HD Theater: was fine, now only black screen during show playback

[alterna]

EDIT: Sorry, wrong forum. Don't know how to move the post, though.

I have an HD THeater (HD-200) on my network with SageTV 6.5.9 running on a Windows Home Server. Everything has been great for months, now I only get a black screen when I try to watch shows (recorded TV or DVD rips). If I fast forward I see stills of the video, but screen remains frozen when I hit play again (time moves by normally on progress bar).

I can get normal playback from the Client software on a PC in my network.

No recent changes to my system (that I know of - auto updates and all!). Worked this morning. Looking for tips before I go and monkey with various settings.

[Gulfboy]

I too started having problems with my stand-alone HD200. It has been running fine for 2-months and suddenly when I try and play a video it goes to a blank screen. I have the videos on a usb drive plugged directly into the HD200.
Started having problems in resuming playback on previously watched dvds.
Have cold rebooted several times. The USB drive works fine on my PC and I can play the dvds using PowerDVD. I have filed a support request, but haven't heard anything yet. Anyone else having a similar problem?

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by alterna

EDIT: Sorry, wrong forum. Don't know how to move the post, though.

I have an HD THeater (HD-200) on my network with SageTV 6.5.9 running on a Windows Home Server. Everything has been great for months, now I only get a black screen when I try to watch shows (recorded TV or DVD rips). If I fast forward I see stills of the video, but screen remains frozen when I hit play again (time moves by normally on progress bar).

I can get normal playback from the Client software on a PC in my network.

No recent changes to my system (that I know of - auto updates and all!). Worked this morning. Looking for tips before I go and monkey with various settings.

Try upgrading to the latest version of Sage (we are on 6.6.2) and while you are at if, if you haven't, upgrade the firmware on the HD200. There are even new BETA versions of the firmware for the HD200 which you might want to try (go to the upgrade screen and type 2382)

[Gulfboy]

To Paulbeers: I'm just wondering why the HD200 would need an update. Something got screwed up in the software for it to start messing up and if we can analyze the message files and maybe find out what happened. I have a message file I downloaded from the HD200, anybody know how to read it? You can open it with Notepad, but it is not formatted for that. Also, is there a way to clear out the libraries and re-scan clean from the usb drive. Some of my problems started when I tried to resume a watched DVD. It seems just using the remote can get the software messed up. Is there a technical manual that would explain the log files and the error codes produced by the HD200?

[Gulfboy]

Went back to my HD200 and made sure I did a reboot while holding delete. This seems to clear everything. After importing media from my usb drive, I can now play videos from my usb drive again and all previous videos were cleared from library. Can also resume a watched video, so hope this continues to work. Still not sure why the HD200 gets messed up?

[fvideira]

I had the same problem happening to me. It started giving an playback error after the screen went black for a couple minutes.

I had not made any changes to my media collection nor the configuration, and it has been working fine for months.

So, I removed all media folders, and imported them back. It did not work.

I removed the folders once again, add them. Waited until the folders were refreshed. Then I power it off, removed the power cable for 30 seconds, started again and it is now playing.

I am still puzzled by this problem, as it may happen again and I am not sure what is the root cause.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Gulfboy

To Paulbeers: I'm just wondering why the HD200 would need an update.

Just as FYI. You should always run the newest firmwares. What if this was a problem that had been fixed in a newer firmware. Think of firmware updates like you do with Operating System updates where you download the updates for fixes that have been report. If there is a problem that maybe overtime the file database becomes corrupt, maybe there was an update that prevents that.