The Official R5000-HD Technical Status Discussion [Text View] - Page 11

MKANET

10-07-10, 01:52 PM

Hi Fellow R5000 users! I currently have 4 R5000 based cableTV boxes. Two of them are DCT6200s and two of them are DCP-501s. They all seem to work great under Vista32. Except I'm running into a problem.

Pretty regularly, when I change to a channel or watch live TV (via SageTV) from a random cablebox (doesn’t matter which modem/brand). I will see a longer than normal pause, then I will see streamed video/audio from the last channel that box was tuned on from a previous recording. No matter what channel I change to, that random box will just pause (like its changing the IR channel), then just stream the same channel it was on. The only way I know how to stop this is to unplug the cablebox and replug it back in (there's probably an easier way to do it). This doesnt have to do with IRtiming; as I dont think IR commands are even making it to the box; or at least the box is not responding to IR request anymore.

I have already replaced two different USB hubs just in case I had a bad hub. But they basically wont prevent from a random cablebox to get stuck in it's IR receiving capabilities.

At least I know it's very unlikely that its a hardware issue; or, it would be just one problematic box only.

I don’t know if this matter, but if I look closely at R5000 DVR app (3.1D latest multi-version with sageTV addon), it looks like its still actively recording a 2 hour TV show (that was over 15 hours ago! The "Program Length" counter shows 15h43m and on going... See below snapshot.

I realize that the latest R5000 DVR app should always be connected to the cablebox; but it sounds like somehow, the IR communication gets locked up. Streaming, however is fine.

Is this because of poor programming? Or, possibly, I am running a little low on available system resources when this happens? I tried sending an email to R5000 support, but I don’t think they will help me or give me any good advice.

Thanks so much for any helpful suggestions or better yet, if someone has seen this kind of behavior before using the new software.
-Michael

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h283/mkanet/Screenshot-1116.jpg

pilotguy7ca

10-09-10, 09:05 AM

MKANET, I'm currently still using 3.0c multi with Sage and I've noticed this same behaviour randomly on both of my starchoice boxes, usually about once a month, but sometimes more. The only way to get it unstuck that I've tried is to unplug/replug the reciever like you say.

On another issue, something I have happening randomly too with sage is partway through a recording the video seems to speed up without audio for a few seconds and then go back to normal and then speed up again and repeat this until the end of the file. If I try to skip ahead it just jumps back on the time line. It becomes unwatchable and I've tried using something like mpegrepair or video redo but neither of them seem to fix the file. I'm using sage 7.0.16 btw and I've had this issue even back in v6 and with prior versions of r5000 but it's come and gone randomly.

MKANET

10-09-10, 04:04 PM

I am being optimistic. There is supposedly a fix for this from the same person who brought us the "proxy app" which forced the DVR app to behave since it sat between the DVR app and sageTV. He said he has an app that takes care of this issue and other issues related to buffer over/underruns... so stanger89 if you're listening, you might be a perfect candidate for this. If this app turns out to work perfectly as advertised, he is planning on selling it as a reasonably priced shareware to replace the DVR app (along with the latest driver that you can install).

He said he was going to send me this alpha-stage app two days ago, but never heard from him again. Not sure if he's going all the way by adding a gui or adding multi-device support or not. I suggest all you guys trying to make your R5000 work on a virtual machine, have weird underun/overrun errors to keep a very close eye in the next few days or so (if Hugo comes through). Its kind of sad that the R5000 developer is one of those guys who thinks juist because it works find on his machine, there is nothing wrong with their software.

More later...
Michael

MKANET, I'm currently still using 3.0c multi with Sage and I've noticed this same behaviour randomly on both of my starchoice boxes, usually about once a month, but sometimes more. The only way to get it unstuck that I've tried is to unplug/replug the reciever like you say.

On another issue, something I have happening randomly too with sage is partway through a recording the video seems to speed up without audio for a few seconds and then go back to normal and then speed up again and repeat this until the end of the file. If I try to skip ahead it just jumps back on the time line. It becomes unwatchable and I've tried using something like mpegrepair or video redo but neither of them seem to fix the file. I'm using sage 7.0.16 btw and I've had this issue even back in v6 and with prior versions of r5000 but it's come and gone randomly.

stanger89

10-09-10, 04:28 PM

FWIW, I only need one device but I'd definitely be willing to experiment.

ctdish

10-10-10, 11:48 AM

On another issue, something I have happening randomly too with sage is partway through a recording the video seems to speed up without audio for a few seconds and then go back to normal and then speed up again and repeat this until the end of the file. If I try to skip ahead it just jumps back on the time line. It becomes unwatchable and I've tried using something like mpegrepair or video redo but neither of them seem to fix the file. I'm using sage 7.0.16 btw and I've had this issue even back in v6 and with prior versions of r5000 but it's come and gone randomly.

I see the same behavior once in a while when playing back files using a Popcornhour 110. Most of my recordings are from MPEG 2 channels. These will play OK on using a MYHD card except beyond the point where the problem first occurs, skip forward will not work correctly. So at least I can watch the program.
John

MKANET

10-10-10, 11:33 PM

Okay, I just recent bought an Android HTC EVO. I love it, 4G speeds work great near my work,

I currently have 4 R5000 based cableboxes. Only two of them have component out/DVI out. My R5000 cableboxes are very active; with no set schedule since they primarily record premium movies and series.

Since sageTV's mobile TV app is at best in alpha stage; I cant even get it to work after spending a week on it; later finding out that the best I can hope for is checking/altering my schedule and use my phone as a remote control for all my sageTV clients; which there's already a better, free app for that.

Anyway, Im not sure what would happen if I were to hook up a Slingplayer HD to the component out of one of my R5000 cableboxes controlled by sageTV. Has anyeone tried this; or a concept similar to this? Im not sure what would happen if i was watching a streamed tv show on my phone; and all of a sudden sageTV changes the channel to record something.

I already have an 8 way cable TV tuner splitter (using all its connections?), so, I dont have room to add yet another cable box dedicated to slingbox.

Do you guys have any suggestions that doesnt involve any major configuration changes?

Doesnt Comcast have a DVR app in the works to stream tv to an android phone? Its really too bad that sageTV doesnt have placeshifter for android phones. That would be the ultimate. But for whatever the reason, even after years of begging, that has not happened.

matt314159

10-21-10, 02:32 PM

Does anybody have Windows Media Center working? I had read that R5000 Supported Windows XP MCE and vista x32 WMC, but I just had the most frustrating conversation with a R5000 HD technical support. See transcript below:
Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]>
________________________________________
Windows 7 Media Center
11 messages
________________________________________
Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]> Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 6:26 PM
To: r5000support@nextcomwireless.com

Hi, I purchased the R-5000 VIP 211 premod last year.

I'm loving it so far, but now I'm thinking of reprovisioning my Quad-Core PC to become a home theater PC running Windows 7 x64.

My question is this: Do I need to purchase a special version of this software, or can I use the standard drivers to work with Windows Media Center edition?

Thanks so much for your time,

-Matt [redacted]

________________________________________
r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 10:42 AM
To: Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]>

Hi,

I'm not sure if you're asking if WMC functionality is supported or if you can use the R5000-HD with a Win 7 x64 Media Center edition PC. The answer to WMC support is no, it is not supported, but to install and use the R5000 on a Media Center edition PC is the same as any other. Just download and run the installer for the appropriate package, in your case the Vista/Win7 x64 bundle.

Win 7 does supply as standard, software decoders for H.264 video so you can play any ViP211 HD recordings without adding anything special -just launch them with WMP or WMC. However, the R5000 USB driver and DVR app has to be loaded from our installation package. Thanks,

JD
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 11:46 AM
To: r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com>

ohh, I was grossly mistaken then, I was under the impression that you supported it as a tuner in Windows Media Center (a'la sage tv) and was wondering if, like sageTV, there was an upcharge for that software. I could have sworn when I bought this, I read something about it being supported in Media Center, and the underlying software would also record raw streams so the recordings weren't locked down to the encrypted media center format.

back to the drawing board, i suppose. I was planning to use WMC with a WMC Extender in another room. I'm not sure if SageTV offers something similar...will have to look into that.

At any rate, thanks for getting back to me, I do appreciate it.

-matt
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 11:50 AM
To: r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com>

so I'm seeing instructions on how to set up the R5000 as a tuner in MCE here: http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/dvr_manual/mce_manual_setup1.htm
So did you mean to say that you only support XP MCE and not Win7 Media Center?
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:01 PM
To: Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]>

Where is that link on our website?
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:02 PM
To: r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com>

http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/dvr_manual/mce_manual_setup1.htm
http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/dvr_manual/mce_manual_setup.htm

If it works with XP MCE only, then I can work with that, but I'd prefer win7 mce.
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:06 PM
To: r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com>

I'm not entirely sure where it's linked from the main page, but here's the page from which the previous two were linked:
http://www.nextcomwireless.com/R5000/dvr_manual/mce_manual.htm

Introduction
The MCE version of the R5000-HD DVR supports the Windows® Media Center Edition (XP and Vista 32). In addition to the special version of the DVR app, a set of drivers is installed providing a fully integrated Media Center tuner. The new software impersonates an NTSC tuner/capture device whereby the R5000-HD device is installed as a connection to the imaginary S-VHS or composite input. Now, full advantage can be taken of the integrated guide and scheduling features of Media Center while still producing the same high-quality HD (and SD) streams.

the emphasized portion is what I'm after.
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:09 PM
To: Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]>

Yeah, but where did you get that link from?? Where can you get to that from our site?
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:12 PM
To: r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com>

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=R5000+Media+Center
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:13 PM
To: r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com>

(BTW I didn't mean that in a snarky sort of way, but yes, I did just search for "R5000 Media Center" in google and 3 of the 4 top results are the links I referred to.
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________
r5000support <r5000support@nextcomwireless.com> Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:21 PM
To: Matthew [redacted] <[redacted]>

Hi,

These are obviously old, outdated links. Anything current will be referenced on our site, for example WMC support. I can't speak to what was experimented with 2 or 3 years ago with XP but trust me there is no support for it now. All you would have to do is look at what software is referenced from our support page.

Thanks
[Quoted text hidden]

________________________________________

Let me repeat that last part (with emphasis this time):
Hi,

These are obviously old, outdated links. Anything current will be referenced on our site, for example WMC support. I can't speak to what was experimented with 2 or 3 years ago with XP but trust me there is no support for it now. All you would have to do is look at what software is referenced from our support page.

"ObviouslY". Like I'm some kind of idiot. I bought this dang thing under the impression that sometime down the line, I could build a HTPC and integrate this as a WMC tuner. Now I'm told that the information I had is "obviously" an old, outdated link, simply because they don't link to that particular support page from their main page. "All I would have to do" is look at their software support page and see that it's not listed, so instead, being the idiot that I clearly am, i googled it, found pages hosted on nextcomwireless' very own webpage, called them on it, but, NO, I'm clearly the moron in this picture.

I just had to vent about this, because I'm incredibly frustrated. This knucklehead really rubbed me the wrong way.

[/rant]

jones07

10-23-10, 11:42 AM

Suck it up and go Sagetv.

I know giving nextcomwireless more of your $$$ will leave a bad taste is your mouth..............but R5000HD and Sagetv works great together.

I think I'm going on 4-5 years of trouble free use.

Good luck

MKANET

10-23-10, 04:16 PM

I actually chose sageTV over Microsoft Media Center before I even had R5000 tuners. SageTV is superior in many different way; especially if you have more than one room that you want to watch TV. I also have 5+ years of trouble free use. Never missed a recording.

Suck it up and go Sagetv.

I know giving nextcomwireless more of your $$$ will leave a bad taste is your mouth..............but R5000HD and Sagetv works great together.

I think I'm going on 4-5 years of trouble free use.

Good luck

matt314159

10-26-10, 03:08 PM

I might have to do just that. I had some plans to share the media center around the house with the Linksys DMA2100, because the 'good computer' is occasionally used for other projects. I may have to fashion a low-budget HTPC to dedicate to this project only. (obviously that's the ideal situation anyway, but I thought i could cut corners and let the one PC be a media center "most of the time" and a photo and video editing workstation "the rest of the time")

matt314159

10-26-10, 06:26 PM

I wonder: Has anybody messed with the Acer Revo? Seems like it might be the perfect solution to my problems, if i can get SageTV working on it--cheap, compact, low-power, etc.

ctdish

10-27-10, 11:31 AM

I don't know about Sage but I have two R5000's connected to a 1.66 GHz. netbook that record OK simultaneously with playback to a Popcorn Hour.
John

MKANET

10-27-10, 01:15 PM

IMHO, I don't think the DMA2100 is comparable to the new sageTV 7 + (SageTV HD Theater 300) extenders can do; even without the R5000s tied in. But, I guess, everyone's taste, priorities, opinions are different. You should definitely not feel like you have to resort to using sageTV just because of the R5000s; especially if you want extender functionality. It's really a win-win situation. Just ask any recent sageTV user.

I might have to do just that. I had some plans to share the media center around the house with the Linksys DMA2100, because the 'good computer' is occasionally used for other projects. I may have to fashion a low-budget HTPC to dedicate to this project only. (obviously that's the ideal situation anyway, but I thought i could cut corners and let the one PC be a media center "most of the time" and a photo and video editing workstation "the rest of the time")

matt314159

10-27-10, 01:19 PM

I'm actually looking into getting one of those Acer Revos, probably the higher-end version, and setting that up as the main SageTV box in the living room, and then I can try out an extender later on down the road if I want. The only reason I was going to go with MCE+ extenders is because the "fast" computer is in another room, set up as a video editing/photo editing workstation, and I didn't want to move it to the living room. I already have a satellite feed in the other room as well so it would be easier to move my VIP211 into the other room and use an extender in the living room.

But I think the Revo/SageTV box will be a great alternative. Now I just need to read up until i feel I understand sageTV properly. I am getting some confusing things about networks and server/client functinality and all that. Gotta do my reading. Thanks for the replies!

matt314159

10-27-10, 11:35 PM

Okay, so this is...strange...

So their tech support guy, JD, was a total jerk to me and acted like I was completely nuts for expecting MCE support. Yet in addition to the MCE support files, it appears they are OFFERING THE SOFTWARE FOR SALE ON THEIR WEBSITE:

http://i122.photobucket.com/albums/o254/matt314159/Capture-58.jpg

They just keep finding new ways to piss me off. I was there looking at the pricing of their SageTV software, and I see the little green button.

is there anybody else at Nextcomwireless I can get in touch with other than this "JD" fellow at r5000support@nextcomwireless.com ?

I'd love true MCE support, and will pay them despite the fact that apparently JD doesn't know what he's talking about, but I really want somebody other than him to deal with. I have a feeling I might just get the big freeze if I try emailing them again.

They really need to get their act together. When is some Chinese company going to clone their hardware already and sell a self-install kit for $49 that will put these guys in their place?

vladd

10-28-10, 01:32 AM

If you click the link, you will get a "Product not found page". This is because they added MCE support May 12, 2008 (http://nextcomwireless.com/R5000/news.htm) and then pulled it because of issues they were having (http://nextcomwireless.com/R5000/mce.htm).

matt314159

10-28-10, 01:35 AM

Hmm...and how hard is it to take it out of their catalog? I mean, they've had two years...

Bah, I just need to get over the chip on my shoulder, give them their $50 for sageTV, and move on.

I ended up buying a barebones eeeBox EB1012 (the one with the dual-core Atom 330), 4GB ram, and a 250GB, 7200RPM HDD. I also have a 750GB eSATA drive that I'll use for the DVR functions. I hope this has the horsepower to work pretty flawlessly. Cost about $280, all told. Not bad for what you get, I don't think.

MKANET

11-25-10, 03:20 PM

Does anyone have a pristine condition R5000 modded VIP211 that they want to sell to me at a great price? The R5000 addon would need to be modded by Nextcom. I'm looking for one that's in mint condition.. to match the rest of my setup.

voorhees98

11-28-10, 11:10 AM

I'm curious what Motorola DCP501 owners are going to do when Comcast kicks these boxes off their network. I just received a letter from Comcast saying both my 501's stop working mid-june.

