Might Be Saying Goodbye to SageTV - RESOLVED

[freedml]

"I am never buying linksys switches again."

If Linksys/Cisco switches had significant problems, they would go out of business in a week from word of mouth on the internet. If Sage doesn't work 100% with these switches, then I'm 99.99% sure the 'problem' is on the SageTV side, not the switch side. Remember, for those of us with this issue, the problem didn't start showing up until Sage started 'enhancing' their network drivers on the HD200. The switches work fine with everything else, just not SageTV.

[valnar]

Sorry, but there is a huge quality difference between low and high end switches. Huge. Most users don't notice because they are funneling through a 10Mb pipe to the Internet. They also wouldn't notice retransmissions on TCP based protocols, but UDP streaming is another can o' worms altogether. The same is true for NIC's. Intel really is better than Realtek.

You want to guarantee your switch is not the problem? Pick up a low-end HP like the 1400-8G.

Remember, just because it says 100Mb or 1000Mb, doesn't mean it does that speed, nor does it reliably. It 'talks' the 100Base-T or 1000Base-T standard, but that doesn't mean it achieves that speed under all (or any) circumstances.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by freedml

"I am never buying linksys switches again."

If Linksys/Cisco switches had significant problems, they would go out of business in a week from word of mouth on the internet. If Sage doesn't work 100% with these switches, then I'm 99.99% sure the 'problem' is on the SageTV side, not the switch side. Remember, for those of us with this issue, the problem didn't start showing up until Sage started 'enhancing' their network drivers on the HD200. The switches work fine with everything else, just not SageTV.

Video traffic, especially real-time, is a very touchy thing to mess with. If even one glitch happens on the network you will see it on your TV. Other applications like FTP, Web, etc.., have a lot of tolerance. TCP retrys on these protocols are unnoticable to the user, because the difference between a photo loading on a webpage in one second, vs 1.1 seconds, it hard to see. This is why most users don't notice if they have a crap switch, until it catastrophically fails.

Like Valnar said, it's all related to the traffic you have on your network. After staring at packet captures for hours, and seeing all of the TCP retrys, I knew I was on to something. Of course this was after trying the obvious of cables etc.., because I had just upgraded to needing Cat5e from Cat5 etc... There were a lot of them in the span of thirty seconds of capture. Maybe SageTV could be optimized to correct for that, or maybe I could get switches which work as advertised. Those TCP retrys shouldn't be as frequent, if at all, and if a switch does this, no matter what brand, it's junk.

If I can plug my old netgear switches, and or new netgear switches up, and the problem goes away, it's a simple problem (to me), and obvious who the culprit is.

[Narflex]

Are the 3 TVs you tried different models?

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by mikejaner

Video traffic, especially real-time, is a very touchy thing to mess with. If even one glitch happens on the network you will see it on your TV. Other applications like FTP, Web, etc.., have a lot of tolerance. TCP retrys on these protocols are unnoticable to the user, because the difference between a photo loading on a webpage in one second, vs 1.1 seconds, it hard to see. This is why most users don't notice if they have a crap switch, until it catastrophically fails.

Like Valnar said, it's all related to the traffic you have on your network. After staring at packet captures for hours, and seeing all of the TCP retrys, I knew I was on to something. Of course this was after trying the obvious of cables etc.., because I had just upgraded to needing Cat5e from Cat5 etc... There were a lot of them in the span of thirty seconds of capture. Maybe SageTV could be optimized to correct for that, or maybe I could get switches which work as advertised. Those TCP retrys shouldn't be as frequent, if at all, and if a switch does this, no matter what brand, it's junk.

If I can plug my old netgear switches, and or new netgear switches up, and the problem goes away, it's a simple problem (to me), and obvious who the culprit is.

I believe kmp14 said he tried playing a file from an external hard drive in stand alone mode and still saw the problem. This would seem to rule out anything to do with the network. The thing that really stands out for me is he did not see the problem with a ripped DVD but has seen the problem in files recorded via his HDHR's consistently across multiple hardware configurations. I'm still betting on this being a source/signal problem.

