No Sound From HD300

[wacole]

No sound provided by my HD300. It has been working fine for months and then a couple of days ago the sound stopped - the picture is just fine. I'm getting sound on my server monitor so it seems to be related to the media extender.

My connection to my TV from the HD300 is through an HDMI cable. I swapped the cable just to be sure, but that made no difference.

Clues would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much.

[wacole]

I mistakenly posted this to the SageTV Media Extender forum. I apologize for mis-reading the instructions on the Forum homepage and posting to the wrong place. Here's the question:

No sound is provided by my HD300. It has been working fine for months and then a couple of days ago the sound stopped - the picture is just fine. I'm getting sound on my server monitor so it seems to be related to the media extender.

My connection to my TV from the HD300 is through an HDMI cable. I swapped the cable just to be sure, but that made no difference.

Clues would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much.

[shatter]

I started noticing this same problem with my HD300 and HD200 a couple of days ago. It appears to be isolated to channels 3-58 for me. Sometimes I will get audio, sometimes not, sometimes the video stutters. I never have any problems on channels 100 and higher. I am running it via a CAT6 ethernet cable to my network.

I was running the beta firmware on the HD300 and went back to the last non-beta firmware without luck. Everything plays perfectly on my SageTV Client computer and everything looks great on the TV that is directly connected to the coax coming from my Dish Network STB.

I am stumped as to what is suddenly going on. I am going to try and put a fan on the HD300 and see if it is heat related.

Update: I changed my default audio setting on my receiver to Direct and it makes an audible click when it sets itself for whatever audio source comes in. When I tune to a channel and I don't get any audio, the receiver doesn't see any incoming audio (no click). Tune to a channel that is working and "click" the receiver sets itself for audio. I am passing this via HDMI from the HD300 to my receiver. So, it looks like when I am having these audio glitches that either the HD300 isn't being passed audio or the HD300 isn't passing the audio on the HDMI cable to the receiver.

[shatter]

Updates:

1. I switched from the SPDIF connection to the 2-channel RCA jack audio connection from the dish network STB to the HD-PVR and everything is working fine.

2. I recorded a bunch of shows on channels 3, 10 and 13 last night using the SPDIF connection and all the shows play back fine on the HD300.

3. So, it appears my problem is with watching live tv on the HD300, it doesn't seem to be able to handle SPDIF sourced audio but can handle 2-channel audio. (only a problem on channels 3-58, channels 100 and up are fine all the time)

So, why is the HD300 having intermittent problems handling the SPDIF via toslink connection on channels 3-58 but is fine the rest of the time? I am running it via a wired ethernet cat6 cable. I never have problems playing back already recorded shows, dvds and blu-rays.

Thanks

[PiX64]

What type of audio output are you having your hd300 use? In standalone mode check in the settings Which audio you are using. I know for me I had to play around with PCM or PCM-bitstream, etc to get my Bose system to consistently output sound. You may be throwing an audio format at your tv that it doesn't know how to decode.

The hd300 has the ability to decode/downsample the audio for you I believe, which is what you are doing when you change these settings. I can look when I get home for you to see what setting I am using exactly.

[wacole]

Shatter, thanks for the info and description of your problem.

For what it's worth, today I restarted the SageTV server as I've done every a.m. forever and after poking around in the sound control panel on the server [thank you for that suggestion] and seeing nothing untoward [except that the master volume was set to about 1/3], I'm finding that the sound is now passing through to the HD300 and on to the TV. If the master volume setting on the server is the culprit, then this is new information as as far as I can recall that setting hasn't been changed.

I've put a ticket in on this asking for guidance in troubleshooting this problem as I've a feeling this will happen again.

Cheers,

[shatter]

Originally Posted by PiX64

What type of audio output are you having your hd300 use? In standalone mode check in the settings Which audio you are using. I know for me I had to play around with PCM or PCM-bitstream, etc to get my Bose system to consistently output sound. You may be throwing an audio format at your tv that it doesn't know how to decode.

The hd300 has the ability to decode/downsample the audio for you I believe, which is what you are doing when you change these settings. I can look when I get home for you to see what setting I am using exactly.

Hi PiX64,

I am running the HDMI 1.3 option on the HD300. I play Blu-rays with the hd audio formats that will only be carried by that option.

Of note, I did some additional testng and I also have this problem on a HD200 which outputs 2-channel audio directly to an old tube television. So maybe this is a HD-PVR problem or something else altogether?

While doing some additional testing on the HD200, I started out tuning to channel 13 that has no audio. Then after a few seconds I started getting popping from the speakers and then some broken audio and then the audio came across fine. Of course, changing channels will lose the audio again.

I am running HDPVR drivers version 1.0.5.3

UPDATE: I updated drivers to 1.5.7.0 (latest) and so far so good. Sometimes I get no audio or choppy video for like 5-10 seconds and then it will start working or it just works perfectly from the outset. I swear I had stability problems with the 1.5.7.0 drivers in the past so I reserve judgement still. I am not sure how I got 1.0.5.3 on my machine since it is running Win7 64-bit and I didn't think those drivers worked on that version of the OS.

UPDATE2: The HDPVR only lasted about 18 hours before locking up using the 1.5.7.0 drivers so I reverted back to 1.0.5.3 and then installed the 1.5.6.1 drivers and it has been chugging along strong for a week while also getting rid of the playback issues through the HD200 and HD300. This appears to be my sweet spot for now.

Thanks,
Chad

[farfromuman]

I have experienced similar problems for about 5 days now, it started with no audio coming to the receiver I rebooted the HD300 and there were strange clicking noises from all 5 channels. Finally after rebooting again it started working. Today it started cutting out audio again, it is not the source since the audio is fine when played at a later time. I did notice that the unit itself gets very hot.

This might be a problem with my receiver, sage connected directly to tv works fine

[wayner]

I also occasionally have sound problems where the sound will stop working for the HD300 on imported video files - which are generally AVI files. But the sound will still work in SageTV recordings. This can generally be fixed by a reboot of my HD300. I have never seen this happen on an HD200 (I have five HD200s and have used them for several years) but I only have one HD300 and it happens at least once a month.