Pretty regularly, when I change to a channel or watch live TV (via SageTV) from a random cablebox (doesn’t matter which modem/brand). I will see a longer than normal pause, then I will see streamed video/audio from the last channel that box was tuned on from a previous recording. No matter what channel I change to, that random box will just pause (like its changing the IR channel), then just stream the same channel it was on. The only way I know how to stop this is to unplug the cablebox and replug it back in (there's probably an easier way to do it). This doesnt have to do with IRtiming; as I dont think IR commands are even making it to the box; or at least the box is not responding to IR request anymore.

Well, I got the letter and phone call back in February and they said by June my two DCP501's were no longer going to work on Comcast. June came and went. However, about a month ago I started getting a strange behavior out of both of my DCP501's that is exactly what MKANET mentions above. Every 1 - 4 days they still stream to SageTV great, but they no longer change channels. I have to unplug both of them and plug them back in (then turn them on since they do not come on by themselves), and also reboot my WHS server (I can sometimes get away without the server reboot, but most of the time I have to do it too). After this all is well again, and they work fine for 1 - 4 days until they stop changing channels again.

Also, I have noticed that the current channel does not appear on the front display of either of the DCP501's anymore. Just to check I moved one the the DCP501's to a TV and plugged it in as a cable box. I got sound (if I remember correctly) but no picture, just snow. It looks like something has changed pretty drastically in the box, maybe from a push by Comcast.

They still work great until they stop changing channels again, then the process has to be repeated. This is really a pain in the neck when I am traveling and the system is stuck on one channel on each box and they just keep recording that channel for what ever channel is requested. Since it happens often, this has really become a show stopper.

MKANET have you, or anyone else, found a solution to this problem?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

MKANET

11-28-10, 12:23 PM

I dont think it's comcast; or it wouldnt work consistently for several days. The date you mention is consistent with the last R5000 software release. the same thing happens on my cable boxes that arent 501's. Unless youre still using XP and an old version of the software. PM me. Some things are better to chat via PM.

Edit: To make a long story short, I'm convinced the problem has to do with the latest significant change in the R5000 software/drivers which forces continuous streaming between the box and your USB hub. The way to fix it is to email r5000support@nextcomwireless.com and ask them to make continuous streaming optional. Continuous streaming does more harm than good on many systems. I have already emailed them. But, as expected, they ignored my email; as, apparently, responses from R5000 tech support is optional.

warlordbb

12-11-10, 08:40 PM

I've had my R5000-HD for about 3 years now and it's always worked great. However, now, on some channels such as SyFy and Animal Planet, I'm getting sound but no picture on both HD and SD version. The R5000 app says, "parse failed to get stream type, assuming MPEG", which I assume is the problem (i.e. it thinks it's a steam type other than it is) but I'm not finding ANY information on how to resolve that. I'm going to sift through the 85 pages and _more_ Google searches but I thought I would just post here in case this is a simple issue that y'all have experience with.

TIA.

pendragonsound

12-17-10, 09:06 AM

MKANET

12-17-10, 10:35 AM

Thanks Pendragonsound. As for me, I dont see any performance or stability related issues specific to version 3.1d or 3.0c with cableTV. With sageTV 7, I no longer need Hugo's proxy app. The only issue I have (specific to Comcast+Vista/Win7); where after about a week or so, regardless of cablebox type, the cableboxes will no longer be able to change channels via R5000 IR commands. This issue was easier to fix that I thought. I just plugged in a power timer (http://www.amazon.com/Intermatic-DT620CL-Indoor-Astronomic-Digital/dp/B001KBZUMG) to powercycle the boxes twice a week (monday/thursday at 4am). This doesnt affect the R5000 app/drivers/sageTV whatsoever; they invisibly recover instantly with no error messages or prompts.

I prefer 3.0c over 3.1d only because I like to see which one of my 4 cableboxes is actively recording/streaming at a glance to my Windows desktop (4 system tray icons):
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h283/mkanet/Screenshot-1258.jpg

With 3.1d, there's no telling if something is recording or not since there's only one icon to represent all 4 devices; plus, all 4 devices would be uselessly streaming anyway on the last channel that was recorded.

So, unless you're using a 64 bit OS or need support for dishnetwork's new transport streams, 3.0c is still the best option in my opinion. The only thing I had to do was make a small change so that I dont get prompted to upgrade to version 3.1c every time the 3.0c app starts up.

-Michael

Dish is changing the format of some of their transport streams and the old Nextcom software is not able to recognize this. The latest build of the 3.1d software should fix your problem. However if you're running on 3.0 (any version), be careful because 3.1 causes serious headaches in certain configurations.

videohacker

12-17-10, 05:44 PM

WHAT THE $#%#. I've been running some old "build". Didn't realize that the same version 3.1d download would just turn into a new version on some random date, a least the file name would change to say it was newer!

I've have the no video problem many times and thought it was some random error, ERrr..

Anyway, does anyone know definitively how to repair a previous "bad" recording?? If I run one through tsMuxerGUI it does make the video come back for media center, but the audio is way off sync??

Thanks

boiler11

12-19-10, 01:10 PM

ctdish

12-19-10, 03:55 PM

I haven't been recording too much from dish but I have the last three or four weeks of Burn Notice from USA network. None of these would play directly on a Popcorn Hour. I use 3.0d of the R5000 recorder software with the dish aimed at the 77 Deg satellite. They can be fixed to play OK with TsRemuxer. The lipsync looks about as good as any other file. A one hour file takes about 5 min.
John

pk442

12-22-10, 02:02 PM

Dish is changing the format of some of their transport streams and the old Nextcom software is not able to recognize this. The latest build of the 3.1d software should fix your problem. However if you're running on 3.0 (any version), be careful because 3.1 causes serious headaches in certain configurations.

I am running 3.1d on Widows 7 Professional - 64bit. I have a nextcom modded VIP-211 Dish satellite box. I am almost always get the "parse failed to get stream type - assuming MPEG-2" message. Playing these recordings, there is audio, but no video. In Win7 directory the file type is listed as MPEG-2 TS stream. I'm sure dish is compressing more then MPEG-2, so the files are probably MPEG-4. Is there a way to just change the extension? Would that work? Win XP explorer it was easy to change the ext of a file, but Win7 doesn't seem to even want to let me "see" the extension. Is there a way around that? Thanks - PK

pk442

12-22-10, 03:49 PM

An issue I've had since I purchase my R-5000 with Sage TV - has been to get Sage TV to work. I always get the message "Sage TV waiting for connection on port 6969..."
Is this a port issue, and how do I configure the/a port for Sage TV in Windows 7 ? Is this the same port as the Nextcom USB? Thanks - PK

ctdish

12-22-10, 03:50 PM

Try downloading and installing the version of 3.1d that is now on the Nextcom website and see if it works better.
John

pk442

12-22-10, 05:26 PM

Try downloading and installing the version of 3.1d that is now on the Nextcom website and see if it works better.
John

Are there recent changes to 3.1d? I would think they'd give it a differnt number - 3.1e. I will try that, it looks like I downloaded 3.1d on 3/11/10. Thanks.

P.S. - Okay, I tried it and I now have version 3.1d - build 5. Build 5 was released 05/24/10. Hopefully that will fix the parsing issue. Thanks again for your help, but I'm still trying to get Sage TV. Following the Nextcom instructions for Sage TV it says to edit some files in C:\Sage TV. I do not have a Sage TV folder anywhere on my computer. Looking at the Sage TV web site, they do not list the R-5000HD. Do I just download a version (which one?) and use my password/id from Nextcom? Any idead? Thanks - PK

gregveres

12-28-10, 11:49 AM

Does anybody have the R5000 software working under windows7 64?

I really want to upgrade my server to windows 7 64bit release but I just realized that I don't know if the R5000 driver will work. Has anybody had any success?

Thanks
Greg

guppyman

12-28-10, 12:58 PM

Sorry - I can't say. It's extremely stable on my Win7 32-bit HTPC with SageTV.

gregveres

12-28-10, 01:22 PM

Sorry - I can't say. It's extremely stable on my Win7 32-bit HTPC with SageTV.

Thanks. Are you using the Vista version from the website then?

Greg

guppyman

12-28-10, 03:31 PM

I think so. To be honest, I did so much going back and forth between Nextcom and SageTV about a year ago, I'm not positive exactly what I have. It HD-PVR says its 3.1d but I see there is newer release of that. I too get the "parse failed to get stream type assuming MPEG-2" but the recordings play in Sage and will edit in VideoReDo.

Right now - the system just works and has for about a year.

guppyman

12-28-10, 04:05 PM

Just updated to the latest 3.1d. Held my breath and ran the new install (after backing up the current install first). After the install, I rebooted and tried recording and all is well. No more error message - recognizes the dish signal correctly now.

cosdog

12-30-10, 11:02 AM

I would really appreciate any suggestions to help me with the problem I'm having with R5000-HD. I am currently using it with Dish 622, running the latest software 3.1d (build 5) on Windows XP. I recently switched to this latest software. For a long time, I ran the 3.0 version and it worked fairly reliably for channel switching and recording. Until...I started having the problem (mentioned here) with recording sound but no picture on certain channels.

So I upgraded to 3.1d, and it did solve the recording sound/no picture problem. However, I cannot get it to change channels reliably. This software version has the "tweaks" section, and I tweaked and tweaked, tried different delays, different pre-codes, but the best setting I could find seems to change channels correctly about 50% of the time (or worse).

Anyone else using the 622 having this problem? Any suggestions on making it work better? I would be so grateful for some help, because this is really frustrating. The recordings I get are excellent...when it changes to the correct channel. Thanks!

MKANET

12-30-10, 11:41 AM

Hi Cosdog, it doesnt sound like the problem is related to timing. I would leave the tweaks section black; at their defaults.

I have a feeling the video is included in the media that was recoded; however, the demuxer used to playback the file (in whatever software you use to playback isn't able to find the video stream). What software are you using to watch your recordings? I know of 3 people that use their R5000 modded dish network boxs along with SageTV with great success. SageTV seems to be very popular amongst R5000 users. I actually got SageTV long before I ever had R5000's. So, it made perfect sense to add R5000 modded boxes to my setup.

I would really appreciate any suggestions to help me with the problem I'm having with R5000-HD. I am currently using it with Dish 622, running the latest software 3.1d (build 5) on Windows XP. I recently switched to this latest software. For a long time, I ran the 3.0 version and it worked fairly reliably for channel switching and recording. Until...I started having the problem (mentioned here) with recording sound but no picture on certain channels.

So I upgraded to 3.1d, and it did solve the recording sound/no picture problem. However, I cannot get it to change channels reliably. This software version has the "tweaks" section, and I tweaked and tweaked, tried different delays, different pre-codes, but the best setting I could find seems to change channels correctly about 50% of the time (or worse).

Anyone else using the 622 having this problem? Any suggestions on making it work better? I would be so grateful for some help, because this is really frustrating. The recordings I get are excellent...when it changes to the correct channel. Thanks!

cosdog

12-30-10, 01:21 PM

Thanks for your response MKANET!

I use Windows Media Center in Windows 7 to play back my recordings. I schedule them through Titan TV with the Nextcom PVR software on the Windows XP computer that I use pretty much only for the r5000 (sorry, should have mentioned that in my first post). Then I play the files back over my network, and that part of things works just fine. As I mentioned, the 3.1d software did solve the problem with the black recordings. What I am hoping to do is make the r5000 more reliable in changing channels on the Dish receiver.

Is it possible that SageTV might help with that...be more reliable in changing channels? I could try that...although I would prefer to get my existing setup to work better, since I'd have pay for both SageTV and the Nextcom software for it. Thanks again for the help!

MKANET

12-30-10, 02:26 PM

Ahh.. okay that makes sense. Yes, now I remember... the new R5000 software 3.1d knows how to handle the new DishNetwork files correctly (per what I've heard from other Dishnetwork users).

Can you be very specific as to what kind of channel changing issue you have? When the channel is supposed to change... can you take a close look to see what's really happening on your satellite box's LED display when it fails? I have personally witnessed a certain type of an issue (timing related) where the channel numbers arent send to the satellite box timely. So, there are these weird pauses between digits... causing issues like changing the channel to 83, instead of 783; and, if the two digit channel isn't a valid channel, it will revert back to the last channel the satellite box was on.

If your issue is somehow timing related, then using sagetV wont make a difference; as, sageTV depends on the R5000 DVR software as well.

What does your R5000 USB cable connect to? Is it a standalone powered hub? If so, which one? What kind of motherboard (and respective chipset) are you using? For example, I'm using an Intel ICH8 chipset and respective USB host controller.

-Michael

I use Windows Media Center in Windows 7 to play back my recordings. I schedule them through Titan TV with the Nextcom PVR software on the Windows XP computer that I use pretty much only for the r5000 (sorry, should have mentioned that in my first post). Then I play the files back over my network, and that part of things works just fine. As I mentioned, the 3.1d software did solve the problem with the black recordings. What I am hoping to do is make the r5000 more reliable in changing channels on the Dish receiver.

Is it possible that SageTV might help with that...be more reliable in changing channels? I could try that...although I would prefer to get my existing setup to work better, since I'd have pay for both SageTV and the Nextcom software for it. Thanks again for the help![/quote]

cosdog

12-30-10, 04:06 PM

Thanks again MKANET....

I have watched it try to change channels, and what I see is very much like you describe. It's very random...sometimes it misses the first number, sometimes the second or third. So only a one or two digit channel number goes to the receiver, and it switches to the wrong channel. I've tried longer and shorter delays between numbers through the r5000 software...some changes make it worse, and only one (1000ms delay) makes it so it works some of the time.

I'm not sure about the chipset/USB controller on my computer...but I can say it's a rather old Shuttle computer, and in fact, the USB has been somewhat glitchy (I haven't used any sort of hub, just plugged directly into the computer USB input with no other devices attached). With that in mind, your last message inspired me to try installing the r5000 software on another newer computer (the Windows 7 computer I use for playback). But I'm not sure it's any better. I've been testing this by setting up an event in the PVR software, and then watching the results. On this new computer, it seems like it's a little better...but many of my tests failed in exactly the same way as they did on the older computer. But I'm going to try to let it go through a few scheduled events and see how that works.

MKANET

12-30-10, 05:14 PM

Yes, unfortunately, thats exactly what I thought was the problem. The reason I asked you for details on your setup is because I'm trying to find out if the cause is hardware, software, or a certain condition which interferes with USB-> IR communication. I think we can rule out USB chipsets/hubs since I've seen this on even on one of the most common Intel based USB host controller chipsets.

What I didnt tell you is I have seen this problem on my own machine. However, for me, either the problem happens or it goes away completely. I was successful in getting rid of the problem for several months without a hitch by upgrading to 3.1d of the R5000 software + the proxy app mentioned in this lengthy thread. However, I also unloaded several apps that were running in memory that I didnt need as well as disable/unload Windows services that I completely didnt use.

My latest theory is that the problem might be related to how much unused physical RAM is available for the R5000 drivers/DVR software (after all Windows services and apps are fully loaded and running in memory). However, I also think that hugo's proxy app may have something to do with this as well.

PM me; and I'll point you to the proxy app; with directions on how to use it. In the meantime, whichever PC you choose, try stripping down (unloading) all apps and Windows services that you absolutely dont use. XP with 4GB of RAM would be ideal. If youre using Windows 7; you may consider temporarily disabling superfetch ...at least for testing purposes.

-Michael

Thanks again MKANET....

I have watched it try to change channels, and what I see is very much like you describe. It's very random...sometimes it misses the first number, sometimes the second or third. So only a one or two digit channel number goes to the receiver, and it switches to the wrong channel. I've tried longer and shorter delays between numbers through the r5000 software...some changes make it worse, and only one (1000ms delay) makes it so it works some of the time.

