a spare and had everything back up and running with about 20 seconds to spare!

My WAF is high, provided I don't forget to record her shows.
My 6 year old son is a pro with the interface. Even my dogs like it. (They chewed up one of my sage remotes pretty good!)

[webwalker]

I guess I'm a little freaked out that

I was monkeying around hitting forward and back

Should be considered a valid reason for an extender to have a meltdown.

What would you think of a brand name DVD player that hung every time you tried to skip back to hear a bit of dialog.

Or are my sights just set too high?

M

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by webwalker

I guess I'm a little freaked out that



Should be considered a valid reason for an extender to have a meltdown.

What would you think of a brand name DVD player that hung every time you tried to skip back to hear a bit of dialog.

Or are my sights just set too high?

M

I was litterally hitting skp forward 10 seconds, waiting two seconds, and hitting skip back 10 seconds and repeated this over and over again....I was just being goofy (I think I had eaten myself into some kind of hyperactive crazy mode). If Sage hadn't crashed, I'm pretty sure my wife would have punched me in the face to get me to stop.....I actually preferred the HD100's crash. Otherwise we had a solid 4 hours of playback with the occassional skip forward and back (depending on the commerical at the moment). I really blame myself.....

[najames]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

Superbowl was solid for me on the HD200 and I was streaming from the HDHR. Neither the HDHR, the server, nor the HD200 had a hiccup. My client crashed 3 times but that was for secondary watching.

Come on mom, you're kicking my butt.

I think we started about the same time. I just got the trial version of WHS server installed with the drivers fully sorted out, updated it, installed SageTV 6.5 tonight, nothing really configured yet.

I just ordered my HDHR (Egg promo) and licensed copy of WHS today, but I did build my db4 antenna and watched live super bowl HD over the weekend (WAF). I am glad you posted that the extender worked OK, crashes would not be good.

I have not ordered any extenders yet, only have an old PVR-150 in the PC now. I still have some more work to do in the attic too (home run my DSL), hang shelves for the networking stuff, etc. More shelves = WAF too.

Edit: your using an Asus G45, I have an Asus G35 board. Did you have to install the ATK driver thing for an unknown device? The driver was part of the Asus Probe II. I also had to disable/uninstall a MS driver similar to part of the Intel chipset utility.

Jim

[webwalker]

Ok, so I think I owe someone an apology.

After Sage repeatedly (every few hours?) blowing up, I cracked out my can of whoopass on it and thrashed through a laborious diagnostic regimen. And came up with a straightforward conclusion:

The hardware is bad. The third (THIRD!) motherboard I've been running on since my jump to Sage had an intermittent failure. (The second fried the onboard NIC with no expansion to replace it, and the first suffered from random reboots galore.)

Can you imagine what the statistical likelihood of this is? Whew.

So stayed up until 3am with MB #4 moving components, installing the OS, loading drivers, configuration, etc and then dropped Sage 6.5.9 in to place and then overlaid it with the previously installed 6.5.9 on the old host. It came up and has been solid as a rock for 11 hours, which may not sound like much but is to me. My wife is relieved.

So I'm going to mail the third motherboard back to the mfr with a turd in the static bag. What are the chances? Yikes.

Anyway, I'll post more when there is more to post. I'm going to just let the dust settle for a few nights first.

[TallMomof2]

Originally Posted by najames

Come on mom, you're kicking my butt.

I think we started about the same time. I just got the trial version of WHS server installed with the drivers fully sorted out, updated it, installed SageTV 6.5 tonight, nothing really configured yet.

I just ordered my HDHR (Egg promo) and licensed copy of WHS today, but I did build my db4 antenna and watched live super bowl HD over the weekend (WAF). I am glad you posted that the extender worked OK, crashes would not be good.

I have not ordered any extenders yet, only have an old PVR-150 in the PC now. I still have some more work to do in the attic too (home run my DSL), hang shelves for the networking stuff, etc. More shelves = WAF too.

Edit: your using an Asus G45, I have an Asus G35 board. Did you have to install the ATK driver thing for an unknown device? The driver was part of the Asus Probe II. I also had to disable/uninstall a MS driver similar to part of the Intel chipset utility.

Jim

Well, I didn't get my WHS install running right before I installed Sage. I actually had Sage and Comskip only on desired channels working almost perfectly but I couldn't back up PCs, upgrade the connector software or even install the connector software on other PCs. So I've spent the last 2 days reinstalling WHS (had to to it 4 times --- reinstall, new install, reinstall, new install before the basic installation was correct) and now I'm formatting data discs and moving over 3.5 TB data. I'll get to reinstalling Sage in a couple of days.

I didn't install the Asus probe utility. My case is running cool and if you install the Disk Management msi then you'll have HDD temps. I had no problems with installing drivers using XP mode, IIRC the lan driver actually had a 2003 server version on the setup disc.

Originally Posted by webwalker

Ok, so I think I owe someone an apology.

