Flagrant SageTV 5.x Issues

[Outvit]

jrhees,

I am having just the most annoying issues with SageTV 5.x and the dll that was provided to SageTV developers. From the day of purchase it never worked quite right but was merely quirky and was acceptable error rate, maybe once every week or two, but when SageTV 5.x was released it just escalated to an unacceptable amount of failures. There is an intermittent failure between SageTV and the USB-UIRT running the latest firmware and latest 1.4.x drivers from your website and SageTV. I have been through the SageTV developers and played email tag with them for about a month installing many of the "fixes" they could think of, however, none of them rectified the issue. I will attempt to describe the issue and then give a concise specifications to my PVR system. I will also provide links to the SageTV forums where I have further elaborated the issue in case I forget anything here.

Essentially what is happening is the system will operate and change channels very quickly and accurately for about a day or so, sometimes more and then (regardless of Java VM version, SageTV loses the USB-UIRT and will change the channel in the software but the USB-UIRT will not actually blink or send any signals--not sure if it's getting said signal from SageTV after SageTV loses it--I have tried Java VM 1.5.0_06, 1.5.0_04, and 1.4.2_06 (all of which have java updates turned off as another error proofing step)). Other programs such as your IR trainer are able to access the USB-UIRT and send signals, so can programs like Orb Networks (which has its own USB-UIRT dll) and GB-PVR and even a BeyondTV 4.x free trial. But Sage is incapable of accessing the USB-UIRT after this intermittent fault takes place, and they're saying that the issue was isolated to your dll but they haven't a bit of source code for it.

In months prior the "acceptable" error rate that was very distant between each failure was a problem in which the first two digits of a channel change would be sent immediately and then the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 2000 cable box would hit its timeout for new input and initiate the requested channel change, and then maybe 30-45 seconds later the 3rd digit would come in for the channel change and rotate the channel again thus recording the incorrect channel and therefore TV program. A restart always rectified this issue as well. Everywhere I mention a restart, that's an OS reboot, not Sage restart. SageTV restarts were all but ineffective in resulting change of behavior. It took a complete reboot of the OS to result in any change. But I thought there isn't any way it's drivers if other PVR apps and your programming utility can access the device. (None of the aforementioned other programs were running in any form, no services or anything when Sage has this problem so it isn't a battle for the devices attention).

Thank you ahead of time. If you wish to make this email, I'd be happy to. My first thought would be if you could provide me with a copy of your dll that has lots of logging output to a text file that I can send you after a couple days.

Kind Regards,
Outvit

Sage Forum Topics: One, Two. (Topic #2 is more of a rant that topic #1 resulted in nothing but has very useful diagnostic steps that i went through). In the end I decided to come here since the issue seems to be isolated to the dll you provided.

System Configuration:
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2 (fully patched)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester Core
RAM: 1GB of generic but very quick memory (Dual Channel)
GPU: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (old but reliable)
Mobo: MSI 7025 K8N Neo2 Platinum
Sound: Soundblaster Audigy Gamer (Audigy 1)
Sage: SageTV v5.04

[jrhees]

Outvit,

That's a good idea -- contact me via support@usbuirt.com and I'll get you a .dll which dumps log info to the Windows Kernel debug console. That way we can see what is happening (at least see the interaction between Sage and the .dll).

-Jon

[Outvit]

Sent.

[Outvit]

I have sent the email 5 different times now, jrhees.

Are you there?!