Cannot scan with analog TV/FM-Tuner any more (1 Viewer)

[rogerleifert]

MediaPortal Version: 1.2.1
MediaPortal Skin: PureVisionHD 16:9
Windows Version: XP (MCE2005) SP3
CPU Type: AMD Phenom II-X3 705e
HDD: Corsair CMFSSD 64GB + 2xSamsung SATA 2TB+1TB
Memory: 2x2GB GSkill DDR3-1333MHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UD3H
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD4550 + Onboard ATI Radeon HD4200
Video Card Driver: ATI Catalyst 10.10
Sound Card: Onboard Realtek (SPDIF-Out --> Extern: Cambridge Audio DAC-Magic + Yamaha Soundbeamer YSP8000
Sound Card AC3: Coaxical Out
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Hauppauge HVR3000
1. TV Card Type: Hybrid:Analog+DVB-T+DVB-S+FM-Tuner
1. TV Card Driver: latest Hauppauge BDA-Driver (2010)
2. TV Card: Hauppauge WinTV Nova-HD-S2
2. TV Card Type: DVB-S(2)
2. TV Card Driver: latest Hauppauge BDA-Driver (2010)
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec:
MPEG2 Audio Codec:
h.264 Video Codec:
Satelite/CableTV Provider: Astra 19.2°E
HTPC Case: Zalman HD160XT
Cooling: Zerotherm BTF80
Power Supply:
Remote: Logitech Harmony 885
TV: Philips 56PFL9954H-12
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI


Though my MP installation is running flawlessly except for already known bugs, I have encountered a very strange error when I did a new scan of my DVB-S channels yesterday.

I cannot reach the scan-page of my analog TV/FM-tuner in TV-Server configuration.
In the attached pictures you can see my tuner-configuration in the first 2 pics.
I do have a single Hauppauge DVB-S/S2 card and additionally a hybrid Hauppauge DVB-S/Analog/DVB-T card.
The single tuners of the hybrid card are put together correctly in the hybrid cards section.
The DVB-T part of the hybrid card is currently disabled, because I don' need it at the moment.

In the next 2 pics you can see what happens, when I first select the scan page of one of the DVB-S cards and then want to select the analog tuner card.
The DVB-S card is shown correctly and all functions are working.
But when I change to the analog tuner card, only the headline changes to "5 Analog Hauppauge WinTV 88x Tuner".
Yet the content of the scan page of the analog tuner card doesn't change!
It simply shows the scan details of the previously selected tuner card.
This happens from whatever other tuner card I go to the analog tuner card.

This means, that I can't reach/use the scanning of the analog-TV/FM-card anymore simply because the buttons don't show up.

What makes the thing still more mysteriously is, that scanning of all the correctly shown tuner cards works perfectly.
Furthermore all the old stored analog TV- and FM-stations are working in MP (or with the preview-function in the TV-server configuration)!
Also all other functions of the TV-server configuration tool work correctly.

I only recognized this strange behaviour yesterday.
After going from MP 1.X seamlessly through all the 1.2. version (alpha, beta, RC, final, 1.2.1) I have waited for a rescan of my DVB-S, analog and FM-channels until yesterday because there was no need for it beforehand.
So this error must have crept in somewhere in between.


Any ideas what could cause this error, if it could be a MP-bug and what I could try before doing a complete reinstall of the TV-server?

Your help and inspiration would be very welcome.

Roger

 

[mm1352000]

Hi Roger

This is probably caused by an error when you try to view that analog tuner section. Please post your logs using the watchdog with option 3.

mm

 

[rogerleifert]

AW: Cannot scan with analog TV/FM-Tuner any more

Hi mm,

logs are attached.

I first deleted the old logs in the TV-server section and stopped the TV-service.

Then started TV-Server configuration, started TV service and then moved around thedifferent tuner-cards in the TV-server configuration.
The last one I selected was the analog card.

Then closed the TV-server configuration and started the Debug Mode with option 3 to create the logs.