I'm not sure about the chipset/USB controller on my computer...but I can say it's a rather old Shuttle computer, and in fact, the USB has been somewhat glitchy (I haven't used any sort of hub, just plugged directly into the computer USB input with no other devices attached). With that in mind, your last message inspired me to try installing the r5000 software on another newer computer (the Windows 7 computer I use for playback). But I'm not sure it's any better. I've been testing this by setting up an event in the PVR software, and then watching the results. On this new computer, it seems like it's a little better...but many of my tests failed in exactly the same way as they did on the older computer. But I'm going to try to let it go through a few scheduled events and see how that works.

boiler11

12-30-10, 07:36 PM

cosdog,

You can most likely fix your problem with the tweaks. Here's my current settings. Note that I'm using the post code and changing channels using the guide to avoid issues when channels go away or for sports channels that I don't always get, etc.

IR Inter-Digit Delay: 250 ms
New Stream Delay: 2000 ms
IR Pre-Code: ok 1000 guide 750 post=ok

Here's a link (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18398682#post18398682) to one of my earlier posts in this thread with more explanation:

MKANET

12-30-10, 07:46 PM

Boiler, I actually tried those tweak a long time ago.. they dont really work for this issue since every time the lag in IR commands are different. I've been successful in getting rid of the issue for several months without any tweaks or extra delays.. with the software/drivers operating the way they should.

cosdog,

You can most likely fix your problem with the tweaks. Here's my current settings. Note that I'm using the post code and changing channels using the guide to avoid issues when channels go away or for sports channels that I don't always get, etc.

IR Inter-Digit Delay: 250 ms
New Stream Delay: 2000 ms
IR Pre-Code: ok 1000 guide 750 post=ok

Here's a link (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=18398682#post18398682) to one of my earlier posts in this thread with more explanation:

boiler11

12-30-10, 07:56 PM

Boiler, I actually tried those tweak a long time ago.. they dont really work for this issue since every time the lag in IR commands are different. I've been successful in getting rid of the issue for several months without any tweaks or extra delays.. with the software/drivers operating the way they should.

Ok maybe it doesn't help you, but my problem is exactly as cosdog describes:

It's very random...sometimes it misses the first number, sometimes the second or third. So only a one or two digit channel number goes to the receiver, and it switches to the wrong channel.

And, I have dish, and making those delays to small immediately brings back bad channel changes. I spent hours messing with those values ... trying to get them as low as possible. I've had them set that way for a long time now without any missed channel changes.

MKANET

12-30-10, 08:07 PM

Mine was also EXACTLY as he described... Thats how I predicted his problem before he described it. There's something that causes this.. and a way to make it stop without adding extra delays. It's not specific to dish or operating system, and apparently hardware. I can actually make it start happening again, but I would have to revert to my old OS image. However, I think he should try to see for himself.

Ok maybe it doesn't help you, but my problem is exactly as cosdog describes:

And, I have dish, and making those delays to small immediately brings back bad channel changes. I spent hours messing with those values ... trying to get them as low as possible. I've had them set that way for a long time now without any missed channel changes.

boiler11

12-30-10, 08:43 PM

MKANET,

I'd love to know the root cause also, but I believe it's simply a timing issue. The nextcom folks probably just make it flexible with the delay to allow for differences in set top boxes.

I can assure you that guho's proxy does not solve the problem. He sent me the source long ago, and I also messed with that extensively. His proxy has no more granularity of channel changes than SageTV does. The R5000 app only accepts channel change commands as a single atomic command. It's after it receives that command that it goes through it's paces of pre-code, inter-digit, and new stream delays.

Besides, cosdod isn't even using SageTV, so isn't guho's proxy irrelevant? Unless scheduling via TitanTV uses the same TCP interface as SageTV.

MKANET

12-30-10, 10:09 PM

Yeah youre totally right on both counts Boiler. Yes, it is a timing issue; and, I didnt even think that the proxy would have no effect on a non-sageTV setup... but, hey.. thats one more thing to cross off the list of troubleshooting.

I personally would prefer to try to avoid having to add delays after exhausting all possibilities first. I was successful in stopping the weird intermittent timing issues dead in its tracks... which is why I suggested to try some things first before giving up and adding extra timings. Lets face it, not everyone needs to add these timing values for it to work. What make's their setups different? I tried several different things to stop the inconsistent timings; and, admittedly, I have no idea which specific action actually did it...so, I just mentioned everything I did. :)

We're a rather small family here, it would be great to put our minds together since we have enough sharp people here that have this issue; and, see what's common among our setups. We have nothing to lose by trying. This is something that not even Nextcom Wireless had the resources to trouble shoot. However, we do. It's not some ambiguous unsolvable issue; and, I'm sure some of us have troubleshot possibly tougher issues in the past. The only thing I can think of right now is not having enough free physical memory driver/software functions to work correctly. I guess it could be a software component....but, we would all have to have the same thing in memory.

I am sitting here on the same setup that I once thought I would never get rid of the issue... now, with the same hardware and OS.. it just works.. and tunes into channels quickly on all 4 unlike cableboxes; the way it was designed to work (EDIT: with the exception of adding hugo's proxy; which I'm guessing might not have done a whole lot.. but didnt hurt either). The fact that this occurs on both dish and cableboxes is a good thing.. its yet another piece to the puzzle.

Of course, this is considering that there isn't more than one thing that can have the same adverse effect on timing. What do you think? I guess it might be hard for both of us who have perfectly working setups to be motivated to fix an issue we dont have anymore. The only difference is I was able to somehow stop the issue instead of working around it.

Anyhow, just a suggestion...
-Michael

MKANET,

I'd love to know the root cause also, but I believe it's simply a timing issue. The nextcom folks probably just make it flexible with the delay to allow for differences in set top boxes.

I can assure you that guho's proxy does not solve the problem. He sent me the source long ago, and I also messed with that extensively. His proxy has no more granularity of channel changes than SageTV does. The R5000 app only accepts channel change commands as a single atomic command. It's after it receives that command that it goes through it's paces of pre-code, inter-digit, and new stream delays.

Besides, cosdod isn't even using SageTV, so isn't guho's proxy irrelevant? Unless scheduling via TitanTV uses the same TCP interface as SageTV.

cosdog

12-31-10, 04:46 PM

Thanks boiler11 and MKANET for the suggestions!

I tried boiler's tweak settings, and results haven't been too good. But those settings make sense to me and I'm going to trying further tweaking within those parameters. With those settings, however, what I found was pretty much what i saw before: it would miss different commands, sometimes the channel numbers, sometimes the "enter" at the end, which meant it just stayed on the guide.

My experience with the r5000 software is exactly as MKANET suggests...I think it needs as little interference from other programs as possible. That's why i put it on a computer that I use for virtually nothing else and have ONLY the r5000 plugged into USB. I'm going to try disabling as much as I can in the Windows services...unfortunately, as I mentioned, it's an older Shuttle computer, so not sure how much I could upgrade the 1GB ram I have in it.

I also tried a different USB cable, just in case...but obviously, it didn't help.

If all else fails, I might end up going back to the older software, which was much better at channel changing, and just accept that I can't record some Dish channels (although one of the channels that didn't work was HBO Signature, which plays some really good older movies). It seems that adding the ability to tweak the settings actually made things worse...when I used that software, it did miss occasionally, but not nearly as often as 3.1d does.

MKANET

12-31-10, 05:28 PM

Cosdog, no worries. I had a feeling it wouldnt work for you; but, wanted you to see for yourself. I'm sure there are optimal timing values that would work for you; but, I think you would be able to prevent the problem quicker than finding the through trial and error the right timing values. You would ultimately be better off since tuning into channels would be noticeably quicker.

There's a test I want you to try for me.

1. While everything is up and running (although not recording), turn off all your R5000 satellite boxes (if you have more than one). Don't worry the R5000 software, drivers, and windows wont mind at all that you just powercycled them; and will silently reconnect.

2. Disable all startup apps and services that you know for sure you dont use. You can go later and disable later the ones that you're not sure about (which you need to investigate). Try disabling the prefetch service (use this method) (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms940847%28v=winembedded.5%29.aspx). Since you have XP. I'd ask you to disable superprefetch if you had Vista/Win7.

3. Powercycler your PC.

4. Click the start menu, Run..., then type the following in the blank field and press the, "OK" button. This action will clear older cached items in physical memory. Since you just booted up, it may not clear up a whole lot; but since you have very low memory, it may clear cache for stuff in your startup.

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

5. Start setting up some scheduled recordings and see how many recordings you can tune into correctly before it fails.

Happy New Years Eve!
Michael

Thanks boiler11 and MKANET for the suggestions!

I tried boiler's tweak settings, and results haven't been too good. But those settings make sense to me and I'm going to trying further tweaking within those parameters. With those settings, however, what I found was pretty much what i saw before: it would miss different commands, sometimes the channel numbers, sometimes the "enter" at the end, which meant it just stayed on the guide.

My experience with the r5000 software is exactly as MKANET suggests...I think it needs as little interference from other programs as possible. That's why i put it on a computer that I use for virtually nothing else and have ONLY the r5000 plugged into USB. I'm going to try disabling as much as I can in the Windows services...unfortunately, as I mentioned, it's an older Shuttle computer, so not sure how much I could upgrade the 1GB ram I have in it.

I also tried a different USB cable, just in case...but obviously, it didn't help.

If all else fails, I might end up going back to the older software, which was much better at channel changing, and just accept that I can't record some Dish channels (although one of the channels that didn't work was HBO Signature, which plays some really good older movies). It seems that adding the ability to tweak the settings actually made things worse...when I used that software, it did miss occasionally, but not nearly as often as 3.1d does.

cosdog

01-02-11, 10:45 AM

MKANET, I went through the steps as you suggested. I removed the one or two startup apps I had, disabled as many services as I could, including the prefetch service. And so far, I've had 5 scheduled recordings work perfectly! That's in the past day or so...so we'll see what happens in the long term, but it looks pretty promising. Thanks again so much for the help!

MKANET

01-02-11, 01:42 PM

That's great. I dont think that's by accident. Let us know how far it gets before it fails (if it fails). Then we can see what causes it to fail after so many consistently successful scheduled recordings. I'm hoping you're not trying to use that box as a workstation; or, that will make things much harder.

EDIT: Dont be afraid to push it a little.. try scheduling multiple recordings (even if you dont need them). I predict that it should work exactly the same way every time unless something changes on your setup or on the satellite box itself; which I'm confident we'll figure out "a set it and forget it" solution.

MKANET, I went through the steps as you suggested. I removed the one or two startup apps I had, disabled as many services as I could, including the prefetch service. And so far, I've had 5 scheduled recordings work perfectly! That's in the past day or so...so we'll see what happens in the long term, but it looks pretty promising. Thanks again so much for the help!

MKANET

01-09-11, 06:24 PM

It's inevitable that you will get the error message, "No Signal" briefly displayed when changing R5000 channels in SageTV while watching TV. Since the only circumstance I see this error message is when tuning into R5000 channels, it made sense for me to rename this message to read, "Tuning in, please stand by..."

Click image thumb to see result:
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h283/mkanet/th_Screenshot-1328.jpg (http://s67.photobucket.com/albums/h283/mkanet/?action=view&current=Screenshot-1328.jpg)

You can do this by simply starting the SageTV Studio editor (control-shift-F12) while sageTV client is open on a PC, then search for No Signal. It's case sensitive, so you have to type it in exactly the same. Then... Just rename the text to, "Tuning in, please stand by...". Make sure you save your changes by Selecting, "File", then "Save" in the Studio menu on top. It's the user-friendly thing to do, IMO.

Here is where you do it:
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h283/mkanet/Screenshot-1327.jpg

CraziFuzzy

01-14-11, 09:58 PM

Also, if you are using sage v7, make sure to make this change without any UI MOD plugins enabled. That way you are only altering the core SageTV7.xml file, otherwise, you will end up saving it with all the plugins applied, and then, when it reloads it, it will then apply all enabled plugins to the file that already INCLUDES the plugin's modifications. Oh.. and don't sage over top of the SageTV7 file, save as a new one and open that in sage.

MKANET

01-14-11, 10:37 PM

Thanks so much Fuzzy! No wonder my sageTV STV was running sluggish. It was all screwed up. I just downloaded the latest clean SageTV 7 STV from the sageTV forum downloads section and replaced

.\SageTV\SageTV\STVs\SageTV7\SageTV7.xml

I just made the change with all my UI MOD plugins disabled. It's now fine. Later, I might put the change in: SageTVPluginsDev.xml

-MKANET

Also, if you are using sage v7, make sure to make this change without any UI MOD plugins enabled. That way you are only altering the core SageTV7.xml file, otherwise, you will end up saving it with all the plugins applied, and then, when it reloads it, it will then apply all enabled plugins to the file that already INCLUDES the plugin's modifications. Oh.. and don't sage over top of the SageTV7 file, save as a new one and open that in sage.

CraziFuzzy

01-14-11, 11:26 PM

If you go through the trouble if making an import to make the change, there's no reason to NOT publish it to the repository. Just by virtue of you posting it here is an indication that it would be of interest for others - adn plugnis are just SOO much easier for most than opening studio. If you don't feel like figuring out the plugin system, let me know, and I'll put one up for it.

MKANET

01-15-11, 12:10 AM

Thanks for the offer Fuzzy... I'll try giving it shot.

If you go through the trouble if making an import to make the change, there's no reason to NOT publish it to the repository. Just by virtue of you posting it here is an indication that it would be of interest for others - adn plugnis are just SOO much easier for most than opening studio. If you don't feel like figuring out the plugin system, let me know, and I'll put one up for it.

MKANET

01-17-11, 02:09 AM

SageTV 7 R5000 plugin now available under 'UI Mod' section called:

"R5000 Tuning Mod"

-MKANET

bigdocman

01-20-11, 08:31 PM

My 2 R5000 HD modified receivers are working perfectly in conjunction with Sage TV. I am experiencing some strange behavior however: With the addition of the second device I seem to have lost my system tray. I have incrementally disabled various applications from loading and have determined that it indeed is the R5000s that cause this phenomenon. Somewhat troubling. Has anyone seen this behavior in the past and can you offer any remedies?

Windows 7 64

MKANET

01-20-11, 08:49 PM

Specifically at what point do you lose your System tray? Is it after you load the DVR app? What version of the R5000 software are you using? What specifically do you do to see the System tray again? Is it 100% reproducable each time you do these specific things )for example can you make the system tray appear and disappear each time)?

Can you send a screenshot of what it looks like when you do that specific action with the second R5000 device? Can you send a second screenshot immediately after you restore it?

What we have to figure out is what's different about your setup than everyone else; as this is not a known issue (at least it's never been reported since the introduction of the R5000 devices). Let's put it this way, if you were to reimage your machine and just install R5000 software and sageTV, I seriously doubt you can reproduce it.

-MKANET

My 2 R5000 HD modified receivers are working perfectly in conjunction with Sage TV. I am experiencing some strange behavior however: With the addition of the second device I seem to have lost my system tray. I have incrementally disabled various applications from loading and have determined that it indeed is the R5000s that cause this phenomenon. Somewhat troubling. Has anyone seen this behavior in the past and can you offer any remedies?

Windows 7 64

big swifty

02-05-11, 10:12 PM

Thank you for your response. I apologize for not commenting further at an earlier date. Holidays, skiing, etc.

I lose my system tray as soon as the R5000-HD software loads. I am using the most recent software version. I cannot give you the exact version number since My wife and kids are watching the TV now so they will behead me if I interfere at this time. I am sure of the sequence since if I have the STB's off the system tray is fine; as soon as I power up the devices, bang, the tray is gone.

I can capture a screenshot tomorrow and specify the software version.

I did contact nextcom; They said they have heard of this phenomenon but cannot replicate it on their end.

Weird.

big swifty

03-12-11, 04:50 PM

I had a funky setup. I had 3 partitions: An older Win7x64 Enterprise (hacked) install (lost activation). Another with a legit (ahem, Cough, Cough) Win7x64 with it's program files on the 3rd partition.

Reinstalled fresh and bada bing, all is well!

