HD200 HD playback issues

[Dingdul]

I'm a new user getting to grips with my HD200 as a first stage trial for a whole-house install . Unfortunately I'm encountering a frequent issue which is rendering the unit unusable at present;

- OTA HD TV recorded within Sage sometimes won't play on the extender
- the show starts with stuttering and audio confined to very loud bursts of electrical noise every 5 seconds or so
- thereafter no video at all will playback on HD200 without a power cycle
- my unit is out of reach (kids etc) so regular power cycling isn't an option

Strangely though;

- the same recorded shows plays fine within Sage TV and Windows Media Player etc
- if I copy-paste the offending items to different file names within my Sage library they will usually then play fine on the HD200 (i.e. extender mode)
- similarly, these files usually also play in standalone mode if copied to USB

Also;

- these same symptoms can occur when tuning to a live HD channel
- some ripped DVDs cause the same issue so not restricted to recorded TV
- I've tried official release versions and now latest betas on Sage TV server and HD200
- tried Vista and now Win7. Considering trialling WHS.

I have raised a support ticket for this though Sage Support are waiting on more info from me. I'll post back with any progress although any interim advice from this community would be extremely welcome!

[freedml]

Same problems here. 64k clusters on the recording drive solved many playback issues. Poor OTA quality was mostly solved by adding 3 amplifiers to the antenna setup. Power cycling of the HD200 can be reduced by regularly rebooting the server.

[reggie14]

I'm not sure if I'm being completely off topic, or if I'm having a similar problem. Yesterday my HD200 seemed to be acting up on live QAM TV. Recorded QAM didn't give me problems, nor did firewire recorded files. But, sometimes when I'd try to watch live TV on a QAM channel the HD200 would just sit with a blank screen for 10-15. Sometimes playback would start up, sometimes it wouldn't. My HD100 did not experience similar problems.

I had been running Sage 6.5.9 with the May 5th firmware, but I tried updating to Sage 6.5.16 and the most recent (May 28, think) firmware. That didn't fix it. I'm going to be watching out to see if it keeps happening over the next day or two, and if it does I'll try to narrow down the cause.