No Signal in Sage on some Channels but HDHR3 QuickTV Tunes Channels Fine

[LexLS]

Been searching the forums all day and seen others with similar issues but nothing has worked for me...

The problem I'm encountering is that a few select channels are giving me the "no signal" error when I tune to them; the majority of channels tune in fine in Sage. However, I can use HDHR QuickTV to tune to the same channels just fine so I know it's not Comcast or the HDHR3. Recordings that were done on these channels do not play in Sage, you just get the spinning circle and you need to right-click to stop it. However, I can open those recordings just fine in VLC or WMC and they play perfectly.

At first I tried playing with the JavaHeapSize. It was initially on 0 and it had been working fine so I set it to 400 and that brought the few channels that weren't working back for a few days but not so anymore. Now even more channels don't resolve in Sage. I set that down to 300 for now since it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Today I upgraded from SageDCT 2.1.7 to 2.6.0 and no difference, still no signal error on those channels. I tried the VLC option and get this error: sage.PlaybackException: ERROR (-4,0x80004005): There was a problem rendering the video portion of the content for playback.

So some type of rendering issue, this is where my skills are lacking and I could use a little guidance. I haven't changed any Sage settings, these channels just randomly stopping tuning (in Sage). Here's a clip of the sage debug log:

Sun 12/15 15:12:43.810 [Seeker@17d0063] RootFile=D:\ fstype=NTFS fileLength=3344144 file=D:\Temp Recording\MissCongeniality-6288442-0.ts
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.814 [Seeker@17d0063] Doing pre-emptive file format detection on recording MediaFile....D:\Temp Recording\MissCongeniality-6288442-0.ts
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.862 [FinalRender-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@239f54] Doing pre-emptive file format detection on recording MediaFile....D:\Temp Recording\MissCongeniality-6288442-0.ts
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.876 [VideoFrame-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@3ce497] WARNING: Native format detection failed for MPEG file D:\Temp Recording\MissCongeniality-6288442-0.ts of formatMPEG2-TS 0:00:02 10795 kbps [#0 Audio[AC3 48000 Hz 2 channels 96 kbps idx=1 id=96]#1 Audio[AC3 48000 Hz 6 channels 384 kbps idx=2 id=95]]
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.879 [VideoFrame-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@3ce497] Returning NULL format due to internal detection failure since redoing it will likely fix it...
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.882 [VideoFrame-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@3ce497] VF waiting for data to appear in new file...liveWait=-306
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.885 [FinalRender-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@239f54] Using internal format detector first...
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.888 [VideoFrame-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@3ce497] VF thread is now waiting for 0:00:00.200
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.896 [FinalRender-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@239f54] AV Format:(0:0:00.000'000.0)
Sun 12/15 15:12:43.896 [FinalRender-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@239f54] Now using external format detector...
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.091 [VideoFrame-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@3ce497] VF processing job VFJob[LoadMF r=0.0 t=0 file=MediaFile[id=6529720 A[6288442,6280924,"Miss Congeniality",59337@1215.12:45,150] mask=TV host=NAS1 encodedBy=SageDCT-HDHomeRun Prime Tuner 1316A569-0 on 127.0.0.1:6972 AMCHD format=MPEG2-TS 0:00:00 0 kbps [] D:\Temp Recording\MissCongeniality-6288442-0.ts, Seg0[Sun 12/15 15:12:40.793-Wed 12/31 18:00:00.000]] ifn=null] nPlayin=false
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.094 [VideoFrame-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@3ce497] VF network encoder playback detected: true
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.098 [VideoFrame-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@3ce497] Doing pre-emptive file format detection on recording MediaFile....D:\Temp Recording\MissCongeniality-6288442-0.ts
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.919 [FinalRender-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@239f54] WARNING: Native format detection failed for MPEG file D:\Temp Recording\MissCongeniality-6288442-0.ts of formatMPEG2-TS 0:00:03 11689 kbps [#0 Video[MPEG2-Video 59.94 fps 1920x1080 16:9 20000 kbps progressive id=94]#1 Audio[AC3 48000 Hz 2 channels 96 kbps idx=1 id=96]#2 Audio[AC3 48000 Hz 6 channels 384 kbps idx=2 id=95]]
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.921 [FinalRender-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@239f54] Returning NULL format due to internal detection failure since redoing it will likely fix it...
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.926 [Seeker@17d0063] Using internal format detector first...
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.938 [Seeker@17d0063] AV Format:(0:0:00.000'000.0)
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.938 [FinalRender-SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI@239f54] Doing pre-emptive file format detection on recording MediaFile....D:\Temp Recording\MissCongeniality-6288442-0.ts
Sun 12/15 15:12:44.941 [Seeker@17d0063] Now using external format detector...