Solfan

03-14-11, 08:35 AM

I had been using r5000 for quite a while on my Dell XP desktop with no issues at all.

I recently upgraded to win7 (32bit SP1) and now I get overflows and they're very predictable... they only happen when I open a web browser or surf the net or get email.. The glitches then appear in the recordings..... driving me crazy!

I've tried disabling all of the extra boot-up stuff in msconfig, doesn't help.

Running in safe mode is the only fix for it right now.

I tried the task manager tricks... priority etc.

I'm running 3.1D vista version.

Has anyone here seen this behavior and found a fix for it?

jamminj2b

03-20-11, 12:20 PM

every time i use the pvr software to schedual a program it causes a runtime error and windows shuts the r5000 down then i have to remove the schedualed program before i can use the r5000 agian

i can record live tv with no problem hd & sd

jamminj2b

03-21-11, 08:57 AM

I connected r5000 to xp machine and everything works fine

the issue is my window xp machine is a workhorse i use for everything

I need to us my win 7 64 to record my shows to and unfortunatly
the r5000 software has issues with that

Solfan

03-26-11, 09:25 AM

Does anyone get small file sizes with their recordings? A two- hour movie may end up as, say, a 4,567 MB size, when it should normally be around 17gig. Vip211.

This happens occasionally here with Win 7 32 bit, as well as an older XP installation, without rhyme or reason. They're difficult to trim using the TScutter tool, too.

MKANET

03-26-11, 01:28 PM

Solfan, do you get get entire recording? If so, can you check to see in your R5000 DVR app if you have "Bit Rate: Compressed (no filler pkts)" selected? It sounds to me if you're expecting 17GB H.264 movies, then they would be fillled with null packets. If youre having problems editing these files, you're not alone.. even some of the most technical people I know have issues with editing Dish H.264 files; as they use very unusual specs that pretty much all good/user-friendly video editors can't handle.

There is one editor that has a very good chance of editing your files (if you haven't tried already):

Transport Stream Packet Editor (http://www.bitstreamtools.com/)

The good news is I don't think anything is incorrectly configured. It' seems to fall in inline with other Dish users.

I actually chose Comcast over dish 5 years ago mainly because transcoding/editing tools for Dish files weren't even close to being useful/proficient; and, it looks like dish has made their files even more non-standard lately. All I know is it's inevitable that Comcast will eventually switch to all H.264 cableboxes; which nextcom doesnt support.

I'm not sure if any of this helps; but at least I tried my best.

-MKANET

Does anyone get small file sizes with their recordings? A two- hour movie may end up as, say, a 4,567 MB size, when it should normally be around 17gig. Vip211.

This happens occasionally here with Win 7 32 bit, as well as an older XP installation, without rhyme or reason. They're difficult to trim using the TScutter tool, too.

Joseph Clark

03-26-11, 03:01 PM

I haven't done much editing for the last couple of months, but VideoRedo has had no problem with any of the Dish files I've thrown at it since they added h.264 support. If I convert the files with tsMuxer to AVCHD format (m2ts), I can even edit them in Adobe Premiere CS5.

videohacker

03-27-11, 03:25 PM

The R5000-HD product is great but has some issues here's my current list of problems, if anyone has a suggestion or better solution please reply..

Problem 1. Win7x64 system tray corruption and/or lost icons. Each time the R5000-HD app loads I loose system tray icons. I have reinstalled, and tried MANY things to no avail..

My solution, after reboot of machine, run PVR and R5000-HD app, then open task manager, end process explorer.exe, then new task run explorer.exe, this gets back all the lost icons. Then never close R5000-HD

Problem 2. Using VIP211 any show recorded at the specific receiver "update" time will get stopped and ruined.

My Solution, In the VIP211 setup, set update time to least popular time and try to remember any show at that time will get stopped.

Problem 3. Random show length corruption. Windows media player and windows file system does not know correct show length which cause many issues.

My solution, This is caused by MPEG timestamp wraparounds. These occur at random times? Using file system it's often easy to see if file is corrupt when for example a 1hr show displays 18hr length, but often its not easy to know. I use bitstreamtools.com TSPE to detect and VideoRedo to fix. TSPE will supposedly fix them but have not figured out how. TsMuxer will also fix but I always get audio off sync and must use VideoRedo. Other problem is TSPE is way overkill for this single need cost $50 plus videoredo another $80. There must be a simpler way around this issue??

Problem 4. PVR app, Information bubbles are annoying, don't help, and can't be turned off.

My solution, live with them.

Problem 5, When adding shows to record PVR app stays in background with a question and does not add show.

My solution, try to make sure to minimize PVR app each time after adding a show, then each time a new show is added it brings the app question to the front so you know it's being asked.

Problem 6, Windows media center integration development stopped and SAGE integration problematic.

My solution, Just use TitanTV to select shows to record and gave up on using as a real time PVR system. WMC integration would be great, I tried sage but my trial ended and was unable to get HD shows to work, SD worked to some degree...

It's my guess that these problems and many great feature enhancements simple don't happen due the limited volume of units sold and thus lack of revenue. If only more people heard about the system and bought them I'm sure a lot more would be done with the system. Too bad the sat and/or content companies don't want consumers to have a record feature, if they did, they could integrate the 5000 and have a quick solution.

MKANET

03-27-11, 05:47 PM

None of the problems you mention affect me. However, item #1 does; and, it's not specific to Windows 7 64; but, an inherent defect to Windows; going as far back as Windows XP 32 bit. My solution; use "PS Tray Factory" (http://www.pssoftlab.com/). Believe me, its worth every penny because its so damn useful in several different ways. Not only does it recover from lost system tray icons, but you can have the icons sorted in the order you want to see them; and, hiding icons you dont want to VERY reliably; which also respectively hides the popup bubble. I wish I had known about this product sooner; as it's not that well advertised.

-MKANET

The R5000-HD product is great but has some issues here's my current list of problems, if anyone has a suggestion or better solution please reply..

Problem 1. Win7x64 system tray corruption and/or lost icons. Each time the R5000-HD app loads I loose system tray icons. I have reinstalled, and tried MANY things to no avail..

My solution, after reboot of machine, run PVR and R5000-HD app, then open task manager, end process explorer.exe, then new task run explorer.exe, this gets back all the lost icons. Then never close R5000-HD

Problem 2. Using VIP211 any show recorded at the specific receiver "update" time will get stopped and ruined.

My Solution, In the VIP211 setup, set update time to least popular time and try to remember any show at that time will get stopped.

Problem 3. Random show length corruption. Windows media player and windows file system does not know correct show length which cause many issues.

My solution, This is caused by MPEG timestamp wraparounds. These occur at random times? Using file system it's often easy to see if file is corrupt when for example a 1hr show displays 18hr length, but often its not easy to know. I use bitstreamtools.com TSPE to detect and VideoRedo to fix. TSPE will supposedly fix them but have not figured out how. TsMuxer will also fix but I always get audio off sync and must use VideoRedo. Other problem is TSPE is way overkill for this single need cost $50 plus videoredo another $80. There must be a simpler way around this issue??

Problem 4. PVR app, Information bubbles are annoying, don't help, and can't be turned off.

My solution, live with them.

Problem 5, When adding shows to record PVR app stays in background with a question and does not add show.

My solution, try to make sure to minimize PVR app each time after adding a show, then each time a new show is added it brings the app question to the front so you know it's being asked.

Problem 6, Windows media center integration development stopped and SAGE integration problematic.

My solution, Just use TitanTV to select shows to record and gave up on using as a real time PVR system. WMC integration would be great, I tried sage but my trial ended and was unable to get HD shows to work, SD worked to some degree...

It's my guess that these problems and many great feature enhancements simple don't happen due the limited volume of units sold and thus lack of revenue. If only more people heard about the system and bought them I'm sure a lot more would be done with the system. Too bad the sat and/or content companies don't want consumers to have a record feature, if they did, they could integrate the 5000 and have a quick solution.

Solfan

03-30-11, 05:26 PM

MKANET,

Thanks for the reply. :) I do have R5000 set to record constant, with the filler packs.
I hear ya about the video editing stuff, it makes my head swim. Tscutter is usually sweet, it's so simple and gets the job done perfectly on full files. Most of the time these small files appear with truncated elapsed times, too.

My present solution to this is: just wait until it airs again and . . . . it records the full file just fine. :D :confused:

Joe,
I CAN'T believe they snuck the H264 version out! I've been checking them for it for years it seems and I gave up awhile ago. :D

I've still got my [paid] earlier mpeg2 Videoredo version + user code, so it looks like I'll buy the $50 upgrade.

TNO821

03-30-11, 05:51 PM

I CAN'T believe they snuck the H264 version out! I've been checking them for it for years it seems and I gave up awhile ago. :D
I've still got my [paid] earlier mpeg2 Videoredo version + user code, so it looks like I'll buy the $50 upgrade.
I can't express how happy I am with VideoReDo TVSuite v4! It's among the best easiest to use software on my system and it works great with h.264 files!

You should go to their website and check out the forums there. They really listen to their users and add new features and bug fixes based on feedback. They also frequently release beta versions which you'll only find by reading their forums.

Joseph Clark

03-30-11, 09:37 PM

Solfan

03-31-11, 06:09 PM

TNO821

03-31-11, 06:47 PM

I hadn't used it for a long time and I'm quickly remembering how really good it is.

What's the general consensus on null stripping, should those files play just as well on powerdvd and/or Tvix as the non-stripped ones? I'll be trying some later tonight.
I have no issues with anything that I play the files back on (though I don't use PowerDVD or a Tvix...I generally play back using Media Player Classic - Home Cinema or by using a USB thumbdrive with my Sony BDP-S570 Blu-ray player).

Any halfway decent software will have zero difficulty with null-stripped files. (BTW, you better believe that any video d/l from the net will be null stripped...it can reduce the file size a *lot*...and, since a lot of people d/l most of what they play on a Tvix or WD Live, you know they've tested to make sure those files play back flawlessly)

Solfan

04-01-11, 06:45 PM

Thanks, TNO821, I'll get back to that issue soon.

=======================

I had been using r5000 for quite a while on my Dell XP desktop with no issues at all.

I recently upgraded to win7 (32bit SP1) and now I get overflows and they're very predictable... they only happen when I open a web browser or surf the net or get email.. The glitches then appear in the recordings Has anyone here seen this behavior and found a fix for it?

Welp... I hauled off and reinstalled Win7 on this Dell desktop machine, with a new ATI 5670 video card to boot.

With the default windows video drivers, my R6000 recordings are working perfectly now, with no buffering overflows at all, even when multi-tasking all over the place like crazy.

The minute I install the recommended ATI drivers, it all goes to hell again, and the overflows quickly fill up the little box.

Maybe I'll learn to live with the weird, stretched desktop, or maybe I'll try some old Ray Adams drivers I have lying around.

Till then, anyone have any ideas, short of trying a GeForce card?

bigdocman

04-02-11, 06:16 PM

bigdocman

04-02-11, 06:26 PM

Solfan

04-04-11, 08:44 AM

The minute I install the recommended ATI drivers, it all goes to hell again, and the overflows quickly fill up the little box.

It looks like I've fixed this temporarily by pushing the color depth and screen resolution way down to 800x600. No overflows.

MKANET

04-04-11, 09:37 AM

Video drivers usually affect recording performance if that machine is used for watching live TV or direct3D (hardware accelerated video rendering). Maybe you can try reverting to the display driver you were using. Does you display adapter have any peripheral devices/respective device drivers such as video capture/encoder? It wouldnt make any sense if you have these issues and dont use that PC as a workstation.

It looks like I've fixed this temporarily by pushing the color depth and screen resolution way down to 800x600. No overflows.

kjake

04-11-11, 09:39 AM

Hi all...

I've been having Buffer Overflow issues with my r5000 too and I'm hoping that maybe we can find a common problem, or maybe people know of some tricks/tips for me to try.

Computer:
Windows 7 Pro x64
AMD Phenom II X4 840 (Quad Core) @ 3.20GHz
4GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4250 (on-board)

Software:
R5000-HD 3.1d (build 5)
SageTV 7.1

I don't get Overflows on every recording, but it is quite a common occurance and ranges from 3 to 10 overflows. It becomes a pain to watch these programs. Even when trying to ignore the blips, occasionally, it corrupts the audio stream so badly that my receiver freezes and I have to go power cycle it.

This system is a "new" system that I built for just HTPC activities. Sage records via the R5000, an HD-PVR, and HDHR (dual tuner QAM). The system also runs PlayOn for UPnP Netflix/Hulu and Comskip for commercial skipping - that's it! Sage records everything to a separate storage server. Network is all wired GigE, CAT6 cabling, ProCurve switch.

The R5000 software is recording from a single DCP501, but I have the SageTV Multi client.

No playback occurs on the server, in fact, I don't even run the client portion of SageTV there - only the service. All the playback is on HD300 extenders.

Any ideas for what causes this? Lack of memory? Cable signal strength too high/low? Network troubles?

Thanks for looking at this! I would love to fix this! :)

etk29321

04-11-11, 09:50 AM

Hi all...

I've been having Buffer Overflow issues with my r5000 too and I'm hoping that maybe we can find a common problem, or maybe people know of some tricks/tips for me to try.

Any ideas for what causes this? Lack of memory? Cable signal strength too high/low? Network troubles?

Thanks for looking at this! I would love to fix this! :)

I had similar issues several years ago that I traced to an ill-behaving USB chipset (all the power in the world wouldn't fix that). I added a PCI USB controller and the problems went away. Since that server, I've upgraded the motherboard and haven't had problems with the new board's onboard ports, so the problem can be pretty hit or miss.

Solfan

04-19-11, 09:00 PM

I tried an old PCI USB adapter I had lying around and it was a no-go, the overflows still occurred. :(

I honestly had some doubts it would work, because this issue I have is OS dependent. [This Dell Dimension 9100 desktop [~2006] had R5000 working perfectly with XP. It was just putting Win7 on it that started the overflows.]

I'd like to roll back but the myriad Win7 improvements on this PC I've seen [over XP] are too good to pass up.

Anyway I've gone the MKANET route by buying another Dell 9100 on ebay [for ~$7.59 :D] and I'll just use that with XP for the R5000 recordings for the time being, until hopefully a fix pops up somewhere for the Win7 Dell.

MKANET

04-20-11, 05:11 PM

Yeah Solfan, that would save you a whole lot of trouble. There's a much better chance things will work better just getting a dedicated XP box and using version 3.0c. I remember when I bought my first R5000 and hooked it up to my XP based Dell PC, I didnt even have to worry about compatibility issues; it just worked.

The setup I currently use (that will most likely retire my R5000s with) is:

1. Four year old HP Pavillian (Intel Quadcore Q6600)
2. Vista32
3. Four instances of the R5000 DVR Multi-Device app Version 3.0c (for sageTV). Im using a special hexedited version to prevent it from complaining that I need to upgrade to 3.1x each time it starts up.
4. Hugo's proxy for for each respective DVR app.

The only way I could prevent issues with channel changing (without adding extra time between IR commands; which slows things down even more when changing channels), I HAVE TO use Hugo's app in conjunction with DVR app 3.0c version. I can still use the latest R5000 DVR version 3.1d in conjunction with the proxy app; but noticed that I get quicker response in changing channels (only takes 1-1.5 seconds total from the time I select a live TV channel to watch in sageTV Guide and seeing video/audio (which also includes the time it takes to change the channel). With Version 3.1d, it takes 2-3 seconds to do this; plus I really dont like the idea of having continuous load on my USB bus when it's not recording.

Let us know how it turns out!
MKANET

I tried an old PCI USB adapter I had lying around and it was a no-go, the overflows still occurred. :(

I honestly had some doubts it would work, because this issue I have is OS dependent. [This Dell Dimension 9100 desktop [~2006] had R5000 working perfectly with XP. It was just putting Win7 on it that started the overflows.]

I'd like to roll back but the myriad Win7 improvements on this PC I've seen [over XP] are too good to pass up.