Kind regards

Roger

 

[mm1352000]

Hi again Roger

Looks to me like the error is occurring in one of these two lines of code:

      mpComboBoxCountry.SelectedIndex = Int32.Parse(layer.GetSetting("analog" + _cardNumber + "Country", "0").Value);
      mpComboBoxSource.SelectedIndex = Int32.Parse(layer.GetSetting("analog" + _cardNumber + "Source", "0").Value);

The failure is occurring because a group of characters fails to be converted into a number. Sometime in the past the value for country or the source (cable/aerial) must have been characters instead of an index.

I don't think this is a bug - possibly just related to the fact that you upgraded from quite an old version of MP. The best way to resolve this is probably to delete the analog tuner from the hybrid card group, and then also delete it from the tuner list. After that, restart TV Server and it should be redetected. You can then map the existing analog TV and FM channels to it, and do a scan to check for new ones.

Let me know if you have any problem with this...

mm

 

[rogerleifert]

AW: Cannot scan with analog TV/FM-Tuner any more

Hi mm,

just tried your suggestion.
Removing the analog tuner from the hybrid card was no problem.

But how can I delete the analog tuner card from the tuner list.
The "remove"-button in the tuner list is always greyed out (for all tuner cards!), no matter what I do.
Stopped the TV-service, deleted the complete hybrid card, unchecked the analog tuner, unchecked all other tuners....
Still "remove button" is greyed out :-(

Do you have an idea?

Kind regards

Roger

[Edit] P.S.: I just saw, that in the "device path" section of the analog tuner card "BDA" doesn't appear in the appear as with the DVB-S and the DVB-T device paths ("...HCW88BDA2....").
Could this be the root of the problem?

 

[mm1352000]

So to be very clear: you are selecting the tuner (the row) that you want to delete and the "remove" button is still greyed-out?
I would have to check that when I get home, but I used that button quite recently and it worked fine...

About the device path: that shouldn't be causing any problem.

mm

 

[rogerleifert]

AW: Cannot scan with analog TV/FM-Tuner any more

Hi mm,

yes.
I select a tuner card and the "Edit"-button becomes un-greyed but the "Remove"-button remains greyed out!

In the mean time I will try to disable and re-enable the analog tuner in the hardware-manager of Windows and see if that helps.

Kind regards

Roger

[Edit]
After disabling the analog tuner in the windows hardware manager it finally was possible to remove the analog tuner card from the tuner list. Button no longer greyed out and card marked as "unknown".

Then reenabled the analog-tuner in the hardware manager and it was recognised again by the TV-server as analog-card with a new ID.
Old analog TV- and FM-channels quickly were reassigned to the "new" analog card.

Now scan-page appears again when analog tuner-card is selected!
Will try to do a new scan in a few moments but am quite confident.

Question remains: was this behaviour only a glitch in my setup or is it a potential bug?

Hi mm,

OK. Everything works again. Analog scanning without any issues and all options are availabe in scanning.

But I still wonder if this shouldn't be reported for further evaluation to the developers:

- Why can a situation arise, when the scan-page simply doesn't appear for a tuner-card?

- Why is the "Remove"-button greyed out and why can this only be changed by manually disabling a tuner-card in the hardware manager?

This is somehow inconsistent and counter-intuitive.

The latter issue might arise, when the tuner cards are still in use by another application.
To install/update the latest drivers (and to check the functionality) for the Hauppauge tuner-cards, I had to install this and that Hauppauge application.
But later I have disabled the autostart of every recognizable Hauppauge service/program with the autoruns.exe tool from Sysinternals/Microsoft.

So I don't understand, why it wasn't possible to remove the tuner-card inside the TV-server configuration.

After everything works again, I still/again have the Remove-button greyed out for all tuner-cards!