Aloha,
Mike

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

I believe kmp14 said he tried playing a file from an external hard drive in stand alone mode and still saw the problem. This would seem to rule out anything to do with the network. The thing that really stands out for me is he did not see the problem with a ripped DVD but has seen the problem in files recorded via his HDHR's consistently across multiple hardware configurations. I'm still betting on this being a source/signal problem.

Aloha,
Mike

Ahh, i didn't catch that in my initial scan of the thread.

[valnar]

Hmmm I missed that too. But I now see that it used to work with WMC. There are some new drivers out from Silicondust. Might be worth trying.

[matt91]

Didn't the HDHR's have the "recalled" power supply which was causing intermittent problems?

I haven't read though all these posts closely, but if you are still thinking it's the source, you might ensure that your HDHR doesn't have a faulty wall wart.

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by matt91

Didn't the HDHR's have the "recalled" power supply which was causing intermittent problems?

I haven't read though all these posts closely, but if you are still thinking it's the source, you might ensure that your HDHR doesn't have a faulty wall wart.

Yes, that is a possibility. I believe the warranty check here http://www.silicondust.com/warranty will determine if a bad power supply is a possibilty.
I don't think the source has been ruled out completely but seems unlikely because the problem is not 100 percent repeatable and does not occur with 720p output. Although, I just reread his statement about it and that does not appear to be 100 percent either. Here is the original statement:

The only thing that I have seen that MAY stop it is setting the output of the HD200 to 720p, but I am not 100% sure that it goes away with that either (can't take any more testing!), and my TV is 1080p and overscans 720p horribly, so no thanks, even if it was acceptable.

[cat6man]

networking stuff can be a real devil.

i had problems a couple of years ago with my ziova network media player locking up after 40-90 minutes of playing large HD video files..........no other
users had this problem and ziova could not reproduce it...........after 6 months of pulling my hair out, i replaced all my d(isaster)-link switches with netgear and never saw the problem again..........what was going on? who knows but i was able to reproduce something that seemed related.

test:
stream HD video to media player, pull ethernet cable from player, wait for buffer to empty (picture would freeze on tv screen), reinsert cable.

with d-link switches, the ziova would lock up hard and have to be power cycled..........with netgear switches, the ziova was able to restart the stream.....huh?

so 'something funky' was going on with respect to streaming, buffering, etc and it was directly and reproducibly related to the gigabit switching (i have/had a small gigabit switch on each floor of the house (4 total) as cross connnects and a somewhat bigger one in the basement connecting all the small switches)

by the way, my hd200 is as solid as any player i've ever used

[ToxMox]

Sounds to me like the problem lies with one of the following:

- Signal Quality/Strength to the HDHR
- Network cable connected to HDHR
- Network switch or NIC connected to other end of HDHR
- Power Supply of HDHR

One thing to try is to:
- connect the coax to the HDHR without any splitters involved.
- connect HDHR with new network cable directly to network card on Sage server
- make sure you've done everything in the "Symptom - Network Packet Loss" section (last section) of the HDHR troubleshooting guide http://www.silicondust.com/hdhomerun...leshooting.pdf
- then copy a recording done this way to the external drive
- play that recording in standalone mode on the HD200 and see if that works
- if that works then you can try playing the same video without standalone mode
- if that works then you can one by one undo the steps at the beginning and figure out where the problem lies.

HTH

[Rezolution]

If you want to test your switches and cabling, I'd suggest downling jperf. You can run it on as a server your sagetv server pc. Then on the side that you have your placeshifter hooked up, disconnect it and hook a laptop up and run it as a client. Then you can test your connection at the site of your placeshifter for speed and jitter.

[kmp14]

Originally Posted by Narflex

Are the 3 TVs you tried different models?

Jeff,

Sorry for the delay in responding, I thought this thread had died since I stopped getting email notices.

Yes, the TVs are different models - Samsung DLP and Philips LCD.

But....George with support has helped me solve the problem! I will post the solution at the end of the thread.



Got the replacement wall wart from Silicon Dust several months ago, so that was not it.

