The Official R5000-HD Technical Status Discussion - Page 87

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

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


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?

Have you tried the NEXTCOM Vista x64 drivers? They work for me with windows 7 ×64 .

Problem 1. Win7x64 system tray corruption ...
I had this problem (see a few posts back). Did you reinstall the R5000 software or windows? A fresh windows install and subsequent UAC off prior to program installation solved it for me.

Problem 6, ... SAGE integration problematic.
How is sage integration problematic for you? The latest version of the software has Sage integration built in.

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

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.

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!

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.

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 ] 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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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:
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!!!:
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

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.

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.

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.

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

@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

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

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