CableCARD tuner support for MediaPortal 1 (4 Viewers)

[mediacowboy]

Ok thank you for the information mm. Also have had a chance to try a few channels out off my cable card and everything is working great. Thank you again for all your hard work.

MediaCowboy

 

[twemperor]

Thanks for the feedback twemperor
Comments...

1. You seem to still be using the PBDA interface. I'm curious: is there any particular reason for that? As explained a couple times I expect it would be slower than the [new] native interface, and from our perspective it is less flexible too. I was tempted to remove support for that interface entirely as it may get a bit confusing for people... but I'm curious if you think there are advantages over the other interface.
2. Regarding tuning time on the first tune, that was due to PMT (info about the video, audio and subtitle streams) not being found on the first try. Your PMT timeout is set to 20 seconds. In other words, TV Server waits for PMT for 20 seconds before giving up and either trying another tuner or searching for a different PMT source. In your case the PMT was found from a different source, so I guess your cable provider occasionally changes the PMT source. Default is 10 seconds so I guess you've modified this previously for some reason? It should be possible to drop the PMT timeout to two seconds as per my recommendation to Douglas.
3. I don't see TV Server hanging on the last tune, though I do see that it appears like data is not received from the tuner. Can you describe the symptoms (ie. visually, what do you do and see)? It may well be that interactions with Argus are causing this, but the other possibility is that the channel DRM prevents viewing in MP (ie. it might be copy-once rather than copy freely). If you were using the new interface I'd be able to say more (unlike the native interface, PBDA wraps up all the info about copy protection so we have no idea whether streaming should work or not).

mm

@mm1352000, I am curious about your first comment. I didn't intentionally pick the PBDA interface (not sure how I would do that). In TV Setup, I have two sets of InfiniTV tuners, one with a Device Path starting with @device (that works great!), and another set with a Device Path starting with uuid that doesn't. With the latter set, I can scan, but I get a lot of discontinuities with the Manual Control and I can't get any video when I try to watch the stream. I posted logs for the two sets of tuners.

Also, I think some of my problems may be the Argus TV Client, because the tuning and recording is rock solid.

 

[mm1352000]

I am curious about your first comment. I didn't intentionally pick the PBDA interface (not sure how I would do that). In TV Setup, I have two sets of InfiniTV tuners, one with a Device Path starting with @device (that works great!), and another set with a Device Path starting with uuid that doesn't.

I quote the first post.

Note that you may see more tuners than you expect for two reasons:

• Silicondust created a "wrapper" for the Prime that allows software like MP to use it for clear QAM only. The tuners named like "HDHomeRun Prime Tuner" are the tuners you want to use; the other tuners named like "Silicondust HDHomeRun Tuner" are the same tuners but only capable of clear QAM. I recommend you disable (untick) the clear QAM wrapper tuners to avoid confusion.
• On a 32 bit version of Windows 7 or Windows 8 you may see each tuner listed twice. This is because there are two ways or interfaces for controlling each tuner. Tuners with device path starting "@device:sw" use a PBDA interface; tuners with device path starting "uuid:" use the native UPnP/DRI interface. Only one interface should be used to control each tuner. The PBDA interface used by Windows Media Center may be more reliable but will certainly be significantly slower than the native interface. I recommend you disable (untick) the PBDA tuners unless troubleshooting.

So, the set that you say are working well for you are the PBDA set. That's all well and good. They should work fine... except that if you were running on a 64 bit system you wouldn't have access to them. In addition, there has been enough feedback now to say that they generally perform slower than the other "uuid" tuners which communicate more directly with the hardware.

With the latter set, I can scan, but I get a lot of discontinuities with the Manual Control and I can't get any video when I try to watch the stream. I posted logs for the two sets of tuners.

I stand by my recommendation to use the native/DRI interface rather than the PBDA interface.
Unfortunately your "uuid" log files don't help me very much. What I see is you attempting to tune a channel just as the tuners are detected... which doesn't work out very well.

I see you've set the tuners to preload. That's okay, but be aware there will be a significant burst of network activity as/when the tuners are loaded/connected. Attempting to tune at the same time as other tuners are loading (as you unintentionally did in your log files)... I know from experience that trying to have too many "conversations" with the tuners in parallel doesn't work out so well.

I note that on your system tuner detection took roughly 15 seconds:

[2013-07-16 21:21:44,154] [Log ] [6 ] [INFO ] - TV service: Starting
...
[2013-07-16 21:22:00,268] [Log ] [10 ] [INFO ] - Detected new OCUR/DRI device Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-36-17)

I've only seen such slow detection when detection wasn't working correctly and in a VM. It concerns me.

