[TV] Attempt retune on bad signal error (1 Viewer)

[onelegend]

My system on occasion (<1% of the time) has a bad lock to a channel and corrupted data is coming down. A simple stop/start of the channel and it goes in no problem. This is obviously bad should it happen for a recording schedule since the whole file will be garbage.

Looking at the tswriter logs, mediaportal knows there is a problem - as soon as it locks - eg

27-04-2013 19:58:09.678 Recorderid 1518 Continuity error... 7 ( prev a ) - bad signal? (this errors runs the entire length of the recording at .1 second intervals

Is it possible to implement a retune function after X amount of bad signal errors - say 20, attempt 1 retune before halting/staying locked on to the duff signal in order to stop an infinite loop in the case of a sat dish falling off the wall

Thanks
Ian

 

[mm1352000]

Hello Ian

Your idea is good in principle (and in fact these are exactly the sorts of things I started to implement in some of my "TVE3.5" branches...) however signal issues are far from the only cause of continuity errors.

Further, I also think more stringent conditions would be needed. For example, if you only get 1 continuity error every 60 seconds do you want that to trigger a retune after 20 minutes? I would personally say no.

mm

 

[onelegend]

Yes, specific conditions would be required for a retune attempt - it would probably need to trigger if x amount occurred in x seconds (50 count in first 10 seconds?)

A failed lock in my logs lists a stream rejected message, it then posts a bad signal error almost every .1 of a second - it continued to do this for every .1 of a second until tvservice stopped the recording an hour later (thus a big log file). 100/1000's or errors

I'll post some logs later with a failed lock, I have 3 debug logs with it occurring if you would be interested in implementing the retune on error system.

I'm going to switch to a clean 1.3 to try and get it to re occur as its happened a number of times this last week so need to find the cause/eliminate mdapi (it occurred probably once in last year but 6 times last week across 2 different systems) - luckily it does it mostly on bbc hd so hopefully reproducible without mdapi

 

[mm1352000]

I'm going to be up front with you: I have no time to implement this any time soon.
And if you read my fuller post in the other thread you posted you'll see I'm *highly* skeptical about the benefits of retuning in the general case.
Retuning is a potentially proactive approach on the part of MP, however it is very reactive in the wider scheme of things.
In other words, I think there are probably better solutions which should be applied on an individual basis, depending on the circumstances surrounding the problem.
For example, get dish alignment checked.
Replace LNB and/or cabling.
Amplify the signal.

Not that I'm closed to your idea. Far from it. Just trying to be practical.

 

[Django.edwards]

Hi, sorry to jump in here, but from time to time, I can also observe such a behaviour. As you can see in the attached log there are about 60000 continuitie Errors. I don't know from where they come. Wat I can say is that the dish allignement and the reception is absolut ok. This does not happen each day, but from time to time.. saying once per week. As you can also see is, that it suddently stops, then Comes back without changing the channel.
Any Explanation for this?

@mm1352000: it is good to see you back in buisiness. Hope everything is going well?

 

[onelegend]

I'd go as far to say I see it once every four/five months - I can spot which day/log it's happened in by looking for a 1mb+ tswriter log

I need to reproduce without mdapi it seems so will come back with more if I can do this, although if it is mdapi then ill have to switch back to my sky box

I have contacted Tbs by email

 

[Django.edwards]

Hi onelegend, thas why I told you about my Problem. I can also scan my logs by only compare the filesizes. As you can see, I have 60.000 continuity Errors. I'm not using mdapi and I have absolutely no idea from where it comes. In the past I had such error which where related with my cam. But now everything is working fine. But sometimes this occurs.
So I think that your idea with retuning in case of such an enormous quantitiy of continuity Errors is not such a bad idea. Thats why I told you my Story here, to Show that you are not alone. Perhaps there is the possibility for an improuvement in later Releases.