Anyway I've gone the MKANET route by buying another Dell 9100 on ebay [for ~$7.59 :D] and I'll just use that with XP for the R5000 recordings for the time being, until hopefully a fix pops up somewhere for the Win7 Dell.

MKANET

06-18-11, 10:17 PM

CraziFuzzy

06-20-11, 09:57 AM

Anyone bailing the sageTV ship for WMC? SageTV announced today they were acquired by Google. I'm guessing there will be people trying to get their working R5000's migrated to WMC. This is a sad day for sageTV users.

I see no reason to bail out of my perfectly working SageTV setup to an inferior (insert any other dvr app) setup.

MKANET

06-20-11, 10:14 AM

Yeah, I've been looking at other alternatives over the weekend, I didnt realize there are no products that come close to sageTV's functionality. I just hope that sageTV forum community developers dont bail out. Plugins that scrape websites will break sooner or later when the websites make changes.

I see no reason to bail out of my perfectly working SageTV setup to an inferior (insert any other dvr app) setup.

guho

06-28-11, 10:59 PM

I love SageTV and the R5000-HD a lot. I am not planning on abandoning the system yet although I have a hdhomerun prime on order to replace my aging ATI ocur cable card tuner. So I can dip my toes in the WMC world and I will certainly miss the ability to stream to PCs, placeshift and copy recordings to other devices.

While I love the R5000-HD hardware, I do not love the software. The glitches, crashes and incomplete recordings became nauseating and I could not sleep. So I wrote replacement recorder software for the R5000-HD. You can download it from http://www.hugolyppens.com/SageTVR5000HDRecorder.html. It only works for FIOS and with Motorola boxes. So it is a lot more limited than Nextcom's software. It is also just a command line so not user-friendly. Stay away if you are not comfortable with this. On the plus side, recordings are flawless. The software uses hardly any memory. It runs on Windows 7 and all others so no need to muck around, like previous posters, with running R5000HD on an old XP box just to make it stable.

If I get some success reports from fellow FIOS/Motorola users I will feel stimulated to figure out a way to make it work for other configurations. Thanks for looking.

MKANET

06-29-11, 01:26 AM

Way to go hugo! You finally did it! Hopefully R5000 users are still getting email from this thread.

I love SageTV and the R5000-HD a lot. I am not planning on abandoning the system yet although I have a hdhomerun prime on order to replace my aging ATI ocur cable card tuner. So I can dip my toes in the WMC world and I will certainly miss the ability to stream to PCs, placeshift and copy recordings to other devices.

While I love the R5000-HD hardware, I do not love the software. The glitches, crashes and incomplete recordings became nauseating and I could not sleep. So I wrote replacement recorder software for the R5000-HD. You can download it from http://www.hugolyppens.com/SageTVR5000HDRecorder.html. It only works for FIOS and with Motorola boxes. So it is a lot more limited than Nextcom's software. It is also just a command line so not user-friendly. Stay away if you are not comfortable with this. On the plus side, recordings are flawless. The software uses hardly any memory. It runs on Windows 7 and all others so no need to muck around, like previous posters, with running R5000HD on an old XP box just to make it stable.

If I get some success reports from fellow FIOS/Motorola users I will feel stimulated to figure out a way to make it work for other configurations. Thanks for looking.

n9cqs

08-03-11, 07:03 PM

I posted this on the SageTV forums, but it was a stale thread. I have gotten no reply. I am hoping someone can help me.

I have had R5000 with VIP211 for over a year. Prior to that addition, I was running Sage for over 2 years with a Dish 301 into a Hauppauge 1600 via S-Video. That combination produced only very occasional rain fade, no different than when I was using a stand-alone DISH DVR receiver. The VIP211 with R5000 has been another matter. Frequently, I lose pieces of recordings with the dreaded Sage error: "device has stopped producing data". Here is my satellite setup.

1-Dish 500 DPP for 110/119
1-Dish 500 single DPP LNB aimed at 129
1-Dish 500 single DPP LNB aimed at 61.5
(I live in a very wooded area, have to have separate dishes to find the right "hole" to see each bird)
All those are routed through a DP44 switch.

Computer system:
Dell Optiplex 745
Windows XP Professional SP 3
latest, fastest Crucial SSD 128 GB for Drive C:,
2 TB drive for video storage
4GB memory
SageTV 7.1.9
latest version of R5000 Sage DVR software (version 'd')
fully updated Java

My problem: I constantly get random errors where SageTV tells me the the "tuner has stopped producing data and will be reset". I have gone to a direct TV connection to the receiver, and it is going through a reset routine that includes having to wait to reload EPG data before it will go back to the program again.

1. When I first connected the VIP 211, I was running a DPP Dish 500 dual LNB with a built-in switch for a third dish (wing-dish) for either 61.5 or 129. At the time I had a nasty old tree in the way and so pointed it to 61.5. I had solid signals on all three birds (61.5, 110, 119).
2. Later, when the tree problem was partially solved, I added a 129 wing dish, and so now have both 61.5 and 129 wing dishes. In order to use all four (61.5, 110, 119, 129), I bought a DPP 44 switch. I also have tested all coax downleads, and actually replaced most of them as I have had trouble. A Dish repair service has verified my setup, LNBs, cables, switches, etc. I kept the 61.5 satellite because I don't have such a great signal on 129.
3. I had a Dish 301 connected to the system and have only had the occasional rain fade problems with it. I swapped the connections between the 301 and ViP 211, same problem.
4. I recently added a ViP 222 using Hauppauge HD-PVR. It is actually connected to the line that the 211 was using, and the 211 is connected to a brand new line in. VIP 211 continues having drop-out problems. Also, I have used Sage to force recordings on the same station (same satellite, transponder, station) with both the VIP 211/R5000 and the VIP 222/HD-PVR. In only one case of many did the VIP222 show a sort of "rain-fade" as the reason for the fault. Otherwise, there was not even a slight bit of "pixilation" on the VIP 222 which often shows up when the signal is getting flaky, while the VIP211 was going through one of its numerous irritating reset routines.
5. I have also had a local dish installer with one of those very expensive satellite finder/signal meters come and troubleshoot the system. They found all dish feeds and all three feeds from the DPP44 switch to be very good.
6. The VIP211 dropout problems happen in ALL kinds of weather.
7. There are rare instances when the VIP211 problems are weather/signal related, from what I can tell. For the first week after getting the VIP222, I forced it to record the very same show as the VIP211. In only one case of numerous failures was the problem signal-related, as the VIP222 lost signal. Otherwise, whenever the VIP211 would have a signal failure, I'd go to the exact same place in the parallel recording on the VIP222 and couldn't even see the occasional "digital-picture" dropout that I would expect for a signal related problem.
8. When the VIP211 goes through one of these "reset" situations, I have gone to a direct picture feed from the receiver (not through SageTV) and it shows that it hangs up for a very long time on "step 0 of 5" or "step 1 of 5". I wish there was a way to tell the thing to skip loading the EPG data - that also takes time, and why it has to do that EVERY time it resets is beyond me. I thought that was a start-up routine, not a signal loss issue.

I have also noticed the VIP211 going through one of those Reset routines when SageTV is not even using the receiver.

9. Further investigations:
9a. For a long time, I was using release "c" of R5000 SageTV software. The upgrade to release "d" has been in the last 3 months, but did not change the results.
9b. After searching SageTV forums and R5000 forums for a solution, I found the R5000HDProxy program and tried that (just in the last 2 weeks). I understand that this mod was actually incorporated this into release "d", but figured at this point anything would be worth a try. No change.
10. One more piece of evidence: I seldom use the receiver to record SD channels, but an hour of SD records nearly every Saturday morning for my kids. I have never had it drop out in the middle of a recording on an SD station.
11. The only other things I have not tried (but have thought of) are:
11a. Changing R5000 to a completely different computer and having it communicate with Sage via ethernet. I have a gigabit system that should handle the data load.
11b. Adding a USB3 card to my system and using that for input. Unfortunately, my slots are all taken (well, Soundblaster Audigy hogs two and only uses one actual PCI slot). In order to do that, I would have to add a USB sound card to get rid of Audigy. I'd rather not, but the necessary parts to do so are all purchased. I dump an HD FM receiver into the SageTV system via optical into Audigy.

OH... to complete this inventory, I should tell you all the USB devices I'm presently using in addition to R5000:

1. Keyboard/Mouse
2. USB-UIRT (added 6 months after R5000 - no change in the problem)
3. Hauppauge stick tuner 950 (added just 6 months ago - no change in the problem)
4. DVICO external HD tuner (ATSC/Clear QAM) - has always been there

This is a bit of a long, rambling post. I can tell a difference in picture between the R5000 and HD-PVR (R5000 is better), but I am SO TIRED of the dropouts.

Any help?
Could this be a receiver problem? How could THAT be diagnosed?

MKANET

08-03-11, 08:24 PM

You'll need to hook up a normal TV directly to your R5000 modded box(s) and verify you have a stable signal; and, you can get all the channels you're supposed to by simply tuning to various channels the way normal, non-R5000 Dish Network customers do. :)

Once you verified that the tuners work correctly without the R5000 being involved (and still have the same issues you mentioned) I would do a full image restore (from a backup) when everything was working properly. If you do this, and it still has problems, it's your R5000 module itself; and, needs to be replace by nextcomwireless.com

If you dont have an image backup from a time that everything worked perfectly, the best thing to do is start from scratch. Clean install of Windows, core drivers, SageTV, R5000 software and respective configuration. That's why it's so important for people with complex setups to ALWAYS have a recent full image backup to be able to put everything back EXACTLY the way it was before; and, if something isn't working right, you have to look at hardware components being changed/removed/damaged.

Good luck,
MKANET

I posted this on the SageTV forums, but it was a stale thread. I have gotten no reply. I am hoping someone can help me.

Any help?
Could this be a receiver problem? How could THAT be diagnosed?

n9cqs

08-20-11, 04:14 PM

Thanks for the reply. Last weekend, my VIP 211 was resetting itself on a VERY regular basis (like every 10 minutes in some cases). When I went to check the unit, it was quite hot (I had delayed turning on air conditioning that day). So, I put a fan on the unit and the failures have basically stopped.

I have had only one failure in a week's worth of recording, and I have been using it quite a lot in the last week (trying to see if it would fail). Since I don't plan to have a very large box fan sitting in front of my equipment rack forever, I ordered a couple of 140mm very quiet case fans that I will be mounting in the shelf below the VIP 211/R5000 receiver.

So if you are having VIP 211/R5000 troubles, that might be your answer!

Jeff

peternm22

09-04-11, 01:56 PM

I'm having some big problems with the R5000 on Shaw Direct in Canada.

Shaw Direct has added quite a few new channels, and it looks like the channel maps are quite bit different now. When I tune into certain channels (527, 528, 580 are the ones I've noticed so far) on my Shaw Direct 505 using the R5000 and SageTV, it records a completely different channel.

I checked the R5000 app when this happens and it gives an error message about not being able to find steam type, and it's assuming it's MPEG2 (which it is).

I tried manually recording the channel without SageTV, I get a message saying the stream contains two different programs and to enter the current channel number. I do this, and it says that it will create 2 30 second recordings. Then I get an error message saying "Couldn't open stream file", and the recordings are never made. Thus I can't find the correct program mappings to enter into the R5000 app to fix this.

I e-mailed support about this, and they just told me to do the above procedure. I told them about the error message when I tried it, and they never bother to get back to me (this is very common with R5000 support unfortunately).

Just to make sure my satellite receiver wasn't going wonky, I hooked it up directly to the TV. Sure enough, all of these channels show perfectly when I tune them.

Any ideas how I can fix this and enter in the correct program mappings?

Thanks.

-Peter

P.S. When I say "program mappings", I'm referring to the Utilities > Edit Program Mappings function in the R5000 app.

MKANET

09-04-11, 03:55 PM

I wonder if those channels actually have 2 program streams. I wonder how you're supposed to get the correct program stream information so you can manually put them in. Maybe someone here knows how to grab that information.

I'm having some big problems with the R5000 on Shaw Direct in Canada.

Shaw Direct has added quite a few new channels, and it looks like the channel maps are quite bit different now. When I tune into certain channels (527, 528, 580 are the ones I've noticed so far) on my Shaw Direct 505 using the R5000 and SageTV, it records a completely different channel.

I checked the R5000 app when this happens and it gives an error message about not being able to find steam type, and it's assuming it's MPEG2 (which it is).

I tried manually recording the channel without SageTV, I get a message saying the stream contains two different programs and to enter the current channel number. I do this, and it says that it will create 2 30 second recordings. Then I get an error message saying "Couldn't open stream file", and the recordings are never made. Thus I can't find the correct program mappings to enter into the R5000 app to fix this.

I e-mailed support about this, and they just told me to do the above procedure. I told them about the error message when I tried it, and they never bother to get back to me (this is very common with R5000 support unfortunately).

Just to make sure my satellite receiver wasn't going wonky, I hooked it up directly to the TV. Sure enough, all of these channels show perfectly when I tune them.

Any ideas how I can fix this and enter in the correct program mappings?

Thanks.

-Peter

P.S. When I say "program mappings", I'm referring to the Utilities > Edit Program Mappings function in the R5000 app.

ctdish

09-04-11, 06:19 PM

In the past when the R5000 found two program streams, at least one of them was not encrypted. I took a look at channel 527 and was unable to record it using the older version of the R5000 I have installed. It is an SD channel but I don't think that should matter. When I get a chance I will try the newer version of the software.
John

peternm22

09-04-11, 07:08 PM

Alright, I figured out what I was doing wrong.

When it prompted me to do the 30 second test recordings and failed, it was because it was trying to write the test files to the R5000 folder in Program Files. The R5000 app wasn't running as admin, so it couldn't write to the folder (I guess the Program Files folder is protected on Windows 7).

Running the R5000 app as administrator worked, and allowed me to make the test recordings. Shaw Direct recently added a bunch of local channels (CRTC mandated), so I'm guessing this is why things got moved around. Only SD channels were added, and no HD channels. This is probably why I haven't noticed it on many channels, since I mostly watch HD channels.

For other Shaw Direct users who run into this problem, here is how to fix the channel mappings:

1) In the R5000 app, go to Utilities > Edit Program Mappings.
2) I've only found 3 channels that were not working (so far). Here they are with the correct program stream numbers:

Channel 528 - program 5
Channel 527 - program 7
Channel 580 - program 3

3) Enter each one into the R5000 settings (you can leave the 'TS ID' blank), and click update. You can view the mappings once done just to verify it worked.

These channels should now be working again. Note that I am using the Classic Lineup on Shaw Direct, and the channel numbers for the Advanced Lineup will be different.

I'm sure there will be other channels broken as well, but this is a start.

Gandalf52

09-05-11, 11:05 PM

I have two R5000 modified Motorola DCT2000 boxes, receiving Shaw Cable in Victoria, BC, Canada.

The R5000 software is version 3.1d and the PC runs Win7 64-bit.

They work well - and I am most impressed with the investment.

However ... in order to make the software and hardware function, I have to disable the auto start of the SageTV service and let the PC start without SageTV. Then I have to login as a user with Admin priviledge. Then I need to manually start the R5000 app and open two windows - one for each tuner. I then have to wait until they both enter "waiting for SageTV" mode. Then I need to manually start the SageTV service and watch the R5000 windows to see that both correctly register the SageTV ping. At that point I can close the SageTV service control window but I must leave the two R5000 windows active but minimized. SageTV then works fine and I can record programs through both R5000 units.

However I have the security breach of an active user logged in as an administrator - and if my user locks up because of other activity then the R5000 interface fails - even if the computer is still running.

What I need to be able to do is what SageTV does - to run the R5000 driver app as a Windows Service rather than in the context of a user. That way I can simply define the SageTV service as dependent on the R5000 service and Windows will start the R5000 first and then SageTV. Simple.

Well it should be. Except that none of this is covered in any documentation and e-mails to Nextcom get responses until I ask about a Run As Service option - then they get ignored.