Couple questions for ya:

• What is your network setup like - wireless G, wireless N, wired 100M, wired gigabit, powerline?
• Is your server running in a VM?
• I see you've got 3 IP addresses on three subnets - 192.168.200.2 (Ceton InfiniTV 4), 192.168.1.4 (???), 192.168.128.1 (???). What is the deal with that?

It'd be great if you could try and grab fresh "uuid" logs. Please allow a bit more time for the tuners to be detected and loaded before attempting to tune.

Also, I think some of my problems may be the Argus TV Client, because the tuning and recording is rock solid.

I don't use Argus so I can't tell you if it is causing issues - no experience. If you're using MP's TV Server isn't it relatively easy to disable temporarily and test?

 

[twemperor]

I quote the first post.

Sorry, I've read the first post a dozen times, but I guess that detail escaped my attention. Since I've had everything working, I wasn't trying to troubleshoot. I will try a more patient and thorough configuration with the native interface.

 

[karthikeyan mohan]

Thanks for the patch this works great in USB CETON tuner ihave one small issue
The channel names are appearing unknown because of this the I have issue in epgmapping
Any solution for this

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome karthikeyan

Thanks for the patch this works great in USB CETON tuner

Great.

ihave one small issue

The channel names are appearing unknown because of this the I have issue in epgmapping

Any solution for this

Normally the channel names should be found.

Make sure you followed all the instructions in the first post, particularly the SDT/VCT timeout setting (see here) - I recommend you set that value to 60 seconds, or maybe even more if names are still "Unknown...".

If you've done that and you still have a problem, could you please post your log files so that I can investigate the problem.

1. Open TV Server configuration.
2. Click "open log directory" in the top left corner.
3. Zip up the files you find there and post the zip file here.

Please also confirm:

1. Who is your cable provider?
2. Do you have switched digital video (SDV) with a tuning adaptor (TA)?

mm

 

[mm1352000]

Sorry, I've read the first post a dozen times, but I guess that detail escaped my attention. Since I've had everything working, I wasn't trying to troubleshoot. I will try a more patient and thorough configuration with the native interface.

No worries whatsoever - there is a lot of detail in there, and I did change it when I released v2 of the patch.
Looking forward to your feedback...

 

[karthikeyan mohan]

Hi
Here is the log file attached, my service provider is Verizon FIOS, I have Windows 8 PC with the CETON USB directly connected.

I tired with 60 and also with the latest 2.1 patch still no luck

Thanks
Karthikeyan Mohan

 

[twemperor]

I note that on your system tuner detection took roughly 15 seconds:

[2013-07-16 21:21:44,154] [Log ] [6 ] [INFO ] - TV service: Starting
...
[2013-07-16 21:22:00,268] [Log ] [10 ] [INFO ] - Detected new OCUR/DRI device Ceton InfiniTV PCIe (00-80-36-17)

I've only seen such slow detection when detection wasn't working correctly and in a VM. It concerns me.

Now that concerns me too...

Couple questions for ya:

• What is your network setup like - wireless G, wireless N, wired 100M, wired gigabit, powerline?
• Is your server running in a VM?
• I see you've got 3 IP addresses on three subnets - 192.168.200.2 (Ceton InfiniTV 4), 192.168.1.4 (???), 192.168.128.1 (???). What is the deal with that?

No VM for the server. I have the Ceton InfiniTV4 network connection (192.168.200.2), a wired 100Mbps connection (192.168.1.4), and I had a Microsoft loopback adapter which was supposed to be a faster loopback than a full network stack (192.168.128.1), but I've since disabled it to avoid confusion.

It'd be great if you could try and grab fresh "uuid" logs. Please allow a bit more time for the tuners to be detected and loaded before attempting to tune.

Logs attached. I tried to be very patient and use the "uuid" tuners. I deleted all the channels again, had a successful scan, but I had a lot of discontinuities while timeshifting/recording so that it was unusable. I tried both pre-loading and not pre-loading the cards, and I moved my timeshift buffer. I tried to make sure that any EPG grabbing is off, so that it wasn't interfering.

 

[mm1352000]

Hello again Karthikeyan

Thanks for the log files
In your case the information received during scanning is quite strange. It is almost as if your CableCARD is not present.

Have you activated the CableCARD with Verizon?
Have you successfully used the tuner for receiving channels in MP or any other software?

mm