Black screen when starting TV (1 Viewer)

Al_Capone

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  • September 26, 2006
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    It's definitely happening to MPEG2. Most of the time, we watch MPEG2 compressed channels. - and have this problem too.
     

    wowski

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    September 14, 2007
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    On my system it is fairly repeatable to get this to happen. Starting from the main menu, go into the TV section and watch a channel full screen. Return to the Main Menu page using the 'previous' button (i.e. TV still playing in small box in corner). Now press 'STOP' to stop TV playing. If I now try to either play a video (e.g. from TV series etc.), or go back into the TV section and select a channel to play, I will get a black screen but still with sound.
    In order to prevent this occurring, I have to stop TV playing from within the TV menu (i.e. turn TV off), not the main menu (using STOP button). I don't know what if there is anything different in the code between stopping TV from these two different sections. (My TV card has the 'STOP graph' option selected in the TV service config).
    I will try to gather some logs and post in the next couple of days.
    It does not seem to be not a codec issue, I have tried with PDVD9, LAV, FFDshow, all have the same result.

    --------------Update with Logs-------------------------
    The trick in getting this to trigger for me seems to be stopping live TV outside of the TV section (e.g. main menu), and then selecting another channel using the TV guide to start TV again. i.e. I had a bit if trouble getting this to occur with the default blue MePo skin as initially I had it set to turn TV on automatically when entering the TV section. Turning this off, and using the TV guide to select a channel then allows it to occur.
    With my default skin, Mastayaluca, I usually select the TV channel I want to watch using the TV guide shortcut from the main menu, hence why I was getting it triggered so often.
    To get the black screen cleared and normal TV to resume I have to press stop when I have the black screen on full screen. Hopefully the logs (created with debug mode) show something, the 2nd and 3rd time TV is turned on have the black screen issue.

    This also impacts on other video files on my system, i.e. if I stop TV outside of the TV section, then try to play a file from TV series or online videos, the black screen issues occurs with those files too.
     

    FreakyJ

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  • July 25, 2010
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    AW: Black screen when starting TV

    Does it only happen with H.264 channels, or with MPEG2 as well ?

    It looks like the video decoder just stops requesting data after a short time - do you have the evr.log ?

    Tony
    Sorry I tried different other things on my HTPC, and this file got deleted :( Will post it if it happen again, maybe wowski could provide a full set of logs?!)
    And yes it also happens with Mpeg2 Streams it was just random that it happened with h.264
     

    FreakyJ

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    AW: Black screen when starting TV

    Spp now I have some more logs :)
     

    Owlsroost

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    Re: AW: Black screen when starting TV

    Spp now I have some more logs :)

    Thanks, interesting - what's happening when it fails is that MP player doesn't try to connect a video decode filter.....I think it's because CDeMultiplexer - Start() (in TsReader.ax) is completing/returning too early, before the file has been parsed enough to trigger the OnVideoFormatChanged() callback to the player code - so the player thinks it's a radio stream....need to analyse what's going on a bit more ;)

    Tony
     

    pdcrom

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    December 12, 2011
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    Hi,

    I also have the same problem with the LiveTV starting with a blank screen.
    Tonight I tried to reproduce it by starting and stopping LiveTV, switching between H.264 channels.
    Once I switched to a MPEG2 channel the problems started, blank screen with audio.
    From that moment onwards, every channel stays blank, also H.264 stream.
    (see the 'log_blank screen.rar' file, the last few channel changes had a blank screen)

    After restarting MP (see 'log_no blank screen.rar'), there were some problems at first, starting the first channel from the EPG (no clue why), but switching channels does not give a blank screen anymore.

    Hope this helps in finding a solution!

    Paul.

    [UPDATE]
    Did some more testing,

    - switching back and forth between h.264 channel and MPEG2 always resulted in a blank screen
    - restart mediaportal solves the problem, but switching back and forth again resulted in blank screen
    - then restarted the entire PC
    - started switching h.264 channel and MPEG2 channel, no blank screen anymore, only occasional tsbuffer problem, but video always started.
    - something must be happening that triggers this and can only be resolved with a reboot.
     

    Attachments

    • log_blank screen.rar
      219.9 KB
    • log_no blank screen.rar
      211.7 KB

    corvy

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  • January 3, 2007
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    Hello fellow threadmembers, I have been having this same issue for a long time. Almost every morning, on first tune I only get audio and a black screen. I stop live-tv, and starts it again and then it works. Fairly reproducible. Last few months I have setup a new TV server and a new client with totally new hardware and migrated from Win7 to Win8.1. Still this issue is there. Only stable component is that I have DigitalDevices tuner cards. Can I humbly ask if anyone in this thread still have the issue?

    Of course I can produce logs for this issue but I am kindof living with it and I am just asking if I am the only one :D
     
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