After Sage repeatedly (every few hours?) blowing up, I cracked out my can of whoopass on it and thrashed through a laborious diagnostic regimen. And came up with a straightforward conclusion:

The hardware is bad. The third (THIRD!) motherboard I've been running on since my jump to Sage had an intermittent failure. (The second fried the onboard NIC with no expansion to replace it, and the first suffered from random reboots galore.)

Can you imagine what the statistical likelihood of this is? Whew.

So stayed up until 3am with MB #4 moving components, installing the OS, loading drivers, configuration, etc and then dropped Sage 6.5.9 in to place and then overlaid it with the previously installed 6.5.9 on the old host. It came up and has been solid as a rock for 11 hours, which may not sound like much but is to me. My wife is relieved.

So I'm going to mail the third motherboard back to the mfr with a turd in the static bag. What are the chances? Yikes.

Anyway, I'll post more when there is more to post. I'm going to just let the dust settle for a few nights first.

Check your power supply. On prebuilt systems I've had more problems caused by the cheaply built power supplies. That's one of the reasons I roll my own PCs. Nowadays I'd rather spend a few extra dollars and buy a really good PS. I especially like modular ones so that I don't have a bundle of excess cables interfering with air flow.

YMMV

[webwalker]

This is a homebrew rig. I've been building my own gear for 20 years. The P/S is an Antec and has been putting out the correct voltages (I measured.)

The problem was a manufacturing error in the ECS ITX board I've been using most recently. It only seemed to show up when both the disk controller and the NIC were pushed at the same time. (Which, you are correct, could denote a bad P/S.) My wife was able to stream content to her wifi laptop from the neilm webserver and because the transfer rate was slow enough, it wasn't a problem. But trying to watch a stream to the HD200 or trying to watch a show that was still actively being captured....no. Hard hang: frozen.

3 years ago (when there was that rash of bad caps from Japan...well, China actually) I chased around and around on a similar problem that wound up having two causes: slowly failing caps AND an out-of-spec Antec, which I didn't bother measuring because the Antec was 'quality'. I won't make that mistake again; I've learned.

And hopefully I've learned from this too.

[najames]

Originally Posted by webwalker

3 years ago (when there was that rash of bad caps from Japan...well, China actually) I chased around and around on a similar problem that wound up having two causes: slowly failing caps AND an out-of-spec Antec, which I didn't bother measuring because the Antec was 'quality'. I won't make that mistake again; I've learned. And hopefully I've learned from this too.

I had a bad caps board or 2 also from that era. ITX usually doesn't have slots but I bought a Sapphire 3470 passive cooled video card that will guarantee random reboots and damaged motherboards (hot?). It needs to go back soon while I can, I basically wrecked 2 good motherboads with this cheap POS video card.

I'll hopefully do my last WHS re-install this weekend. I'm a newbie, both with WHS and SageTV although I looked at it once last year too. I don't know enough about all the SageTV settings yet, but got the PVR-150 card working and can record in SageTV. I copied a previously recorded HDNET Hogans Heros MPEG into the SageTV video directory and it played ok. Even though she hasn't seen it yet, so far failures of WAF I need to work on are:

1) the current DVD settings won't play Kung Fu Panda "because of CSS or Macrovision settings" - plays great on my Mint Linux box!!
2) I also found an online video and tried to play it, it downloaded, and SageTV crashed
3) I need to get a remote working, preferably my Sony RM-VL600 Learning Remote Control, but my knowlege of PC remote control is woefully lacking

[Slipshod]

Wow. My SageTV adventures are pretty boring at this point. I don't think I've had either HD-100 crash or hang since they fixed the "mystery hang" waaay back when. The SageTV server has maybe crashed once in the last couple of months.

The R5000 was dropping the first 5 mins on recordings for a week or two, but I haven't seen it since the last beta release. It also drops frame a bit here and there, but it did that with with the Dish DVR as well cause the Satellite at 129' sucks.

The HDHR has been pretty solid, other than needing a rescan after I upgrade Sage.


The trick must be to not invite anybody over for a once-a-year event like the Superbowl.

[flavius]

Originally Posted by ybrew

..My 6 year old son is a pro with the interface. Even my dogs like it. (They chewed up one of my sage remotes pretty good!)

Yep, our yellow lab went straight for the Sage remote. But it turned out to be quite sturdy.

My wife's fondness of sage increased even more when I recently started loading our DVD collection. I'm running SageMC and she really enjoys the data coming from IMDB etc.

[stevech]

Some time ago, I bought an ECS motherboard.
Never again.
Only ASUS last few years.

low price of ECS isn't worth the aggravation.

[dislecksea]

We switched from DirectTV with Tivo back in November when we moved into the new house. WAF is very, very good. I have 2 HD-PVRs running (just got the 2nd one working yesterday)l, Sage on a WHS, and 2 extenders. For the most part, everything works great. Granted, things got a little weird right around Christmas when the in-laws came to town (of course), but overall things are good.

However, I am trying to keep to my goal of getting it up and running and then not messing with it. To me, that would just be asking for trouble.

[webwalker]

To my wife's view, Comskip is the holy grail. I'm going to encourage her to send the developer flowers. She has become almost compulsively intolerant of advertisement.

M