can't tune to Radio or TV channel after recovery from standby (1 Viewer)

[robbo100]

I run a client / server setup (with the client also installed on the client itself). The server configuration is shown at the bottom of this post.

For a couple of week now, I have been having problems with my system not tuning after recovery from standby. When I select a channel, the client hangs and I have to kill the process. Rebooting the server always clears the problem. It seems to be intermittent (I put it down to the fact that we were going through DSO and they keep changing the frequencies), but this is now stabilised so I think I can rule it out). The TV Service itself never seems to hang in anyway obvious, only the client part of the software.

I have attached the logs for the client and server (labelled appropriately). These logs are a bit big, because it is an intermittent problem they are more difficult to grab (coupled with the fact that the MiniDisplay plugin is writing madly to the log for some reason). I previously had similar problems with CRC check causing this sort of behaviour (albeit that issue cause the TV Service itself to hang), but this is definitely unticked. Also, all the tuner cards show as idle in the manual control tab when the failure occurs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

Robbo100



MediaPortal Version: 1.2.1
MediaPortal Skin: StreamedMP
Windows Version: XP SP3
CPU Type: Intel E7400
HDD: various
Memory: 2 GB DDR2
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP41-UD3L
Video Card: NVIDIA 9400GT
Video Card Driver: NVIDIA 195.81
Sound Card: Onboard REALTEK
Sound Card AC3: SPDIF Optical Out
Sound Card Driver: Latest
1. TV Card: Pinnacle 300i
1. TV Card Type: DVB-T
1. TV Card Driver: Latest
2. TV Card: Compro Videomate S350
2. TV Card Type: DVB-S
2. TV Card Driver: Latest
3. TV Card: Hauppague WinTV HD S2
3. TV Card Type: DVB-S2
3. TV Card Driver: Latest
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: Cyberlink 10
MPEG2 Audio Codec: ffdshow
h.264 Video Codec: Cyberlink 10
Satelite/CableTV Provider: UK Freesat
HTPC Case: Bog standard PC case with wires running through the wall to lounge
Cooling:
Power Supply:
Remote: Cyberlink cheapo
TV: LG 47LE5300 LCD LED
TV - HTPC Connection: HDMI

 

[robbo100]

Oh,

I should have said, the actual event where the problem occurs in these (very messy) logs is at 17:35:52, when I try to tune to Radio 4 shortly after coming out of standby.

I have cleaned out all the log files on the server and I plan to try to gather some far cleaner logs this morning (if I can get the failure to occur).

Thanks

Robbo100

 

[robbo100]

Sorry to keep posting against my own post, but I thought I would report that I think I may have identified the problem (although I am only 80% confident as it was an intermittent problem and I might have just been lucky so far).

To eliminate the concern that it might be linked to Digital Switch-Over, I deleted all my channels (DVB-S and DVB-T) and did a fresh re-tune of all the channels and set up the EPG again (I use XMLTV GUI (RadioTimes) and fill the gaps with DVB EPG). However, I found that the DVB EPG was not working (set to download when tuner is idle). I changed the setting to download when tuner is in use (and removed the download when idle) and then tuned the TV to a channel for an hour. After doing this, the missing EPG items were populated, and since then I have not had a problem with the tuner failing to tune after recovering from standby.

Is there possibly a bug with the DVB EPG?

Robbo100

 

[jameson_uk]

Is there possibly a bug with the DVB EPG?

More than likely yes. We have a hunch that there is a problem with locking in the code and possibly the EPG grabber causing something to remain locked and then block tuning requests.

Problem is we have not been able to locate a specific issue and the area of code that any problem would exist is the realm of very few developers too (C++ Directshow code).

Anything you can do to help identify a pattern would be great but I think this will be extremely intermittent and there without being able to replicate the problem on demand we are a little stuck.

There is however some experimental stuff going on in the background to do with locking but that is a rewrite of quite a lot of the TV server code so is not going to be quick or easy

 

[robbo100]

Hi mate

Maybe it is linked in with the system going to sleep whilst grabbing still DVB EPG and then it can't unlock when it recovers, which could be a problem with PowerScheduler++ (potentially). One of the other reasons why I went down this route to fix the problem was because the fault didn't seem to occur if I forced the system to sleep manually, but does happen when it is left to PowerScheduler to do it (although I don't have an enormous quantity of data to support that conclusion).

Rob

 

[jameson_uk]

Hi mate

Maybe it is linked in with the system going to sleep whilst grabbing still DVB EPG and then it can't unlock when it recovers, which could be a problem with PowerScheduler++ (potentially). One of the other reasons why I went down this route to fix the problem was because the fault didn't seem to occur if I forced the system to sleep manually, but does happen when it is left to PowerScheduler to do it (although I don't have an enormous quantity of data to support that conclusion).

Rob

Yep I think standby makes it more prevalent but it does not appear to be a bug in either powerscheduler or EPG grabber but a combination of both and also other TV code.

Would be interesting if you were able to limit this to Freeview or Freesat but I think it is across the whole of TV server...

There are some attempts to try and sort this out but it is one of those incredibly nasty issues that is hard to track down. It is possible that this is down to drivers (although I think it is an issue with the TV code)

 

[robbo100]

Well,

If I have any bright ideas, or manage to find out any more information, I will post it back here.

Cheers

Rob

 

[mm1352000]

Hi Rob

I note that the problem does seem to start after EPG grabbing at 2011-11-18 04:35:28. One of the things that I can suggest is to try and disable the CRC checksumming in the EPG grabber. That has successfully eliminated the problem in some cases...

mm

 

[robbo100]

Hi mm

One of the things that I can suggest is to try and disable the CRC checksumming in the EPG grabber.

- From the first post:

I previously had similar problems with CRC check causing this sort of behaviour (albeit that issue cause the TV Service itself to hang), but this is definitely unticked

CRC check is definitely a problem for me (and on my fathers system). I always have to have it unticked to stop complete crashes of the TV Service, I don't know if this is linked to the fact that I get DVB EPG from a mix of sources (XMLTV, DVB EPG (S) and DVB EPG (T)?

Thanks

Rob

 

[mm1352000]

Sorry about that Rob - skim reading too fast. :sorry:

The issue is with TsWriter - nothing to do with XMLTV or mixed sources. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the issue is in the EPG decoding code, however at this point I'm unable to prove that. I've looked at the text parsing code in depth and made a few tweaks. At some point when I have some time on my hands I'm going to work my way back and look at the general header/field parsing to ensure that is all okay as well. If I find anything glaringly bad I'll definitely release public test builds for people to try. This issue is high on my list of "things that really annoy me about TV Server".

mm