New recurring issue Capture device Failure to start

[-=Jeff=-]

Yes I did see the other post but mine is a little different.

my Sage System started acting up on Sunday.. all 3 analog tuners had issues Recording. I have one ATI 550 and 2 hauppaugge PVR-150s. All 3 of them started having issues when I tune a channel VIA the guide,

Error - Capture Device Failure while Starting Recording

If I went into the Device Set-up I could see the channels and then did a Scan on each one Monday evening all all was well. well this Am (Tuesday) it took about 5min before one tuner started working on it's own.

I also have 2 HDHR boxes (4 tuners) and those seemed to have an issue too on Sunday evening, I did find an update so the only difference is the HDHR are updated. and those were working, but I forgot to scan those tuners so the channels were not correct. I tested one of those tuners this AM (VIA the guide) and it seems to work.

If the signal quality degraded, could that be cauing my issues? I never watch analog CBS but it did seem snowy, which when that happens I know I have a lower signal.

These analog tuners are currently working off cable and once they fully switch to requiring a digital box I was planning on removing them from the mix anyway. so I am thinking it could be a lower signal causing the issues and will investigate tonight.

So could it be the lower signals?

Lastly Sag runs on my WHS, the software version is 6.6.2.218, is that the latest?

my STV is 6.6.2.24

[-=Jeff=-]

here is another error I was having:

There was a playback Error in playback. Details:
sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-5,0x80040200)
There was a problem rendering the audio portion of the
content for playback.


I am guessing that could also be caused due to a low signal right?

[MitchSchaft]

Have you tried rebooting yet?

[-=Jeff=-]

Originally Posted by MitchSchaft

Have you tried rebooting yet?

Yes I did that Sunday evening but will try again tonight when I get home.

I am Also going to check the signals. I am starting to think I have a bad cable or Splitter.

[MitchSchaft]

Yeah, bad signal will cause that. I haven't seen that on my cable line, but OTA will do it occasionally (if I'm standing in the wrong spot near the antenna ).

If you've already tried rebooting, I wouldn't worry about doing it again.

[-=Jeff=-]

Okay signal is good, all analog tuners had issues.. I also found I cannot tune and see anything on the WHS even with Java and such installed..

Anyway, I did realize I had a 400W PS with the 3 tuner cards and 5 HDs.. I swapped it for my 500W PS and it seems better, I think I need a bigger PS for the server though

[-=Jeff=-]

Thought all was good, then tonight the HDHR tuner failed to start.. I got it working but odd cause the show prior the same tuner recorded without fail

next thing to do it rescan all the HDHR tuners and go from there

[Curtis M]

OK, I can see where this issue got a lot of support?????

Might be because it is not a hardware problem ..... at least mine isn't.

I have a new install of SageTV. everything worked fine until about a week ago while I was watching one recording while trying to record another program. All of a sudden I get a "Capture device failure while starting recording" error that keeps popping up every minute or so. I figured the same .... it must be that I am not getting a good enough signal, so I started playing with it. I have 4 tv's in the house and ALL of them were working fine, the TV in which I use as a monitor worked fine on that channel and I even started up Windows Media Center and it was able to record the program just fine. Two days later, everytime I start SageTV to try and record my programs, I get the same error.

Sorry to say that I am really getting fed up with SageTV's issues and lack of support. My God if MICROSOFT can do it with WMC, SURELY a company that only has ONE program can release a stable version or at least SUPPORT the problems that its customers have.

And yea ... I have win7

[Bikeman]

Hey there Curtis_M,

Before you start getting all puffed up there, this is not a Support forum! This forum is for users to communicate amongst themselves.

If you want support, follow the instructions here: http://www.sagetv.com/support.html

[Curtis M]

I know ... Been there, done that.

I am paraphrasing here, but basically the response was "guess your screwed because we do not support Win7 installations at this time".

Of course it would have been nice had they told me that BEFORE they took my money.

Thanks anyways Bikeman,

Curtis M

[barney B.A.]

I had these error messages and it was due to a failing hard drive
I replaced the recording drive and haven't had another capture error.

[Hornet]

I see that you are using Comcast for your video. In my area, Comcast has a nasty habit of re-assigning the the Physical frequencies or channels for the local HD QAM picture with no notice. They usually leave the SD channels alone. I don't know if they do this everywhere, but I have to re-scan on my HDHR about every 3 months, or when I get that message about failed to start, to find the new Physical frequency. When I remap the channel to the new frequency it works again.

[Bikeman]

@Curtis M,

So what issues are you having?

I see the first thing you should do is to install the Sage program in a different folder.

Try installing it to C:\Sage or something similar. That gets you away from the \Program File (x86) folder and away from the VirtualStore issues. Second make sure that when you install it that you "run it as an Admin" by right clicking on the file first.

What tuners are you using and do you have the latest drivers for each.

I would also suggest you start a new thread instead going off topic here.

You'll find the the people here are friendly and helpful, more so if you state your issues and not be so negative. Sage works and works well. Win 7, especially adding the 64 bit version to the mix, is relatively new and going through growing pains and tweaks.

Jeff

[Savage1701]

Same here - one of my affiliates went off the air last week 15 minutes into Fringe and I got those errors. The tuner kept trying to re-lock onto a non-existent signal (verified because it was off the air from other non-related sources as well).

Sounds dumb, and I don't know where you live, but I get slightly worse reception in the spring and summer when leaves grow back onto the trees. That can make a signal go marginal, especially during bad weather, vs. the dead of winter when there are no leaves on any trees, etc.

[Savage1701]

A few other things I thought of - I have noticed increased tendencies with my OTA and HD-PVR tuners to throw errors, glitch, skip, tile, etc. as hard drives approach capacity, or if I make the mistake of putting a new drive in and not moving an equal percentage of shows onto it, as Sage then seems to allocate more recording activity to it to "balance" it with the other drives in terms of available space. If you don't want to move shows, allow Sage to only have free space equal to what's available on the other drives and then maybe 100GB extra, and then gradually lessen that number to open up space on the new drive. Example - I add a 2TB hard drive, but my other 3 2TB drives only have 300GB available. I would set Sage to set aside, say, 1600GB as unusable, and then gradually increase availability depending on how fast I was recording to it. Hopefully that way Sage does not solely single the new drive out, and you are not reading and writing all your newest shows just to that drive and overwhelming it.

Also, if your drives are "green" and "spin up" when shows start, you could be overdrawing your power supply on the surge alone. I can do that to even my servers at will if I set the RAID controller to spin up a dozen drives at once, rather leaving about a 4-sesond lag between them. I can see it on my ethernet PDU's amp meter, since a hard drive spinning up can draw a total of 30 watts each, which then falls back into the 5-10 watt range once the drive is going about its business. My large media server draws 4.5 amps under normal use. If I let all the hard drives spin up, even with 2 decent PSU's, current draw goes up to about 9 amps for about 10 seconds and totally overloads the PSU's +12v supply abilities. Spin the drives up 4 seconds apart, and it never spikes over 5.5 amps. The solution here is, of course, a larger PS, and preferrably one with a SINGLE +12v rail. Multiple rails tend to be a joke to begin with, you can rarely control how the allocate, and they are designed for Crossfire systems that pull heavy to the graphics cards.

It's possible your cards are faulting as well if your PS can't get enough +5v current to the motherboard and its slots. Something sticks in my head that a modern board spec demands that a PSU can throw 18A at +5v to it if it needs it. Since a lot of PSU's don't go a much over that, it's possible a fully populated board, if using a lot of +5v devices, could be leaning heavy on your PSU's +5v rail as well. And 3.5" HD's take +5v and +12v power.