What is the problem? Several other postings in this thread have posed similar questions - but no answers are forthcoming.

Surely someone else has been here before. I could go down the path of trying to manually convert the R5000 program to a service - which would be fine under a 32-bit OS as there are plenty of software hacks to do that. However none of them that I have found work on a 64-bit OS.

It is an easy fix for Nextcom - they could compile as a service from the source code.

Except they seem to have no interest in doing that for some reason.

Has anyone got the Nextcom drivers to run as a service under Win7 64-bit? If so - how?

waldo22

10-27-11, 04:41 PM

I have a question about a "problem" that isn't really a problem.

I need an academic explanation for what's going on with some basic transport stream cutting on my R5000-HD streams recorded from Dish Network on a ViP211 in the Southeastern US.

I just recently tried editing a few of these streams with a nifty program (no longer in development) called TSSniper (http://www.videohelp.com/tools/TSSniper).

It seems to good to be true...

It supposedly just "cuts" the transport streams at the specified locations, without any transcoding or other alterations.

That's why I am very surprised at how much smaller the output files seem to be than the original recordings.

For instance, my recording of the animated film "How to Train Your Dragon" was originally around 14 Gigs:
Mediainfo:
Complete name : How to Train Your Dragon (2010).ts
Format : MPEG-TS
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Duration : 1h 46mn
Bit rate : 18.0 Mbps
Width : 1 440 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : Component
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.387
Stream size : 13.4 GiB (93%)

I used TSSniper to cut about 1 minute off the beginning and 8 minutes off the end, and now I have a file that's under 3 Gigs!!!:
Mediainfo:
Complete name : How to Train Your Dragon (2010).ts
Format : MPEG-TS
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Format settings, GOP : M=4, N=32
Duration : 1h 37mn
Bit rate : 3 644 Kbps
Width : 1 440 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : Component
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.078
Stream size : 2.49 GiB (86%)

I have only included the video information, as the audio info is exactly the same after "cutting".

I should note here that ALL of my Satellite TS recordings report a bit rate of exactly 18.0 Mbps for the video stream before I "cut" them, but display varying bit rates of between 3 and 5 Mbps after I cut them.

I can't tell any difference in the video quality with my untrained eye.

Can someone explain what's going on here?

Is the satellite provider "padding" the streams to make them exactly 18.0 Mbps to comply with some type of TS standard?

If I'm not losing any quality, I'm going to trim up all of my recordings - saving 12 GiB per film!

-Wes

MarkV

10-27-11, 08:11 PM

It's probably stripping the nulls. Can't remember the exact terminology, but if I remember, there was a lot of empty structures in the data saved out.

Gandalf52

10-27-11, 08:11 PM

Hello Wes

You are right that editting a TS stream will often significantly reduce its size. In fact pretty much doing anything with a raw TS stream will reduce its size as long as the process involves rewriting the stream. I use TSDoctor and get the same result.

The issue is that the R5000 simply recovers the raw data stream from the carrier network and passes it on to the USB port for whatever downstream software wants it. The R5000 does not process the data at all.

A TS data stream can carry lots of different types of data - including multiple video streams, different audio languages, subtitles, teletext, etc. Most carriers have a certain fixed bandwidth allocation for a "channel" and basically that is the bit rate that you see. When you "process" the bit stream you select the primary video and audio stream and discard the rest. That gets rid of any other data (which is often just padding anyway).

As a result, when you resave the stream it has magically shrunk - as you see.

The cable and satellite boxes do the same job internally because they select only the required streams before converting them to the required output format for "normal" users. We R5000 users get the lot and it is up to our downstream software to sort out the bits.

You can transcode the stream from the MPEG format often used into the more efficient H264 using any of a number of programs. You will then not only gain the reduction you see but also a further reduction by using a more efficient codec. I can reduce an 18G raw TS stream to an H264 file that is less than 0.5G - even at max quality.

So - summary explanation - it is not the "fault" of the R5000, rather it is the nature of the raw TS beast used on fixed bandwidth channels.

Have fun.

Joseph Clark

10-27-11, 08:35 PM

ctdish

10-28-11, 11:49 AM

Joe is probably correct. I recorded the same show and it is a 3.3 Gig file. I used the option to record without nulls. The null packets have no information but are required to make a ATSC stream that can be transmitted over the air. They are also needed to send the program to a DVHS recorder. These applications require a constant data rate signal. In the early days of digital video some software may have also expected a constant rate file but the null stripped version seems to be supported by most software and hardware players today.
John

waldo22

10-28-11, 12:44 PM

There's an option in the R5000 software to record just the stream and not pad it with nulls. It'll warn you that you may have selected a stream incompatible with some software, but you can ignore that. My guess is that you don't have that option set.

@Joseph,

I found what you are talking about.

In the Nextcom DVR software, there's a Bit Rate setting under File Options called "Compressed (no filler pkts)".

I assume that this means it doesn't add null packets to make the stream conform to 19.392Mbps (default) or 23Mbps (the other choice), and not that it applies some sort of compression to the stream, correct?

@Gandalf52, I believe all the HD content on Dish Network is already encoded in H.264. I don't think you can get much better quality than the encoders that the satellite companies use, so I'd rather not transcode at all.

I think you're referring to recompressing SD content, right? I don't think HD content at 500MB (for a full-length film) would look very good.

-Wes

Joseph Clark

10-29-11, 01:18 AM

Right. By not adding nulls, you get the original broadcast - no re-encoding.

waldo22

10-30-11, 03:43 PM

As a follow-up, the movie streams I record off of HD stations (for films, at least) were presumably originally encoded as 24fps progressive.

Does anyone know if these programs are converted to 30fps interlaced by some trickery using pull-down flags, or are the additional frames and telecine hard-coded into the stream?

ie. can I run some tool from Doom9 or VideoHelp to de-interlace and remove pull-down by simply removing flags, or does it actually need to be de-interlaced and have "extra" frames dropped?

How can you tell if the interlacing/pull-down is hard-coded or not?

-Wes

MKANET

11-02-11, 02:38 PM

I'm surprised nobody actually noticed, but the 64bit Vista DVR application is NOT compatible with the Windows 7 64 System Tray. It causes the system tray to flip out and prevent all other tray icons from being visible.

I found a great solution. I use the application called "Always Up" to run the DVR app as a service (similar to srvany; except much nicer). This protects the app from misbehaving. However, you wont be able to view the R5000 system tray icon while it's running. Using the 64bit version of the software and driver under Windows 7 + Hugo's proxy application works perfectly and dependably for cableTV.

@Wes, whats the actual symptom/problem you're having? Is it with playback on a particular device? I dont have DN, but have a few DN recordings. They playback perfectly on my Nvidia based card on a PC as well as my SageTV HD200 and my SageTV HD300.

waldo22

11-02-11, 04:48 PM

@Wes, whats the actual symptom/problem you're having? Is it with playback on a particular device? I dont have DN, but have a few DN recordings. They playback perfectly on my Nvidia based card on a PC as well as my SageTV HD200 and my SageTV HD300.

@MKANET,

Thanks for your reply.

I'm not having a "problem" per se, it was more of an academic question.

I'm using XBMC Live to playback on my 1080p television, and the recordings are interlaced.

They look perfectly fine, as long as I tell XBMC to use inverse telecine.

I was just wondering if Dish is actually telecine-ing the content and hard-coding extra frames into the stream to make it 1080i at 30fps, or if they are using some sort of flags to interlace and apply pull-down. (because the source material was clearly 1080p @ 24fps)

It's like when you rip an HD-DVD, it's 1080p content at 24fps, but they've applied pull-down "flags" to the stream so that a player will know which frames to repeat if you're playing it on a TV that doesn't support 1080p24. If your player is outputting 1080p24 (because your tv supports 24fps) then the player ignores the pull-down flags, but many software players don't know they're supposed to ignore them, so if your TV does support it 24fps, it looks terrible because it's trying to repeat frames but doesn't need to.

So you have to use something like eac3to to remove the pull-down flags (this doesn't actually alter the stream, it just removes meta flags, I think).

This allows applications to see the content as 1080p @ 24fps instead of 30fps, and it plays properly.

I guess if MediaInfo says the stream is 1080i30 and it looks fine when played and the tv says 1080i 30fps, the answer is that it's actually hard-coded to 30fps and interlaced.

Does that make sense?

Glimmie

11-04-11, 12:27 PM

Is Win 7/32 supported? I am trying to use a new computer running the Vista 32 d basic non-Sage version of the R5000. I can control the DVR622 just fine but when recording I get all errors and the file size remains zero. The computer does see the R5000 and loaded the driver without any problems. The buffer bar goes fully across as well - like it's saturated and it reports "waiting for stream".

My USB port is an NEC USB3 on the MB. I also tried a UBS2 port on the MB with the same results.

Any ideas?

Note, the R5000 hardware was never tested before. Installed in 2009 but I have not gotten a suitable computer to use with it until now. However the DVR622 has been running fine all along with the mod installed.

ctdish

11-04-11, 04:51 PM

I only use XP with my R5000 but I have seen similar behavior when using USB on the motherboard. My solution was to get a PCI USB card. The R5000 web site says to use the Vista version with Win 7 so that is probably not the cause of your problem.
John

MKANET

11-04-11, 04:51 PM

It definitely should work with it. However, you might have the same issue I did with the system tray acting strange. Can you confirm that the channel you tune into to record actually has visible video when you hook up your DVR622 to a TV? Can you try other channels to see if they have the same result?

Is Win 7/32 supported? I am trying to use a new computer running the Vista 32 d basic non-Sage version of the R5000. I can control the DVR622 just fine but when recording I get all errors and the file size remains zero. The computer does see the R5000 and loaded the driver without any problems. The buffer bar goes fully across as well - like it's saturated and it reports "waiting for stream".

My USB port is an NEC USB3 on the MB. I also tried a UBS2 port on the MB with the same results.

Any ideas?

Note, the R5000 hardware was never tested before. Installed in 2009 but I have not gotten a suitable computer to use with it until now. However the DVR622 has been running fine all along with the mod installed.

Glimmie

11-04-11, 05:00 PM

sofakng

11-05-11, 07:20 PM

Does the R5000 have a BDA driver?

I'm wondering if it will work with For The Record DVB application...

Also, how difficult is the self install? $700 for a premodified VIP-211 is quite steep...

MKANET

11-05-11, 08:10 PM

It doesnt have a BDA driver. SageTV is the only application that completely supports the R5000. It's also, in my opinion still the best PC based media center solution out currently. Bad news is it's not sold anymore. So, you would have to buy a copy from ebay.

It definitely needs the expertise and equipment of a electronics soldering specialist. It's not as easy as modding game consoles.

Does the R5000 have a BDA driver?

I'm wondering if it will work with For The Record DVB application...

Also, how difficult is the self install? $700 for a premodified VIP-211 is quite steep...

sofakng

11-05-11, 08:15 PM

Thanks for the information...

Does MythTV also support it? (it looks like it does)

That's too bad about the BDA driver...

MKANET

11-05-11, 09:15 PM

It's like the Windows Media Center support.. nobody has gotten it to actually work sucessfully. There has been a some people have have spent a lot of time trying to make it work in other apps; but, nobody has reported success. Which DVB software do you use? I use DVBDream as a network encoder (just like the R5000) which feeds into SageTV as well for my DVB-S2 channels. I actually got into using DVB-S2 thanks to another R5000 user in this thread.

Thanks for the information...

Does MythTV also support it? (it looks like it does)

That's too bad about the BDA driver...

Glimmie

11-07-11, 12:22 PM

Glimmie

11-07-11, 01:48 PM

I fully intend to try this myself but has anyone successfully dumped an MPEG4 stream to DVHS and brought it back into the PC for playback? IOW, just using the DVHS is a bit bucket. I realize the internal decoders in the JVC decks are MPEG2 only. And for this to be feasible, you would need the DVHS to be able to playback in real time over 1394. Dumping back to disk to play is too much hassel

I know some may think this is backwards technology but lets keep in mind a DF300 tape holds 31GB. That's still far more economical than disk.

And yes I have plenty of decks, like 15 of them, to keep the format going for myself :)

Glimmie

11-07-11, 02:29 PM

I have to say that I was not as familiar with the Sage, but from what I have read on the MPC review, it sounds like a great device for use with tuners and recorders. I probably should not have jumped in here, and I would recommend the Sage to Glimmie.

You're right that the TVIX is more expensive, the differences such as SATA drive bay and VFD display will add to the cost. The M6600N is a relatively new model and needs some firmware work to get it up to the level of the more mature Sigma products that has now been out for 1-2 years, but it starts with a stable platform based on more powerful processor. I've been an avid Dish/R5000 user for a few years but with degradation of the broadcast resolution, I'm now moving more towards ripped conent, which is coloring my comments.

Ok this post is from 11/2009 and obviously the two devices here, the Sage HD200 and the TVIX M6600N, are long out of production. So what is the best device to play my Dish MPEG4 files. I will need Ethernet connectivity. How about the TViX S1?

BTW, Windows 7 Media Player seems to play the streams flawlessly.

Kei Clark

11-07-11, 03:27 PM

Ok this post is from 11/2009 and obviously the two devices here, the Sage HD200 and the TVIX M6600N, are long out of production. So what is the best device to play my Dish MPEG4 files. I will need Ethernet connectivity. How about the TViX S1?

BTW, Windows 7 Media Player seems to play the streams flawlessly.

The M6600N is not really out of production. We still carry the M6620 dual tuner player as well as the S1 which uses the same chip with slightly different configuration because the S1 has a lower retail price.

If you're even considering DVHS, don't. As file storage and playback device, any of the TViX, even the most ancient units are far more superior to tape options. I have 3 DVHS tape decks that have not been turned on for almost 4 years.

The TViX (M6620N, S1, and now the new Android based Xroid A1) will play R5000 files whether its MPEG2 or 4 as well as practically any other format out there, and it's easy to configure for use in an R5000 environment.

stanger89

11-07-11, 04:12 PM

I know some may think this is backwards technology but lets keep in mind a DF300 tape holds 31GB. That's still far more economical than disk.

Kei's right, you can get almost 100 times that much capacity for ~$300.

Glimmie

11-07-11, 07:15 PM

Kei's right, you can get almost 100 times that much capacity for ~$300.

Yeah bad idea! I just realized I can install a BD-R drive and the media is roughly $1.50 per 25GB disk. Sure beats the old $7.00 per DVHS - and good luck finding it anymore.

Joseph Clark

11-07-11, 07:48 PM

Try 80 cents for a 25GB disc at Micro Center, or $200 this week for a 4TB drive at Best Buy. 5TB drives are right around the corner. It's never been a better time for storage costs, and there's probably no end in sight. In a couple of years, we may have super fast TB size SSD storage at an affordable level.

Joseph Clark

11-07-11, 07:51 PM

Yeah bad idea! I just realized I can install a BD-R drive and the media is roughly $1.50 per 25GB disk. Sure beats the old $7.00 per DVHS - and good luck finding it anymore.

Drill an extra hole in an S-VHS tape and you can record D-VHS on it. I went that route for a while, until I saw that big old ugly VHS collection start to eat up my shelf space all over again. I said, "That's it - no more of this. I'll just wait for something better." It didn't take too long.

Glimmie

11-07-11, 08:03 PM

Drill an extra hole in an S-VHS tape and you can record D-VHS on it. I went that route for a while, until I saw that big old ugly VHS collection start to eat up my shelf space all over again. I said, "That's it - no more of this. I'll just wait for something better." It didn't take too long.

Well my DVHS library is just over 500 tapes. I do plan to dump into a server once storage gets cheap enough.

Joseph Clark

11-07-11, 08:16 PM

Well my DVHS library is just over 500 tapes. I do plan to dump into a server once storage gets cheap enough.

I have my over 600-disc Blu-ray collection on an UnRaid server, somewhere around 30TB or so and growing. My latest 2TB drives cost me $59 each. The same server has all my photos, music and HD and 3D video footage. God help me if fire or flood hits, but that's true of any collection stored where someone lives. Storage is dirt cheap and getting cheaper every day. It can also make access much faster and more convenient than digging up physical media. I don't ever want to go back to those days.