Kind regards

Roger

 

[mbuzina]

You can not elevate the issue higher, since MM is the lead TV dev

As he stated above, this is probably due to your setup being upgraded from a long time ago, resulting in some inconsistent settings data. So this will only occur for people that started way back (lets say MP 0.1.1) and never did a clean install in the mean time. So there is nothing to be done about that anymore and the potential number of people having the issue is very small.

 

[mm1352000]

Re: AW: Cannot scan with analog TV/FM-Tuner any more

Hi again Roger

Question remains: was this behaviour only a glitch in my setup or is it a potential bug?

I'm almost certain it was just a glitch in your setup. I've also got analog tuners and I have not had this problem.

- Why can a situation arise, when the scan-page simply doesn't appear for a tuner-card?

These things can happen in any code when unexpected values are encountered. It just so happens that in this case it was in the analog scan page, and it was probably due to incompatibilities with old settings.

- Why is the "Remove"-button greyed out and why can this only be changed by manually disabling a tuner-card in the hardware manager?

After looking at the code I think this must be by design. I did not write this code (it was written more than 3.5 years ago) so I can't confidently explain the reasoning for it. If I had to guess, I would say that it was thought there is/was never any need to delete "active" tuners - only "inactive" ones (ones that aren't present or recognised by the OS)...

This is somehow inconsistent and counter-intuitive.

Yes and no. I agree that it doesn't make sense at first, but when I think about it there really isn't much reason to delete an active tuner - it will just get recognised again when the TV Server restarts so deleting it is a waste of time (except maybe to reset settings).

The latter issue might arise, when the tuner cards are still in use by another application.

No, that is not correct. That list basically shows all tuners that the OS knows about. Tuners that are being used by other software are still registered with the OS so they will still be available in the list. If you attempted to use them then you would get an error.

So I don't understand, why it wasn't possible to remove the tuner-card inside the TV-server configuration.

After everything works again, I still/again have the Remove-button greyed out for all tuner-cards!

Again, I think this is "by design" as explained above. Do you think that it should be enabled?

mm

 

[rogerleifert]

AW: Re: AW: Cannot scan with analog TV/FM-Tuner any more

Hi mm,

After looking at the code I think this must be by design. I did not write this code (it was written more than 3.5 years ago) so I can't confidently explain the reasoning for it. If I had to guess, I would say that it was thought there is/was never any need to delete "active" tuners - only "inactive" ones (ones that aren't present or recognised by the OS)...

... I agree that it doesn't make sense at first, but when I think about it there really isn't much reason to delete an active tuner - it will just get recognised again when the TV Server restarts so deleting it is a waste of time (except maybe to reset settings)

...Do you think that it (the Remove-button) should be enabled?

Perhaps an entry in the Wiki would be an alternative.
There it should be explained that the remove-button in the tuner section is only availabe for unrecognized/unregistered/not working tuner cards.

If ever a case like mine should arise for a user, the workaround with the disabling of the unresponsive tuner-card in the Windows hardware manager, then removing it from the tuner-card section and then re-enabling it in the hardware manager did/does the trick, followed by re-assigning the old channels to the newly recognised tuner-card.

Because I am not a total beginner to PC, was quite clueless about a solution and needed help from an expert, I think this not a trivial case and could also appear for other users?

By the way I'm not sure that my problem arose by updating MP from a "very old version".
As far as I remember, the last clean install was about 2 years ago when I changed my primary HD for an SSD and freshly reinstalled the OS and all application programs.
There MP must have already been in 1.x version-status.
After that I sequentially updated MP through all evolutionary stages including 1.2. Alpha, Beta, RC and final and never used an SVN version.

Perhaps my problem was caused by a driver update of the Hauupauge tuner-cards which eventually did set one or more settings to a wrong value?
I definitely did do a driver update for the tuner cards after the last "fresh-install" because originally HD-channel decoding didn't work with the Hauppauge cards. After the driver update HD-channels did work.
Driver updates are quite common. So my problem could also arise for others if that was really the cause of the problem?

Many thanks again

Roger