My hardware setup is in my sig and hasn't significantly changed since the HDHR3 was released. I'm running SageTV 7.1.9, Java 7.45, HDHR Prime firmware 20130328, and SageDCT 2.6.0. I tried to get SageDCT 2.7.2 but it gave me a permission denied error. Suggestions????

[tmiranda]

I am having a similar issue and can't figure it out either. The HDHR tunes the channel fine but I get "No SIgnal" when I try to watch in Sage.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I am having a similar issue and can't figure it out either. The HDHR tunes the channel fine but I get "No SIgnal" when I try to watch in Sage.

What version of SageDCT are you using and with which options?

You may need to try the Donator version and enable FFMPEG recording. I have not needed to do this myself yet, but I've seen a lot of posts where people (primarily using Comcast) have certain channels that cause recording problems. I think the symptoms that most people describe is that they get sound but no picture on their extenders.

I think the cause is that Comcast is sending out a poorly formatted MPG file and the extender chokes when it tries to play it back. Some decoders (such as those used by VLC) are more forgiving and can play the recordings back without problem. In the more recent versions of SageDCT, they added an option to use VLC to re-encode the recording on the fly. Then in the most recent (Donator / beta) version, they changed it to use FFMPEG instead of VLC.

One other warning- from what I've seen posted, if you enable the FFMPEG stuff, the preview in the Sage channel setup screen doesn't work (you need to temporarily change a setting in SageDCT to "Dump" when using the channel setup preview function).

I have Comcast myself, so I've been paying attention to those posts, figuring I'll run into this same problem sooner or later.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by Tiki

What version of SageDCT are you using and with which options?.

Not using SageDCT. The problem is with unencrypted QAM.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

Not using SageDCT. The problem is with unencrypted QAM.

Sorry, I assumed you were referring to the HDHR Prime with Sage DCT.

In that case, I have no ideas.

[LexLS]

I just made a donation on babgvant.com and will try out SageDCT 2.7 to see if that helps. From what I've read it takes a day or so to gain access.

[LexLS]

I've been running SageDCT 2.7 for about a week now and channels seem to be tuning fine. I haven't had any unplayable ones that I know of. All I did was uninstall the old version, install new 2.7. Downloaded ffmpeg and dropped those files into the ffmpeg folder that was created in the program files > babgvant.com folder. I then set SageDCT from dump to ffmpeg and restarted the service. We'll see long term.

A big thank you to babgvant for putting this great piece of software out there and continuing to improve it!!! That was well worth buying you a beer

[hufnagel]

bumping an old thread I know, but the problem i'm having seems very similar.
Comcast/HDHR3-CC/cablecard/'SageDCT 2.6' combo with some TS files NOT playing back, but can be transcoded to work later on. they also play fine in windows media player. if anyone would be willing to try and so an in-Sage playback for me of a small ( <7MB file ) I'd appreciate it. URL of the file is...
http://misc.pcsi.ws/browse/bad_streams.ts

I suspect SageDCT 2.7 (or higher if one comes out?) might fix my problem but before I go that route if someone who has it could test the above listed stream/file I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

[sjwoo]

Originally Posted by LexLS

I've been running SageDCT 2.7 for about a week now and channels seem to be tuning fine. I haven't had any unplayable ones that I know of. All I did was uninstall the old version, install new 2.7. Downloaded ffmpeg and dropped those files into the ffmpeg folder that was created in the program files > babgvant.com folder. I then set SageDCT from dump to ffmpeg and restarted the service. We'll see long term.

A big thank you to babgvant for putting this great piece of software out there and continuing to improve it!!! That was well worth buying you a beer

Hear, hear! ffmpeg did the trick for me, too, plus 2.7. All is well now.