Just sayin'. :D

Kei Clark

11-07-11, 10:56 PM

I have my over 600-disc Blu-ray collection on an UnRaid server, somewhere around 30TB or so and growing. My latest 2TB drives cost me $59 each. The same server has all my photos, music and HD and 3D video footage. God help me if fire or flood hits, but that's true of any collection stored where someone lives. Storage is dirt cheap and getting cheaper every day. It can also make access much faster and more convenient than digging up physical media. I don't ever want to go back to those days.

Just sayin'. :D

Well, actually, there is a catastrophe going on in Thailand and hard drive prices have shot up, so the prices you'll see this winter won't be representative of the norm. The 2TB drives I purchased three weeks ago at $70 is now going for $200. Despite that price, when you move data off the tapes and enjoy the convenience of being able to browse all your movies in one directory, you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

Glimmie

11-08-11, 05:15 PM

I have my over 600-disc Blu-ray collection on an UnRaid server, somewhere around 30TB or so and growing. My latest 2TB drives cost me $59 each. The same server has all my photos, music and HD and 3D video footage. God help me if fire or flood hits, but that's true of any collection stored where someone lives. Storage is dirt cheap and getting cheaper every day. It can also make access much faster and more convenient than digging up physical media. I don't ever want to go back to those days.

Just sayin'. :D

I still see some drawbacks to a server based system:

1) All those drives spinning but you are only watching one thing at a time. Heat, noise, power, etc.
2) HDDs have a finite life span.
3) You should back up all material to something like BR-R.

As a typical movie is 100 minutes, I don't see the problem with manually loading a BD-R each time.

I am trying to justify a media server in the 25TB size. But it just doesn't make sense over a physical BD-R library which you need anyway for backup.

Comments?

vladd

11-08-11, 06:14 PM

If you have kids, the life span of a hard drive is MUCH greater than that of a physical disc. ;)

MKANET

11-08-11, 06:28 PM

It goes to show, there's an ideal playback/backup solution for each person... just not the same solution for everyone.

Personally, I buy BDR50 discs only for portable bluray (such as taking a movie to watch at friends house). I never take the original disc. I still haven't gone through my 20pack from last Christmas. However, playback/backup is all on HDD's.

Joseph Clark

11-08-11, 06:32 PM

I still see some drawbacks to a server based system:

1) All those drives spinning but you are only watching one thing at a time. Heat, noise, power, etc.
2) HDDs have a finite life span.
3) You should back up all material to something like BR-R.

As a typical movie is 100 minutes, I don't see the problem with manually loading a BD-R each time.

I am trying to justify a media server in the 25TB size. But it just doesn't make sense over a physical BD-R library which you need anyway for backup.

Comments?

UnRaid spins down the drives after a period of inactivity. You can always shut down the server if you don't anticipate using it for a while.

When a hard drive fails in a RAID system, you replace it. The array rebuilds and you're back in business. You lose a single hard drive to parity, and it protects 19 other drives of the same capacity. I've had a few hard drive failures while using UnRaid, but have never lost a single file because of it.

BD-Rs have a finite life span, but when they fail they're gone. BD-R single layer discs (25GB each) cost about a buck most of the time, but the vast majority of commercial Blu-ray discs won't fit a single layer. Double layer Blu-ray discs typically cost $6 or more. The cheapest I've ever seen them is $3.95 each. A Blu-ray iso stored on a server can be used to burn a new disc.

Using software such as MyMovies, you can organize your entire disc collection for fast access. A natural disaster or theft can wipe out any collection. I just don't see the advantage in having physical discs anymore. The server is a better security blanket for me.

I can't argue against the idea of manually inserting discs into a Blu-ray player, except to say that I'm too lazy. :D It's a matter of choice.

The disaster that's affected the supply of hard drives will end eventually, and prices will start to drop again. I don't see that changing.

Kei Clark

11-09-11, 09:51 PM

1) All those drives spinning but you are only watching one thing at a time. Heat, noise, power, etc.

True, but the volume of data has no bearing on wear, that's kind of a linear view....and depending on what type solution you choose, there are ways to achieve stable/reliable operation. For instance, my ReadyNas can spin down the hard drives when they are not actively in use, it's slower waking it up from that state, but with the excellent RAID configuration where the last time I lost a drive, it recovered beautifully on the replacement, it certainly is a compellng upgrade to a tape/disk based system. And data management is infinitely simpler, especially moving it.

2) HDDs have a finite life span.
3) You should back up all material to something like BR-R.

True, and if you are prone to be careful, you'll want to maintain a duplicated back-up of all your files on additional hard disks. The usability of your "library" on hard disks is pretty dramatic change from a tape/disc based system.

As a typical movie is 100 minutes, I don't see the problem with manually loading a BD-R each time.

We'll see. ;)

I am trying to justify a media server in the 25TB size. But it just doesn't make sense over a physical BD-R library which you need anyway for backup.

Comments?

If you have tapes as a back up, you can mix your back-up options, but the server is more than just storage, so be more creative in your justifications.

Kei Clark

11-09-11, 10:06 PM

Yikes, for a moment, I thought my name was Joe. :)

Joseph Clark

11-09-11, 11:12 PM

Yikes, for a moment, I thought my name was Joe. :)

That would probably be spelled Jo Clark, Kei. If you were Jo Clark, the name would get an immediate image upgrade. Yikes, you're beautiful. (Unless you're put off by such comments, in which case I deny saying it. :D)

Kei Clark

11-11-11, 02:47 PM

Anyone that gets offended by that needs to have their heads examined. ;) Thanks.

Joseph Clark

11-11-11, 05:21 PM

Whew! I feel better. :D

Glimmie

11-13-11, 12:33 PM

MKANET

11-13-11, 01:19 PM

I use Nero 10 Platinum to burn a bluray movie disk. You can either have it start playing with or without a menu. There is a program that "Nero 10 Platinum" comes with called "Nero Vision Xtra". All you do to do is select "Make Blu-ray Disc". Then simply drag and drop your dish files into the application.. and hit, next, next, and Burn the disc. I just tested this with the movie transformers.ts (recorded on a DishNetwork R5000 box). Works perfectly.

You can even create chapters to jump to. It's so easy, I doubt you would need instructions.

PS: Be careful not to exceed more than the size of the BDR disc (if you plan to have mutiple files on there). If you do, Nero will try to re-encode/compress the files to fit the disc. It will show you how much space you're using (and how much free space you have) at the bottom of the screen.

I am now moving Dish material to BD-R disk which play flawlessly on Windows Media and XBMC.

Is there any software that can wrap these MPEG4 files such that the disks will pay on a standard BluRay player?

So far my Pioneer and Phillips units report the disks as unplayable.

Kei Clark

11-14-11, 02:37 AM

Solfan

11-14-11, 07:15 AM

I haven't had any problems with those mini connectors (since you posted that exact same comment seven years ago). :confused:

Solfan

11-14-11, 08:17 AM

[3/26/11] Does anyone get small file sizes with their recordings? A two- hour movie may end up as, say, a 4,567 MB size, when it should normally be around 17gig. Vip211.
This happens occasionally here with Win 7 32 bit, as well as an older XP installation, without rhyme or reason. They're difficult to trim using the TScutter tool, too.

I can now fix all of these issues with Videoredo v.4.20.7.629, as I've been learning the ropes quite quickly over the past few weeks.

Thanks for the heads-up on this great program, guys.

Trimming, null-stripping, restoring previously broken files....the works. Christ, I'm busy! :)

mtallent

11-14-11, 10:13 AM

I am now moving Dish material to BD-R disk which play flawlessly on Windows Media and XBMC.

Is there any software that can wrap these MPEG4 files such that the disks will pay on a standard BluRay player?

So far my Pioneer and Phillips units report the disks as unplayable.

TsmuxeR is a free program that can take a .ts or .m2ts file and make a Blu-Ray or AVCHD folder structure and then burn onto BD-R or DVD disks using Imgburn (free) and they will play on most BD players, I believe the dish encoding is OK for doing this if not then they can be re-encoded into proper BD format using Ripbot264 (free) program from Doom9.org forum. So if the file size is smaller than 8 GByte then it would be cheaper to use DVD disks instead of BD-R disks and the quality is the same.

Mike T

stjr

11-14-11, 12:36 PM

95% of films I record these days with the R5000 in the compressed mode can be placed on a single layer DVD+R disk. The other 5% can go on a DVD+R DL. There is no need to use a BD-R disk for archiving a single film recorded from Dishnetwork with the R5000. It's not worth it for me to put multiple films on a BD-R disk.

I've used Nero Vision, Tsremux and TsmuxeR to create AVC-HD disks that play in Blu-ray players, but they all had deficiencies, IMO. The disks I created with TsmuxeR and Tsremux had lip sync issues. Nero Vision re-encodes the video, which can degrade the picture and is a waste of time.

My best results come from playing the raw TS file on my Sony PS3 (3.50 firmware or earlier played from a UDF DVD+R 2.5 disk) or streamed to a hardware media player over my network (either SageTV or a TVIX box).

Glimmie

11-14-11, 12:38 PM

I haven't had any problems with those mini connectors (since you posted that exact same comment seven years ago). :confused:

Ditto that! This is a non-issue!

Glimmie

11-14-11, 12:41 PM

stjr

11-14-11, 12:46 PM

Compressed MPEG-2 files had problems sometimes when played with the MyHD card. I find that compressed AVC files play better in most software players, because you're not dealing with all those unnecessary null packets. R5000 AVC TS files play great in Windows 7 - Windows Media Player.

Solfan

11-21-11, 06:57 AM

I read somewhere here that the compressed mode can be problematic with some player software?

My Tvix M6500 player had horrendously wacky navigation and file size issues on the null-stripped (variable-bit-rate) R5000 recordings. Like Kei said, I fixed it with a firmware update, the last few nights have been smooth sailin'.

-
"There's nothing on it worthwhile, we're not going to watch it in this household, and I don't want it in your intellectual diet." -Philo T. Farnsworth

MKANET

11-28-11, 11:12 AM

Does anyone know what are the actual symptoms for playing back cableTV mpeg2 compressed R5000 recordings? I have always very bad stutter with strong interlace artifacts on 2 out of 3 of my PCs. I've never tried turning off the compression setting on my R5000s. Does anyone know if local channels are padded with null packets as well? Would R5000 "compression" setting have any affect on local HD channel recording for mpeg2 cable TV?

mtallent

11-29-11, 09:29 AM

Yes, over the air broadcasts are at a constant bit rate so they do have null packets. I also seem to remember if you have the R5000 software to not compress the data stream, then it will add null packets to the source if necessary to maintain the default constant bit rate setting. The broadcasts can be interlaced (1080i) so you will have to set your player software to de-interlace to remove the interlace artifacts during playback.

I am interested is how you achieve your sig statements, you can use PM if necessary.

Thanks

Mike T

MKANET

11-29-11, 10:49 AM

Thanks for replying back Mike. I just set my R5000 app to insert null packets so the stream is at a constant 19.2mbps. However, after I did this, I am still noticing something odd/non-standard with the 1080i movie/premium channel recordings. They dont playback like a typical 1080i recording from a local channel using my clear QAM tuners.

What's different about the R5000 MPEG2 movie channel 1080i recordings that causes weird deinterlace related issues? Of course, my system is capable of deinterlacing standard 1080i mpeg2 files such as local 1080i TV channel recordings. My SageTV hardware extender plays these weird R5000 mpeg2 movie channel files perfectly.

PS: Feel free to PM me with any questions you have about my setup. I dont think however, it would be too interesting to you since it's all based on SageTV products; which is no longer being sold.

Thanks,
Michael

Yes, over the air broadcasts are at a constant bit rate so they do have null packets. I also seem to remember if you have the R5000 software to not compress the data stream, then it will add null packets to the source if necessary to maintain the default constant bit rate setting. The broadcasts can be interlaced (1080i) so you will have to set your player software to de-interlace to remove the interlace artifacts during playback.

I am interested is how you achieve your sig statements, you can use PM if necessary.

Thanks

Mike T

MKANET

12-01-11, 02:44 PM

boiler11

12-01-11, 02:54 PM

How do I Power ON, or Power OFF my cableboxes using command-line (version 3.1D)?
For example how do I power on the below device from command-line?

Device #4 100570E

I saw some examples for command line, but didn’t know how I could send the pwr IR command and how to direct it to the proper device.

Thanks,

Unfortunately, you can't do that in multi-instance. I asked nextcom about that before:

Hi,
No, currently there is no way to direct the command line for multi instance. That's why it won't let you do it.

MKANET

12-01-11, 02:59 PM

Thanks for the quick reply. Oh well.

Unfortunately, you can't do that in multi-instance. I asked nextcom about that before:

MKANET

12-07-11, 02:52 PM

Video stuttering issue identified! Affects people using R5000 based devices and Cablecard. I was able to get this to the attention of nevcairiel (creator of LAV filters). It looks like he is looking into a fix for display cards that can't handle switching between soft deinterlacing/hardware deinterlacing quick enough. If you have this stuttering issue; and, want to show your interest in a fix... you should post a comment on doom9 LAV Video filters thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1543333#post1543333)

The 29/59 Frame Rate Issue (http://experts.windows.com/w/experts_wiki/71.aspx) (affects HBO and some other paid TV channels when playing back on several popular display cards)

felino

12-28-11, 08:22 PM

hi, i got a vip211 on a sale and have inside a r5000, i need to know how to deinstall the device, now these receivers can use EHD, not interested on the device r5000, somebody can tell me what have to do? only have to remove the device or have to do any others modifications?
thanks in advance.

MKANET

12-28-11, 08:37 PM

Nextcom Wireless can do it for you for pretty cheap.

I'm curious how is a receiver with EHD a replacement for an R5000 based VIP211? VIP211+R5000 functionality is currently irreplaceable. You can't do anything with EHD except for add more disk space to the receiver. All the files are encrypted except for local TV channels. These poor people learned the hard way...
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/309112-Help-dish-network-encrypted-so-xp-can-t-recognize-my-external-hard-drive

hi, i got a vip211 on a sale and have inside a r5000, i need to know how to deinstall the device, now these receivers can use EHD, not interested on the device r5000, somebody can tell me what have to do? only have to remove the device or have to do any others modifications?
thanks in advance.

felino

12-28-11, 08:50 PM

Joseph Clark

12-28-11, 10:10 PM

only interested on the normal capabilities of the vip211, record on a external hard drive, pause ect, i am very far and send this receiver is expensive, i was thinking to remove it by my hand with my tools, but afraid is not only remove and play, some others mods or anything have to be do it, i am on hawai

There's no need to remove it. Just don't use it. I have an external hard drive on mine and if I don't install or set the R5000 software, the mod does nothing.

felino

12-29-11, 11:10 AM

too late, remove it today and now the ird not give me video on free channels, only black screen with menus and guides and all of that but no video of any kind

waldo22

12-29-11, 12:27 PM

felino,

There is nothing that the r5000 is doing that prevents the ViP from showing video.

A lot of the ViP211 boxes have older versions of the software that don't support the new Dish configurations out of the box.

You need to have a purple 3rd gen Nagra access card, and you probably need to get the box to update it's software in order for it to work.

-Wes

felino

12-29-11, 01:44 PM

did that, have the last software and a n3 card inserted, with the r5000 showed the free channels, now without the r5000 not video on the free channels, something is missing, only desold the r5000 modules and nothing more.

waldo22

12-29-11, 10:10 PM

You de-soldered it?

Why would you do that? You could simply unplug the ribbon cable from the r5000 PCB and unscrew the PCB from the ViP211 chassis.

That way it could easily be re-installed later.

You probably ruined the board when you de-soldered it.

felino

12-31-11, 10:28 AM

thank found the diagram to mount again, i think something maybe is broke.

reekinhavoc

01-06-12, 06:06 PM

When i try to use compressed (no null packets) option the program freezes and I get a message that the HD Video Recorder has stopped working.