[kmp14]

Well the great news is that the problem is solved!!!!

I was working with George from support, and the solution was to add a custom resolution:

Test1920x1080i@60|standard=HDMI_1080i59;

When I switch to that custom resolution, the pic is rock solid, and I jump around the room doing the happy dance!

Strange part: Both the Samsung DLP and Philips LCD need that res. to solve the problem. Seems odd that 2 different brands had a quirk that needed a special res.

Now the bad part - I BLEW IT by missing the last several posts. I stopped getting emails saying that there were updates to this thread, so I thought it was dead. Meanwhile jvl711, mikejanner, ToxMox, Rezolution were continuing to provide excellent ideas. I am sorry for missing, and not responding those great posts!

Thanks, thanks, thanks, to everyone who spent the time helping me. I learned a ton! Even better, I am staying with SageTV!

[valnar]

Awesome news. That is great!

So... question. Do both of your TV's only support 1080i, not 1080p? What models are they? Maybe the extender was trying to output 1080p?

[kmp14]

Originally Posted by valnar

Awesome news. That is great!

So... question. Do both of your TV's only support 1080i, not 1080p? What models are they? Maybe the extender was trying to output 1080p?

Samsung DLP - HL-S5679W (First gen LED based DLP)

Philips LCD - 42PFL7422D

They both accept 1080p, but I was definitely feeding them 1080i (I had also tried 1080p)

Seems like that tweak to feed 59hz instead of 60hz refresh rate did the trick, if I am understanding that custom res correctly.

[davenlr]

How did you input that custom rez? I would like to have the option available to try, as Im having a problem with my extenders output changing occasionally.

[kmp14]

Originally Posted by davenlr

How did you input that custom rez? I would like to have the option available to try, as Im having a problem with my extenders output changing occasionally.

Please note that custom res's are NOT SUPPORTED by Sage, and could actually damage your TV!!!! (this is my disclaimer)

The thread that explains how to do custom res is here:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...93&postcount=9

Here is the one he provided for me that fixed my problem, USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Test1920x1080i@60|standard=HDMI_1080i59;

Keep in mind that these custom res's don't stay selected when the HD200 is power cycled, at least it doesn't for me.

[davenlr]

Ok, thanks. Apparently, not all power companies are created equal. I *think* most monitors used to get their 60hz timing from the power company, so its possible yours might be 59? Dont know if they still use the powerline for timings now though. I know strange things happen on my system if they all arent plugged into the same leg of the 240V supply. I ran a second outlet to my media closet, and that breaker was on the opposite leg as the original 120V outlet, and I got hum bars on my digital screen just like an old analog cable had gone bad. Switched the breaker to the next slot, and the problem disappeared. I have weird problems.

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by davenlr

Ok, thanks. Apparently, not all power companies are created equal. I *think* most monitors used to get their 60hz timing from the power company, so its possible yours might be 59? Dont know if they still use the powerline for timings now though. I know strange things happen on my system if they all arent plugged into the same leg of the 240V supply. I ran a second outlet to my media closet, and that breaker was on the opposite leg as the original 120V outlet, and I got hum bars on my digital screen just like an old analog cable had gone bad. Switched the breaker to the next slot, and the problem disappeared. I have weird problems.

I don't think it has to do with power frequency. US power is pretty solid at 60Hz, and wouldn't affect digital processors, since they run on DC. Your problem probably had to do with ground loop feedback etc...
This is probably more to do with the fact that NTSC standard is 29.975fps, and 60fps doesn't divide evenly into that. with the .05fps difference, you get an extra frame every 40 seconds (30-29.975=.025 .025*40 seconds =1Frame). The correct multiple is 59.95hz. Some video players compensate by playing the video slightly faster , so there is not an extra frame they have to fill with the last frame, which makes it look like a studder. By telling the HD200 to use the right frequency, it doesn't have to skip the frame. Why it affected him with his tv's and it doesn't affect many others in this forum, may be further explained by the hdmi implimentation in tv's being different per manufacturer etc.... HDMI may be as sensitive about framerate also, not sure.