I am using Windows 7 with the vista 64 nextcom software. It does the same thing on an XP desktop I own. I really want to strip those packets. Im getting tired over 19GB HD Basketball games when they should be 4-5GB. Anyone else have this problem?

MKANET

01-06-12, 07:08 PM

That's odd. I thought that removing the null packets only affects playback on some media players that can't handle vbr files. If this is happening on two different desktops, I think it's related to your content provider. Do you have cableTV or dish-network? I dont have any problems with stripping the null packets or not.

I hope you dont mind me asking (unrelated to your problem) Do you have the multi-instance version of the DVR app? If you do, I'm sure you noticed very quickly what it does to your Win7 64 System Tray icons once it's minimized. :) Since I use my R5000 PC as a full time workstation (and can't have it screw up my tray icons), I had no choice but to hide the whole DVR app by running it as a Windows service using an app called "Always Up" (very similar to Srvany.exe in the Resource Kit). I'm guessing this bizarre behavior doesnt happen with the Vista64 system tray. I'm just curious what you do.

When i try to use compressed (no null packets) option the program freezes and I get a message that the HD Video Recorder has stopped working.

I am using Windows 7 with the vista 64 nextcom software. It does the same thing on an XP desktop I own. I really want to strip those packets. Im getting tired over 19GB HD Basketball games when they should be 4-5GB. Anyone else have this problem?

reekinhavoc

01-07-12, 12:24 PM

Thanks for the reply MKANET. I guess I didnt put my problem succinctly. I mean when I choose compressed in the preferences and press ok or enter r5000hd.exe stops working. It freezes and you have to re run the exe. Of course when you go back to preferences the constant bit rate is still picked. It also happens if you choose the 23mb/s option. The program or exe stops working.:mad:
I only have the one instance version so my tray is not affected.

MKANET

01-07-12, 01:47 PM

Just change the setting in the registry when the app is not in memory. There may be a weird bug in the app that's preventing you from making changes in the user interface.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Nextcom\R5000-HD\xxxxxxx]

Unfortunately, I dont know which setting it is. I'll try later for you today if nobody else chimes in.

Thanks for the reply MKANET. I guess I didnt put my problem succinctly. I mean when I choose compressed in the preferences and press ok or enter r5000hd.exe stops working. It freezes and you have to re run the exe. Of course when you go back to preferences the constant bit rate is still picked. It also happens if you choose the 23mb/s option. The program or exe stops working.:mad:
I only have the one instance version so my tray is not affected.

MKANET

01-07-12, 03:42 PM

Okay, I figured it out. Since you can't do this in the app itself. You can do it directly in the registry by just replacing the below "100543D" serial number with your device's serial number. Then, save what you see below in notepad.exe as: Nonullpackets.reg. Then double-click the reg file you made.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Nextcom\R5000-HD\100543D]
"Bitrate:"=dword:00000000
To undo what you did; and, make R5000 use null packets again, just do the same thing for the below.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Nextcom\R5000-HD\100543D]
"Bitrate:"=dword:00000001
NOTE: Make sure that you don't have the R5000-HD app in memory when you make this change.

reekinhavoc

01-07-12, 04:12 PM

MKANET

01-07-12, 04:27 PM

Glad it worked.

Thanks that did it. One note is now when i go in to preferences to see if it says compressed is the picked option, it freezes then lol

mtallent

01-08-12, 09:23 AM

I know its extra work, but there are several programs that can remove the null packets and it is pretty fast. VideoRedo will and HDTV2MPEG2 will for mpeg2 files only, and I am sure there are others, I just have not tried them.

Mike T

benjasage

01-18-12, 12:50 PM

I am getting a frequent error that occurs when watching R5000 content from SageTV on a Sage HD300 extender. The video starts getting jerky and then playing in FFW with no audio. It happens at the same point in every troubled video recording. SageTV software plays this fine, as does MPC-HT.

I fed the TS through MPEG-2 TS packet analyser 2.4.1.0 and checked for discontinuities and it found none. Therefore I believe that the problem exists in the elementary streams and there are only two present: the H.264 video and the AC3 audio. No problems with SYNC bytes.

If I feed it through video redo as a quick repair, playback is ok but the timecode is broken and it shows 13 minute show duration, and the seeker bar behaves like a 13 minute show, but it plays at 1x properly. If I let videoredo re-mux the whole show with no edits it fixes everything and makes it perfect.

So the question is where do I start? I suppose I need to identify the event in R5000's video stream that triggers the symptoms, and then identify why the HD300 can't handle it.

What do I use to identify the fault in the stream?

Running SageTV 7.1.9.256
Sage HD300 beta 20110506-0 and current mainstream release.
Java 1.6.0_10

Update:
VideoRedo quickstream fix reports 25 "input sequence errors" and removed 25 audio resync frames.

MKANET

01-18-12, 01:14 PM

Did you select the option to strip out null packets? I noticed popup once in a while when this option is enabled; which is probably why we get the warning about playback issues when this option is enabled.

Symptom: Where there's no audio; and, the video looks like it's fast forwarding.

I am getting a frequent error that occurs
when watching R5000 content from SageTV on a Sage HD300 extender. The video starts getting jerky and then playing in FFW with no audio. It happens at the same point in every troubled video recording. SageTV software plays this fine, as does MPC-HT.

I fed the TS through MPEG-2 TS packet analyser 2.4.1.0 and checked for discontinuities and it found none. Therefore I believe that the problem exists in the elementary streams and there are only two present: the H.264 video and the AC3 audio. No problems with SYNC bytes.

If I feed it through video redo as a quick repair, playback is ok but the timecode is broken and it shows 13 minute show duration, and the seeker bar behaves like a 13 minute show, but it plays at 1x properly. If I let videoredo re-mux the whole show with no edits it fixes everything and makes it perfect.

So the question is where do I start? I suppose I need to identify the event in R5000's video stream that triggers the symptoms, and then identify why the HD300 can't handle it.

What do I use to identify the fault in the stream?

Running SageTV 7.1.9.256
Sage HD300 beta 20110506-0 and current mainstream release.
Java 1.6.0_10

Update:
VideoRedo quickstream fix reports 25 "input sequence errors" and removed 25 audio resync frames.

ctdish

01-19-12, 12:11 PM

I have seen what I think is the same issue with recordings and it can occur whether null packets are added or not. I suspect it is a counter or time code error or reset that is included in the original video stream. I have seen it recordings from both Dish and Shaw. I use PowerDVD tom play these recordings. Usually I use a Popcorn Hour but it has similar troubles as the HD300.
John

MKANET

01-19-12, 01:16 PM

I guess my experience may only apply to Comcast. I havent seen it do that symptom in a couple of years or so (when I might have had this option selected). A few weeks ago on this thread when I saw talks about using "compressed", I gave it a shot... I had to revert back due to this very issue.

stanger89

01-20-12, 05:12 PM

Anyone ever seen the "Error: Failed to set USB transfer Mode" error dialog? Basically it seems my R5000 (VIP-211) is non-functional and all I get is a popup with that error whenever I try and start a recording....

benjasage

01-29-12, 08:17 PM

MKANET: Yes I am stripping null packets to reduce file size. This is sounding like a minor inconsistency in the program stream that SageTV's HD300 decoder isn't dealing with properly. But why would there be a gap in the audio stream during a show? Is this a broadcast glitch?

MKANET

01-29-12, 08:54 PM

Yeah, they warn you when selecting that option that not all players can handle VBR media files correctly; unless they're padded. I just recently switched to "compressed" mode again to see if I was just imagining things. And, sure enough... whala... I got that weird fastforward problem just only a few days later! So, that compressed option definitely look related (at least on Comcast).

I'm not sure what you mean by "a gap in the audio streaming during a show". Do you mean you hear the audio drop out? Does this happen when you leave the orignal stream in tact (not removing null packets)? If you hear it on all players, then it's a problem with the original broadcast.

MKANET: Yes I am stripping null packets to reduce file size. This is sounding like a minor inconsistency in the program stream that SageTV's HD300 decoder isn't dealing with properly. But why would there be a gap in the audio stream during a show? Is this a broadcast glitch?

benjasage

01-29-12, 09:13 PM

quoting "VideoRedo quickstream fix reports 25 "input sequence errors" and removed 25 audio resync frames."

I'm not certain as to the nature of these errors. Quickfix in VideoRedo won't fix it, but a 100% stream remux in VideoRedo fixes everything. From a little research the audio resync frames apparently indicate that there are missing audio frames.

If there is a gap in the audio, its difficult to perceive because the player jams up.

So far, only the SageTV HD300 glitches on this video, server and client roll playback just fine.

MKANET

01-29-12, 09:31 PM

Does this happen only whe using the "compressed" option? Does this happen on all your TV channels via R5000? Do you have the same issue when using your cablebox's HDMI output with it's builtin mpeg2 decoder) to watch the same TV channels?

quoting "VideoRedo quickstream fix reports 25 "input sequence errors" and removed 25 audio resync frames."

I'm not certain as to the nature of these errors. Quickfix in VideoRedo won't fix it, but a 100% stream remux in VideoRedo fixes everything. From a little research the audio resync frames apparently indicate that there are missing audio frames.

If there is a gap in the audio, its difficult to perceive because the player jams up.

So far, only the SageTV HD300 glitches on this video, server and client roll playback just fine.

benjasage

01-31-12, 07:17 AM

I haven't tried uncompressed (unpadded) streams yet. I am planning on it soon. No problems capturing the analog video from the VIP211 with an AMD Theater650 based MPEG2 encoder, I can't really hear any audio issues, but the catch is that I don't record both MPEG2 SD from analog and R5000 feeds, and it is impossible to predict when the glitch happens.

What tool can I use on my video stream to analyze the streams for errors? There are zero errors in the transport stream continuity.

MKANET

01-31-12, 09:42 AM

I don't think you would have to worry about errors or playback issues with the default setting. If you still have playback issues using the default setting, TS-Doctor (http://www.cypheros.de/tsdoctor_e.html) should fix recoverable errors.

I haven't tried uncompressed (unpadded) streams yet. I am planning on it soon. No problems capturing the analog video from the VIP211 with an AMD Theater650 based MPEG2 encoder, I can't really hear any audio issues, but the catch is that I don't record both MPEG2 SD from analog and R5000 feeds, and it is impossible to predict when the glitch happens.

What tool can I use on my video stream to analyze the streams for errors? There are zero errors in the transport stream continuity.

MKANET

02-03-12, 07:54 PM

I think I know what you're experiencing. The video is fine, only the audio drops in and out. However, this only happens to me on a couple of SD channels... Playboy and BBCWLD; neither of which I watch. This doesn't happen to me on any of my HD channels. My guess is it's something indirectly related to these channels being in SD.

I haven't tried uncompressed (unpadded) streams yet. I am planning on it soon. No problems capturing the analog video from the VIP211 with an AMD Theater650 based MPEG2 encoder, I can't really hear any audio issues, but the catch is that I don't record both MPEG2 SD from analog and R5000 feeds, and it is impossible to predict when the glitch happens.

What tool can I use on my video stream to analyze the streams for errors? There are zero errors in the transport stream continuity.

benjasage

02-15-12, 08:53 AM

I set my file options to "Constant 19.392mbps" and got another glitching cycle on the HD STP-300 player last night, House was broken and WAF took another hard hit (on Valentines day no less).

My trial version of VideoReDo has expired but the full remux always fixed the errors. Stream quickfix does not fix the errors.

Getting ready to run it through TS doctor.

benjasage

02-15-12, 09:13 AM

TS-Doctor simply reports "PMT invalid or missing" for every single R5000 recording.

I guess the other issue I noted is that two recordings that have occurred since setting to uncompressed streams is that the file size hasn't changed yet. I will reboot my receiver and R5000 hardware and restart the server and try to record again.

benjasage

02-15-12, 01:10 PM

Dirty Jobs Onion Processor was recorded at the 19.3mbps padded transport stream setting and it too glitched out on me. I'm uploading my House program that was broken to SageTV support, and I am gonna test it in stand-alone mode on the HD300 player via USB.

MKANET

02-15-12, 01:22 PM

How does it play when using the cableTV box itself (using it's HDMI/DVI and audio outputs)? I have a feeling there may be something wrong with the cablebox that you have your R5000 in. The R5000 module just streams exactly what comes from your cablebox. It doesn't alter the audio/video streams or re-encode in any way. So, if you have errors in audio/video stream, then you also have errors in the stream when your cablebox tries to decode them as well.

Dirty Jobs Onion Processor was recorded at the 19.3mbps padded transport stream setting and it too glitched out on me. I'm uploading my House program that was broken to SageTV support, and I am gonna test it in stand-alone mode on the HD300 player via USB.

benjasage

02-15-12, 05:08 PM

I can't readily test that way (watching the analog output during recording). I did just confirm that the video playback also breaks the same way when watching from a USB file system in stand-alone mode. So it has nothing to do with SageTV framework, rather the decoder firmware.

Here is some output from TSremuxR:
SmartLabs tsMuxeR. Version 1.10.6 http://www.smlabs.net
Decoding H264 stream (track 1): Profile: Main@4.0 Resolution: 1280:720p Frame rate: 59.9401
H.264 stream does not contain fps field. Muxing fps=59.9401
Decoding AC3 stream (track 2): Bitrate: 448Kbps Sample Rate: 48KHz Channels: 2
B-pyramid level 1 detected. Shift DTS to 2 frames
B-pyramid level 2 detected. Shift DTS to 3 frames
H264 bitstream changed: insert pict timing and buffering period SEI units
AC3 stream (track 2): bad frame detected at position00:12:19,168. Resync stream.
Decoding AC3 stream (track 2): Bitrate: 448Kbps Sample Rate: 48KHz Channels: 6
AC3 stream (track 2): bad frame detected at position00:35:21,983. Resync stream.
Decoding AC3 stream (track 2): Bitrate: 448Kbps Sample Rate: 48KHz Channels: 6
Processed 215279 video frames
Mux successful complete.
Muxing time: 1 min 46 sec

MKANET

02-15-12, 06:22 PM

You wouldn't have to record anything.. just use the cablebox to watch TV the way it was meant to be used to see if it even works correctly. I have a feelng it might have the same problem decoding the same content. AFAIK, the sageTV HD300 (which uses are relatively recent Sigma chip... 8654 chipset), can handle all the broadcast TV standards that are out. Presuming there's nothing wrong with your SageTV HD300, if it can't playback this type of media, you won't find any consumer HD media box that would either. Usually when a media file can't be decode a file format, the symtom isn't audio/video breaking up. It just wont play it at all. With all the time you've spent on this issue, I think you would be better off trying to use you cablebox's video/audo out; preferably DVI/HDMI video.

I can't readily test that way (watching the analog output during recording). I did just confirm that the video playback also breaks the same way when watching from a USB file system in stand-alone mode. So it has nothing to do with SageTV framework, rather the decoder firmware.

Here is some output from TSremuxR:
SmartLabs tsMuxeR. Version 1.10.6 http://www.smlabs.net
Decoding H264 stream (track 1): Profile: Main@4.0 Resolution: 1280:720p Frame rate: 59.9401
H.264 stream does not contain fps field. Muxing fps=59.9401
Decoding AC3 stream (track 2): Bitrate: 448Kbps Sample Rate: 48KHz Channels: 2
B-pyramid level 1 detected. Shift DTS to 2 frames
B-pyramid level 2 detected. Shift DTS to 3 frames
H264 bitstream changed: insert pict timing and buffering period SEI units
AC3 stream (track 2): bad frame detected at position00:12:19,168. Resync stream.
Decoding AC3 stream (track 2): Bitrate: 448Kbps Sample Rate: 48KHz Channels: 6
AC3 stream (track 2): bad frame detected at position00:35:21,983. Resync stream.
Decoding AC3 stream (track 2): Bitrate: 448Kbps Sample Rate: 48KHz Channels: 6
Processed 215279 video frames
Mux successful complete.
Muxing time: 1 min 46 sec